New Wine Needs New Wineskins

Eugene Kim

In 2020, I stepped away from a thriving church I helped grow for over 17 years. I gave everything I had to that community, but in the end, I could no longer ignore the ways the system was not only constraining my voice but also limiting our imagination for what the Church could be. I sensed we needed new wineskins—more flexible forms and containers—for the new wine of God’s movement in a rapidly changing world.

Ultimately, I didn’t leave because I stopped believing in the Church. I left because I still did. I believed the Church could be and do better.

There’s no denying the deep faith and belonging that can be found in a traditional, staff-led, programmatic church. However, it’s become increasingly clear that this model is working for fewer and fewer people, especially among rising generations.

From the outside, our church appeared to be one of the “successful” ones. But in the years leading up to my departure, I became more and more aware of the downsides and compromises built into the system:

• Our church was growing, but mostly through “transfer growth”—people who were already pre-churched or coming from other churches. The reality was that the vast majority of the neighbors we were trying to “reach” were never going to walk through our doors.

• Our staff were overfunctioning and overburdened with the constant demand for more production and programming, while most attendees remained passive consumers. Were we truly making disciples, or just creating dependency?

• Despite a large budget, staff, and multiple properties, we were making little impact in matters of justice or equity in our surrounding community. Most of our time, energy, and resources went to inward-facing programs.

• On a personal level, I experienced firsthand the harmful impacts of unhealthy power dynamics that are all too common in fixed hierarchical systems.

Moreover, I began to see that these issues were all deeply interconnected. You couldn’t address one without having to reckon with other features of the system as well. The donor, membership-based business model of the church drove the need for more people, which drove the need for more attractional programs, which required more paid staff, which required more programming and content to justify those positions—which then required more and more people to sustain it all, and so on and so forth.

If, as the saying goes, “every system is perfectly designed to get the results that it gets,” I had to ask myself: What was this system truly designed for?

I’d already spent years trying to change the system from within. Perhaps it was time to step outside and create something new. I made the difficult decision to step down but had no idea what to do next. I only knew I couldn’t return to business as usual, and had no desire to replicate the same patterns and structures I had just left behind. So I went back to the drawing board and began asking basic questions like, “What is church?” and “What is it for?” And it was in the midst of these questions that I discovered a need, a calling—a sacred opportunity—to reimagine things from the ground up. As a result, I founded New Wine Collective, a church innovation think tank and R&D lab.

Since then, I’ve been a student of innovation and systemic change. I’ve been learning, questioning, and discovering that there’s so much more to what God is doing than what we see inside institutional structures. I see the Spirit showing up in decentralized, grassroots communities centered around love, justice, and inclusion. I see people practicing mutuality, sharing power, and building community in new and creative ways.

I didn’t leave my position because I gave up on the Church. I left because I believed the Church could be and do better. And it turns out, I’m not alone out here. These days, my spiritual imagination is being shaped by mystics, activists, systems thinkers, and other spiritual innovators like my friends and colleagues in the Phygital Fellows. Together, we’re exploring the intersections of emerging technologies, culture, and spiritual formation, and discerning what it means to show up faithfully in these new spaces.

The new wine of the Spirit is already here. We just need new wineskins—fresh approaches, bold experiments, and collaborative innovations—that can help guide the Church and the world into a more loving, just, and equitable future for all. This is the Church I still believe in, now more than ever.