Famous last words

It's been said that the sentence "We've never done it that way before" can be a prelude to the death of an organization.  Or maybe I'm just making that up, but in my mind, it sounds like solid truth.  Have you ever been metaphorically stuck, blocked, unsure of the direction you should turn?  Organizations and ministries get stuck, too.  And the "joy" of this is that instead of having one person stuck, you have a multitude of sinking souls dependent on one another, yet clinging desperately for life (or dejectly resigned to death) as individuals.  Try throwing out a life preserver in the form of new ideas, and it is thrown back to you, punctured with the words, "That's not the way we do things.  We've always done it this way..." And they continue to sink.