James K. A. Smith on the value of the church's traditions:

There is a deep sense in which the church is a people called to resist the presentism embedded in the tyranny of the contemporary. We are called to be a people of memory, who are shaped by a tradition that is millenia older than the last Billboard chart. And we are also called to be a people of expectation, praying for and looking forward to a coming kingdom that will break in upon our present as a thief in the night. We are a stretched people, citizens of a kingdom that is both older and newer than anything offered by "the contemporary." 

 (from Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation)