Traditions or Doctrine?

I have had the chance to be away for a couple of days sharing thoughts and ideas with some of my peers in ministry. It has been refreshing and invigorating as my mind and thoughts have been challenged, contradicted and confirmed. One of the things I have given thought to lately is this, in the church I am afraid much of what we have done is give time to developing our traditions into doctrine. One simple example of this would be how a house of worship "does" its Sunday morning worship experience. Chairs must be in a particular place and arrangement, lighting must be just so, there must be certain elements involved in the experience, we must dress a particular way and we must sing certain songs or types of songs. It is a challenge to find any of these "musts" in scripture, our denominational tenants, or anywhere at all. Yet they have become such an important part of "church" we are unable to "worship" if any of them are absent or changed.
Some people long for the "good old days" and others beg God for something new. I am of this thought - I simply want what God wants. I am convinced, however that what God wants is not tradition developed into doctrine. Nor does He want doctrine developed into tradition. No, I am convinced God doesn't necessarily want anything new or want to revive anything old. I think God wants us to experience something fresh. A fresh annointing, a fresh touch, a fresh infilling of His spirit, a fresh touch of unconditional love for a world full of hurting people, a fresh compassion to touch people where they are. I long for something fresh. The old is past, the new becomes old - but the fresh is an everyday experience.
My wife, Kris loves fresh flowers in the house. But, within a few days they are old, wilted and even begin to smell as they rot. Even the water in which they stand becomes cloudy and dirty - the life gone from it. "Fresh" means simply that. If I am to keep fresh flowers in the house for her, I mean really fresh, I must take time to go to the store every day and purchase fresh flowers. That can be time consuming and expensive. But, even the day after they are purchased they begin to die. So it is with God - we must go to Him on a daily basis to recieve a fresh touch from Him. We cannot last for days, months, or even years with what we got "in the good old days". We must develop the doctrine of being freshly annointed DAILY or we transform the doctrine of "fresh" into the tradition of the "good old days" and soon find ourselves standing with wilted souls in dirty water that gives no life. To remian fresh with God can be time consuming and expensive. However, just as it is wonderful to see and experience fresh flowers in our home, so it is even more wonderful to experience a fresh touch from God everyday - no matter the time consumed or the energy spent.
Just a thought.