Tradition is important. But the Church must adapt in order to survive

Ever since I was a teenager growing up in Rugby, I’ve been a passionate runner. I loved escaping the town, slipping onto the canal ways, and just running, mile after mile, surrounded by stillness.

Those paths were my refuge. A thin ribbon of water cutting through fields and hedgerows where your thoughts could finally catch up with your feet. The whole place had its own gentle rhythm: unhurried, familiar, human.

Around the age of 17, I became especially obsessed with one particular stretch of canal just outside the town. Over two miles, the water rose and fell through a series of locks. I found myself constantly drawn to that stretch, running it again and again, watching the gates open and close, the water surge and settle.

One day, in a moment of teenage sentimentality, I mentioned to my father how much I loved running there. Only then did he tell me that stretch of canal, those very locks, had once been my great, great, grandfather’s responsibility.

He had been the lock-keeper. He lived in a small cottage beside the water and oversaw what was, at the time, a busy and vital route. Boats passed through constantly, carrying goods across the country. The canal wasn’t decorative. It wasn’t nostalgic. It was essential.

Running there years later, I was tracing the edges of something that had once carried the weight of a nation’s industry. 

Where paths converge

More recently, while visiting Rugby, I found myself back on the canal ways once again, this time at a slower pace, walking my dog. I was reflecting on the blessings and challenges of leading a church and praying for wisdom in mission and discipleship across our parish.

I reached an interesting stretch of canal. To one side was the familiar calm. To the other side, running almost parallel, was the motorway, which was relentless. What struck me was that this quiet stretch of water would once have looked very much like the motorway beside it.

On the path, I approached a bridge. As I stepped underneath it: BOOM. A train hurtled overhead. The sudden thunder of it made me jump out of my skin.

That unusual stretch of canal creates a moment where three modes of transport meet. Beneath my feet, the canal waterways: once the primary transport network of the country through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Above me, the railway: less frequent, but still running. And beside me, the motorway.

That moment caused me to reflect on the journey of the British Church, and more specifically, my own journey. 

A Church in tension

In 2025, we introduced a second service in our parish. We had already attempted to make adjustments to our existing, more traditional service, but for many people those changes felt costly. There was a genuine sense that in adapting, we were losing the historic beauty and deeply sentimental qualities of Anglican tradition. That grief felt to painful too ignore.

Alongside that grief, however, sat a shared conviction. We wanted our congregation to reflect the parish we are called to serve. We longed to speak of Jesus in ways that felt relevant, accessible, and alive within the culture of younger people around us. Exploring more missional expressions of church requires courage, imagination, a willingness to let go of some familiar forms and maybe the most difficult of all…risk! 

And yet, running quietly beneath all of that, was a deep longing not to lose the still, reverent beauty of tradition, the very things that had carried faith faithfully for generations.

There was something deeply comforting, even grounding, in discovering that my great, great, grandfather had walked those same canal paths and opened those same gates. It didn’t make the canal more efficient, but it made it more meaningful.

In the same way, there is profound comfort in knowing that we worship in the ways of our parents and grandparents. That comfort is not trivial. It deserves to be honoured. 

If people in your church are irritating you because they’re suggesting things you’ve never seen or tried… pause before complaining. Listen. 

But comfort can slowly become limiting and risk averse. If sentiment alone is allowed to dictate our future, we risk confusing faithfulness to our ancestors with faithfulness to the mission they themselves served.

Purpose or preservation

The canal mattered because of the people who built it. But it was never built to be preserved. It was built to carry life and purpose. Standing between the canal, the railway, and the motorway, it struck me that all three existed to move goods across a nation.

They were not competitors in essence. They were successive answers to the same question: How do we carry what matters to where it is needed most?

And that, ultimately, is the question the Church must keep asking.

The purpose of the UK Church is not to preserve a form, however beautiful, it’s not to be dictated to by sentimentality. It is to carry the good news of Jesus Christ to a nation.

We rightly cherish history, culture, and tradition. They root us. They remind us that we belong to something far bigger than ourselves. But we cannot allow sentiment, however understandable, to override our responsibility for effectiveness. Beauty without purpose becomes a museum. 

The next motorways

As a church leader, and at 42, already aware that I’m beginning to sound like an old man, I feel this tension and responsibility to my core. I find myself listening to younger people in my church, inviting them to imagine how the gospel might be carried to their generation.

And in those moments, discernment matters. What is preference? What is sentiment? And what is foundational?

The early church gathered in public spaces and in homes. They devoted themselves to teaching, prayer, shared meals, communion, and shared life. Church was both gathered and scattered, reverent and relational.

We, as a Church, must be unshakable about the foundations, and radically flexible about the forms. Doctrine matters. Community matters. Breaking bread together matters. But the way we carry those things must remain open-handed.

If we are not willing to be entrepreneurial, visionary, and experimental, willing to try things and fail, we will lose effectiveness. Every advance in transport came through imagination, courage, and discarded ideas, through a willingness to fail. 

If sentiment alone dictates our future, we risk confusing faithfulness to our ancestors with faithfulness to the mission they served.

The same is true for the Church.

We must create cultures where people are empowered to dream, to try, to make noise, and to disrupt our comfort, not because noise is the goal, but because transformation rarely arrives quietly.

And so I would gently say this: if people in your church are irritating you because they’re suggesting things you’ve never seen or tried, or asking uncomfortable questions about why, or not conforming to your expectations of church conduct… pause before complaining. Listen.

Because it is those minds who will build the next motorways. They will see paths we cannot yet imagine. They will carry the good news further than we ever could.

But only if we are brave enough to listen, and sacrificial enough to let them influence change.