Church and Ministry Burnout? There is a solution

Luke 5:37-39 NET  "And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the new wine will burst the skins and will be spilled, and the skins will be destroyed.  (38)  Instead new wine must be poured into new wineskins.  (39)  No one after drinking old wine wants the new, for he says, ‘The old is good enough.’”

In the first century most of the Jews did not follow Jesus. The above passage addresses one of the reasons. Jesus used new wine as a metaphor for the gospel. He carried the metaphor farther by mentioning wineskins. In this case the wineskins was the people. Today, many think of the wineskins as a church or community of believers, and that is likely appropriate but the actual metaphor is for individual people. So, the people are wineskins and the gospel is the new wine. Jesus is explaining in the above passage that most of the Jews will be content with the old covenant and not want to venture into the new covenant.

Fast forward to 2019. The church in general and specifically the evangelical iteration has adopted a mixture of the old wine and new wine that renders the new wine really old wine. Jesus warned of this in Matthew 16, Mark 8, and Luke 12. He called it the leaven of the Pharisees. Further Paul warned of a similar thing in Acts 20:29-30. He told the Ephesian Elders that savage wolves would come into their midst, not sparing the flock and that members of their own community would rise up and pull away the flock from the purity of the word of God's grace. Neither Jesus nor Paul said this might happen, no, they said it would happen. Further, Jesus prophesied that the entire kingdom would be leavened (Matthew 13:33.)

Now you have the whole church that needs the new wine. Unfortunately, like the first century Jews many say, the old wine is good enough. The problem is that so many churches have people on a treadmill of performance. It is like the carrot dangling on the stick in front of the animal it cannot be attained. There is no way that anyone will ever feel righteous by their effort to live the Christian life. It is impossible. There is an additional problem as well. Many of the leaders, elders, pastors and ministers, find themselves on this same treadmill. They suffer burn out from striving.

There is an answer however. It is the original new wine that was offered in the first century. It is the pure gospel of God's grace. It is wrapped up in being justified by the faith OF Jesus Christ, Galatians 2:16. Oh by the way, you have to find it in the KJV or the NET version of the bible. The reason is that all the other versions render it faith in Christ rather than the faith of Christ. That doesn't matter for my purpose here because in the Greek it says the faith OF Christ. You can find other posts on this blog that address this issue by typing in the faith of Christ in the blog search bar.

The bottom line is that one can rest in the gospel message. The writer of Hebrews called it the Sabbath Rest. This alone is the antidote for church and ministry burnout.