As we build Global Legacy, we embrace four principles. We believe these principles are applicable for all kingdom organizations. The first principle that we hold to is this: it is all about the wine.
This is a beautiful picture. We must be centered around the Presence of God. Everything we do must be looking to and coming from Him showing up and changing things. This is revival, renewal and refreshing. This new wine, this fresh outpouring, this flowing river, this meeting with a person, all result in encounter and we can never be the same again. It is all about the wine.
Wine needs a wineskin. In fact, the wineskin gets its purpose from the wine. The wineskin’s purpose is to receive, carry and pour out the Wine in whatever form He chooses to come tomorrow, because the wine is a Person, with a will and a heart.
Wineskins do have value – without them, there is nothing to catch the wine in, carry it, store it, pour it out from or pass it onto future generations. Therefore we do create wineskins; we build structure and organization but always with the purpose of serving the wine. After all, the structure of an organization must always serve the spirit – or Spirit – of an organization. Administration that does not serve the spirit of an organization will kill it.
Historically, what has been one of the biggest extinguishers of revival? Why do revivals fade instead of never ending? It is because the wineskin has not been flexible enough to embrace what God is doing tomorrow.
This is key. The Wesleyan Revival was a wonderful outpouring that became a Methodist movement. There is still incredible life in places but the language speaks for itself – the method became more important than the outpouring. What began as a revival move of God showing up in an uncontrollable and uncontainable way became over-controlled and over-contained.
We want wineskins that are flexible; that can respond, receive, expand, grow and change. Old wineskins get stiff, crack and spill or spoil the wine, so when we build organizations we need to be continually aware of what God is doing today. It is a beautiful marriage between the natural and supernatural – it is what Spirit-led organizational leadership and administration is all about. If an organizational leader does not understand the power of God, he will reduce the move of God to what man can do without God. In other words, he will reduce it to a wineskin without wine.
That is not our goal. Our goal is to be constantly renewing the wineskin. When the wineskin becomes more important that the wine, it gets cracked, musty and stale, and ceases to have the capacity to serve the wine – it needs to be renewed. In biblical days, in order to renew a dry or cracked wineskin it would be beaten on a rock, soaked in a river and have oil rubbed into it. There are some interesting parallels here. Sometimes our organizations need to be beaten on the rock of Christ, soaked in the river of God and rubbed with the oil of the Spirit. We must always be aware of what God is doing and saying, and responding appropriately.
Music provides a good example of our need to remain flexible. If we believe that God only turns up with one style of music, we will look at the upcoming generation or other people that embrace other, newer styles of music, and we will question whether God can show up with that style. We have moved on from the pipe organ, but there was trouble in the early days when a generation began to embrace the electric guitar. What kind of music will the next generation embrace?
Think of Moses: at the end of his life, he was taken to the top of a mountain where he saw the Promised Land, which was a land into which he would not enter. He saw a generation that would outlast him and he was able to say to them, “…would Heaven drop like dew onto you – go in and take the land.” In his mind, he saw a wineskin that would receive something that he himself would not experience.
We love the wine, and we love the wineskin, so we put the two together. We want to learn the value of the wineskin and its purpose to serve the outpouring of the wine. Why? Because ultimately, no one buys a wineskin for itself. We need a wineskin to enjoy the outpouring of the fresh wine it contains but it really is all about the wine.
