I was listening to a fascinating interview last week that featured Dr. David Fajgenbaum, the founder of an organization called Every Cure.

While he was in medical school, Dr. Fajgenbaum was diagnosed with Castleman disease (CD), a condition for which there was no cure. He had no hope or time for a new drug to be invented to treat this disease, so he went about looking for a drug that already existed but was used for other conditions. Miraculously, he and his team found one, a drug called sirolimus, which had been FDA-approved as an immunosuppressant after kidney transplants.

No one had ever used this drug for CD, but it worked and his disease has been in remission for 10 years. The process inspired him to found Every Cure and its mission is to repurpose already existing drugs that might be used to combat diseases the drugs weren’t originally intended to combat. To date, they have repurposed 14 drugs and saved thousands of lives in the process.

I’ve learned a lot in my two years as Director of Congregational Development and I’ve certainly made some mistakes in judgment, including an error that I often made while I was a pastor: the belief that there is some yet-to-be-discovered magic program or resource that is going to help the church turn its fortunes around. I have to be reminded time and again, however, that we already have historical traditions that are sometimes underutilized or forgotten: practices hiding in plain sight.

At Annual Conference this year, we celebrated, as we always do, the ordination and commissioning of several individuals. This year, I have been reflecting on the 19 historical questions asked of the ordinands.

I’m a little embarrassed at how infrequently I go back to them, but they are centering me as I look ahead to a new appointment year. Do I have faith in Christ? Am I earnestly striving in perfection? Am I determined to employ all my time in the work of God? These time-honored questions have always been there, but they have gathered dust in my own mind as I look for the next new thing.

For the laity, perhaps the membership vows can be used for spiritual grounding and revitalization. Or, for all of us, the Wesley Covenant Prayer. Or we can go even further back and explore Jesus’ instructions to the disciples in Luke 10. All of these are wonderful resources that we may overlook.

I am attending SCD in August, the biennial gathering of United Methodists seeking new ways of thinking how the church will flourish. One of the main speakers will be Carey Nieuwhof, who is known as a never-ending source of cutting-edge ideas. I’m looking forward to what he has to say. But it’s important that we don’t lose the time-honored wisdom and covenant practices of those who have gone before us. Those practices may bring a kind of healing and flourishing that no new resource will ever provide.