“Unless we can regenerate the depth of the theological tradition alongside the depth of spiritual transformation, I think our churches deserve to be empty. And I find in the youngest generation this great longing for substance, for real theological substance, and real ascetical demand. People want their lives to be changed.”
– Sarah Coakley, NYT, 10/18/26
And (Jesus) said to them, “Therefore every scribe who has become a disciple in the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.”
– Matthew 13:52
I didn’t expect to be so moved that morning. Visiting my grandmother in south Georgia one weekend a few years ago, we joined her for worship at her small rural Methodist church. As the opening hymn began, I turned to see my seven-year-old daughter reading and singing the words of “Holy, Holy, Holy! Lord God Almighty” beside her 92-year-old great-grandmother, who was probably singing them from memory. Later, the two of them knelt together at the communion rail. It was ineffable. Soul-stirring.
I’ve reflected often on that moment, not only captivated by the mystery of what was happening between the two of them, but also by the shared formation of their faith, and mine. My grandmother had spent nearly a century being shaped by the prayers, hymns, Scriptures, and practices of the church, while my daughter was just beginning to receive them. There was something profoundly important happening that challenged me to consider more carefully how to nurture deep, sustainable faith while also keeping our eyes trained on what’s happening in the rapidly changing culture we inhabit.
There is a temptation. In our efforts to respond to cultural change, we are at times quick to dismiss elements of our traditions and practices that have proven durable and capable of cultivating deep faith, spiritual maturity, wisdom, and the fruit of the Spirit. We experience a restlessness that lures us into substituting novelty for imagination and activity for fruitfulness. It takes the form of repackaging programs, introducing clever new approaches, and sometimes reinventing the wheel that didn’t need reinventing whatsoever. In our eagerness to be relevant, innovative, or engaging, we risk overlooking practices that have been forming people in the way of Christ for generations.
Of course, not every practice or framework we inherited needs to be preserved. Even our most cherished traditions can become empty rituals, navel-gazing, deformative practices, or attempts to exert control in an anxious system. But before we abandon something because it no longer feels interesting or exciting or relevant, or if it’s not providing that coveted ministry ROI, we ought to ask what it has actually been doing (or not doing) in people’s lives: Is it cultivating patience, humility, generosity, and a growing capacity for love? Is it instilling the wisdom people need to navigate suffering, conflict, and uncertainty? Is it drawing people into relationships that move beyond the transactional so that they come to know and be known in ways that are occasionally difficult and yet more beautiful than anything we could have planned? Is it nurturing lives of prayer and spiritual discipline?
Our answers to these questions might reveal that much of the deepest work of Christian formation is slow, difficult to observe, and sometimes only recognizable years later.
Even so, confidence in the wisdom of our traditions cannot be confused with confidence in our understanding of the world in which we’re called to embody them.
One of our fundamental callings as ministers is to pay attention and learn about how people are being shaped by the surrounding culture. How are emerging technologies reshaping attention, imagination, and learning? How are the changing patterns of work, family life, and friendship altering people’s expectations and attempts to make meaning? What are people learning to value, desire, and aspire to, often without realizing it?
These questions require our attention, not simply because congregations need to be more relevant or “successful,” but because we care deeply about how people and communities are being formed. As we come to better understand these broader dynamics, we may discover that some of our inherited practices need rethinking while others deserve renewed attention precisely because they cultivate things that are increasingly difficult to find: patience, sustained attention, relationships across generations, shared responsibility, and the capacity to remain present with one another through difficulty.
Perhaps it simply means being more confident in the best of (not all of) what we’ve inherited while being much less certain that we fully understand the people and culture around us. That means taking seriously the formative power of our traditions, learning more about how people are being shaped by the world they inhabit, and allowing both to inform our discernment of what the Spirit may be calling us to preserve, reconsider, or undertake for the first time.
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