David Pytches was consecrated Bishop of the then diocese of Chile, Bolivia, and Peru in 1972. While in South America, he witnessed what he termed a 'spontaneous expansion' of the church. Pytches was keen to see this replicated in the UK and while vicar of St. Andrew's, Chorleywood in the 1980s, he invited John Wimber to his church. Wimber was founder of the Vineyard Church in the United States. Inspired by Wimber and by what he had witnessed in South America, Pytches came to believe that ordinary Christians can minister to others using the scriptural Gifts of the Spirit. While in the UK, Wimber held a number of conferences resulting in considerable interest in the charismatic movement from churches nationwide. Soon afterwards, Pytches became the leader of New Wine. Unlike John and Eleanor Mumford, who planted the first Vineyard Church in the UK, Pytches chose to establish the values of the Vineyard Church in other church settings. The name 'New Wine' was chosen as an appropriate biblical description of the ‘new life’ offered to people who were open to the 'Gifts of the Spirit'.
Summer conferences
The first New Wine Christian Conference was held in 1989 at the Royal Bath and West Showground, Somerset and attracted nearly 2,500 people. In 1993 a separate conference for teenagers was launched under the leadership of Mike Pilavachi, then a youth worker at St Andrew's. The youth conference was named Soul Survivor. New Wine now attracts around 24,000 delegates over two weeks and Soul Survivor attracts over 35,000 young people over three weeks. With Soul Survivor ceasing to run summer conferences in 2019, New Wine have significantly expanded their youth provision with the launch of a new "event within an event" called Luminosity. This will begin in 2020. There are also a number of New Wine conferences held around the UK and abroad each year. Over the years, New Wine has attracted many well known speakers, including Baroness Caroline Cox, Jackie Pullinger, Danielle Strickland, Christy Wimber, J.John, Heidi Baker, Bill Johnson, Francis Chan, Ken Costa and Brother Yun. The list of worship leaders who have led worship at New Wine includes Matt Redman, Tim Hughes, Brian Doerksen, Kathryn Scott and David Ruis. The first New Wine North and East conference was held at the Great Yorkshire Showground in Harrogate in 2005 with 3,500 delegates attending. In subsequent years, the event was moved to Newark Showground in Newark-on-Trent. In 2013 it was held for the last time as New Wine decided to concentrate on the event in Somerset. In 2014 the area distinctions of North and East, Central and South West and London and South East were dropped in favour of 2 separate conference weeks in Somerset not linked to specific areas of the UK. In 2014, Mark Bailey took over briefly as Director of New Wine from John Coles. In 2016, Paul Harcourt became the new National Leader of New Wine. After 30 consecutive years of holding summer conferences at the Bath and West Showground, in 2019 the summer conferences moved to the East of England Showground near Peterborough.
Leaders in Training
New Wine works with almost all the training institutions in the Church of England and other denominations to ensure that every person training for ministry can have access to practical training in healing, prayer ministry, prophecy, evangelism and visionary leadership.
Worship
New Wine has released a number of worship music CDs. From 2009 to 2012 they have recorded studio albums before the Summer Conferences, as opposed to releasing albums with worship recorded from the Summer Conferences later that year. In 2013 the 'live worship' music CD was recorded at the conference with a separate album for the 'North' and 'South' conferences. In 2014 and 2015, the live worship albums were recorded at other New Wine events during the year to be available for purchase at the main Summer events. The 2016 conference worship was recorded live, but from 2018 the worship albums reverted to being recorded during the year at other New Wine events.
Prior to 2001, the albums were given volume numbers.
International work
The Summer Conferences at Shepton Mallet have spawned a number of related conferences around the world. In addition to New Wine North & East in Newark, there are separate events in Scotland, Wales, Jersey, Guernsey, Ireland, Finland, Sweden, Netherlands, Australia and New Zealand.
