Australia has some great new wines. Vineyards are developing everywhere or so it seems. When I was there earlier this year, we visited Giantsteps winery which was very contemporary and stylish. It got me thinking about a story Jesus told about wine...

I was doing some training and workshops for the Uniting Church. Like so many other denominations and churches she is wondering how to create newness and change whilst remaining faithful to her traditions and edges. This seems to be the case wherever I travel at the moment. I always like to find stories and symbols that connect with the local context so here are a few thoughts in relation to wine.

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The thing that struck me about Jesus’ story last time I read it was the last line about old or vintage wine. Once you have drunk the good stuff why would you bother experimenting with the new?

If you are in, or have people who are drinking at the well of good vintage wine in churches, then great - let them keep drinking. But if there is going to be good vintage in the future we need pioneers who will go and find new soil and plant vines to begin the process of developing new wine. I have been told (not that I know a lot about it) that it might take fifteen years to go through the process of getting towards something decent in the way of wine from scratch. On the way there will be experiments that fail and wine that's thrown away. But with hard work, passion, good knowledge of wine making traditions and processes, a bit of good fortune (weather conditions, soil, climate etc), and creativity, the new wine will get produced. Some wines will fail. That's just part of the process. And sometimes the most unlikely ones will be amazing. If there are things learned, innovations that work, they might also flow back and renew the traditions of winemaking. But it's new alongside the old.

In the Church of England we call this (thanks to Rowan Williams who coined the term) a mixed economy. Where there is good old keep it going. And alongside that let's develop new. This takes the threat out of it for the old. Indeed the old is probably better!

There is a lot of interest from other countries and denominations in the Church of England and some of the factors that have created an environment in which change is happening. It’s very unusual which I think is easy to forget when it’s on our doorstep. A strategy of creating space for and encouraging new things starting round the edges (a new congregation, a new community) has been a great way to go rather than trying to change what already exists. Alongside that there have been plenty of people still working more at the centre. And that combination has been key along with a shift in environment towards openness to the new and change.

I had plenty of discussions and feedback from people at training days that I led at the Uniting Church synod and the Centre for Theology and Ministry. One of the comments that got me really thinking was from a woman who was around 85 who said to me that the problem with church is that she knows lots of old people who don't like it either. They are fed up with singing the same old hymns and want some more action out there in the world! That fascinated me - I think we have told ourselves a story in many places that traditional church is working for the older people. But I have increasingly noticed that church hasn't just dried up in places for the younger people and adults - lots of people are struggling with it. So maybe a nuance we could add to the new wine/old wine is there is the danger that the old gets kept too long and where we think it's going to be great, it turns out it has peaked and may even have become undrinkable which is why we'll always need the new as well as the old to keep the tradition being renewed and alive.

My last thought on wine is that sometimes the old vineyards just when we think they have resisted change and are about to die get a good year or their wisdom honed over decades pays dividends. I am getting increasingly irritated at the Church's capacity to write off other parts or denominations or approaches. Every part has its edge and gift to bring and we all only see in part - I've got loads of blind spots. The body is only a body with all the parts. I showed a DVD clip in a worship session that I led, that we have used at Grace before now, from David Attenborough's Planet Earth ‘deserts’ program where the desert blooms with life. The water only comes sometimes once every 30 years. But it still blooms where it seems there is no life at all and it could never come again. Just when we write somebody, or a denomination, or a community, off that can happen - I actually think there is something about the Christian story that suggests we should expect God to surprise us in those kind of scenarios.

There is loads going on in Melbourne - at least that's my observation as an outsider - lots of creativity, wonderful people, good thinking. Lots of it is small and fragile (no surprise - it's not vintage yet). There is plenty of reason to feel hopeful about the future against the statistical odds...

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Jonny Baker works for the Church Mission Society developing and supporting mission and new ways of being church in the emerging culture in the UK. He is a member of 'Grace', an alternative worship community that is a congregation of St Mary’s Anglican church in West London. He has authored the book Alternative Worship which is a collection of liturgical resources for the church year. He is involved in various creative projects, the most successful of which has been the Labyrinth/Prayer Path which he helped design. He runs proost.co.uk, a creative company that produces inspiring worship resources that fuel faith. He is a London Independent Photographer. And he blogs at jonnybaker.blogs.com