not a museum piece

The new Rector along at the Royal High School has been in post for a couple of weeks now.

I was along to meet her today. Jane Frith is her name, and it was good to be able to have a bit of time with her and chat about the school and my involvement there.

She's plainly an able person and I'm sure will be good for the school. And it was interesting to hear her speak about the balance that she needs to strike between retaining traditions and effecting change.

The Royal High School is very old. I mean really, really old. It dates back to the early 12th century and is reckoned by some to be, I think, the eighteenth oldest school in the world.

If you've been around that long, traditions tend to develop of course. And the Royal High has a few!

But it's not a museum piece. It's a 21st century school: a very large school, as well as a very old school: so there are changes which have to be made.

I was in today not least with a view to the upcoming Armistice Day service they hold in the school on Wednesday of this week.

And there's a lot of tradition bound up with this. Far more, I suspect, than in most other schools.

Certainly the new Rector was somewhat surprised by how important the traditions relating to this occasion are. She hadn't been used to that in other schools where she's been.

So it was good to be able to chat a bit. After all, she's now the fifth Rector at the Royal High that I've known. I've seen the way that things have been done across the years - and how and why things have changed.

I hope that for her it was useful to have that sort of informed external sounding board.

Because the issue is one I'm familiar with as well. The balance between retaining important traditions, and nurturing necessary change.

The church is not a museum piece. There are things that need to change.

But there's always the need to be careful in how that's done that the baby doesn't get thrown out with the bathwater.

Because the good news begins with a baby. And that baby born at Bethlehem is who it's all about.

There's a lot of past-its-sell-by-date bathwater needing to be thrown out. But not the baby please!