Dear GCI Family and Friends,
The concept that Jesus introduced with new wine and new wineskins to contain the wine has captured my attention for some time. Superintendent Mike Rasmussen and his National Ministry Team took this concept from Jesus and shaped their interactive teaching and training into a wonderful conference for pastors and spouses.
It was designed as a time of engaging Jesus and his call to ministry through GCI in a fresh and new way. I was able to join as a participant, and it was inspiring to hear the stories from various pastors during breakout sessions, inclusive of victories and challenges. Mike and his team designed this to be more than a “one and done” event. They built foundational ideas out from the heart and life examples of Jesus, and the goal is to continue this journey via online cohort meetings in the months ahead.
Please read Mike’s highlights from the conference.
This spring, pastors and spouses from across GCI-USA gathered for our New Wineskins events. We envisioned it as a time of renewal, discernment, and growth. Throughout the gathering, participants reflected on the ministry of Jesus — who shifted focus from religion to relationship, from temple to table, from inward to outward.
It was a time of discovery of what it means to be Jesus’ Church, living as a sent people. We discussed what it looks like to be new wineskins ready to receive and embrace the new wine Jesus brings in his personage, gospel message, and his calling. Jesus tells his disciples in Luke 5:37-38:
And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the new wine will burst the skins; the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, new wine must be poured into new wineskins.
Jesus is telling his disciples that he is our new wine, and the containers of this new wine (us) must be made new and ready, because the old wineskins will not stretch sufficiently to hold what the new wine brings — without bursting. As disciples of Jesus and as the Body of Christ, we are filled by Jesus, who pours himself into us. He fills us with his love, his power, his presence, and his Great Commission. Our old ways of thinking and being cannot hold all that he has for us and all he has called us to do alongside him. We must trade our old ways of thinking and our old ways of being for his new way of thinking and being.
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