by Tracee Swank | Sep 10, 2026 | change, leadership, renewal
New idea. Full launch. Whole budget. Pastor’s credibility riding on it all. That’s how most churches try something new, and it’s exactly backward. When the idea falls short—and plenty of good ideas do at first—the cost isn’t just the idea....
by Tracee Swank | Sep 9, 2026 | England, immersion, Kingdom
You have read the books. You know the language of renewal. So why does Monday morning still feel the same every single week? Nothing changes. Transformation is not primarily academic. Jesus discipled His followers by having them hand out the food at the feeding of the...
by Tracee Swank | Sep 8, 2026 | church, entrepreneur, growth
Many church leaders are working from an outdated picture of their own neighborhood. The families who lived there when the sanctuary was built are not always the families living there now, and few congregations have taken the time to find out who their neighbors have...
by Tracee Swank | Sep 7, 2026 | Pastor Call
St. Luke’s Lutheran Church in Garfield, Minnesota, is seeking its next senior pastor, and we are helping them spread the word. Located in the Alexandria Lakes area of Minnesota, St. Luke’s is seeking an experienced pastor who will share God’s Word, lead God’s people,...
by Tracee Swank | Sep 7, 2026 | church health, community, Kingdom, mission
For many believers, innovation and faithfulness sound like opposites. Innovation suggests change, novelty, and risk. Faithfulness suggests stability, tradition, and holding the line. So when someone proposes innovating in the church, a reflexive alarm goes off. Are we...
by Tracee Swank | Sep 3, 2026 | change, growth, renewal
Notice a problem. Launch a program. Watch attendance shrink over a year. Quietly retire it. Repeat next fall. If that pattern sounds familiar, your church isn’t failing at innovation. It’s starting in the wrong place. The Great Commission isn’t a...
by Tracee Swank | Sep 2, 2026 | England, Kingdom, mission, outreach
Every church has a particular culture, whether anyone names it or not. That culture rests on five dimensions: values, beliefs, attitudes, priorities, and worldviews. Many leaders sense something has shifted in their church but cannot name what. That uncertainty is...
by Tracee Swank | Sep 1, 2026 | challenges, entrepreneur, Kingdom
Behind every church that finds its way back to mission, there is rarely just one moment of change. There is usually a team, quietly doing the work that makes that change possible. At Church4Today, that team is made up of coaches, consultants, and researchers. Coaches...
by Tracee Swank | Aug 31, 2026 | church health, community, Kingdom, mission
When a church senses it is stuck, the instinct is almost always the same. Launch something. Add a program, start a ministry, create a new initiative, fill another slot on the calendar. Activity feels like progress, and a busy church feels like a healthy one. But many...
by Tracee Swank | Aug 27, 2026 | change, growth, renewal
Ask 10 longtime members what makes your church distinct. You’ll get 10 different answers. The building. The hymnal. A beloved pastor from 30 years ago. The chili supper before the Lenten service. Somewhere in that list is the real core culture of who you are....
by Tracee Swank | Aug 26, 2026 | England, Kingdom, leadership, outreach
England looks like a mission field lost. Empty cathedrals. Declining attendance. A culture that moved past faith long ago. Underneath that story, something else is happening. Innovative churches are growing. Missional communities are embedded in neighborhoods....
by Tracee Swank | Aug 25, 2026 | challenges, entrepreneur, Kingdom
Most people never ask where their giving actually goes. You do. You want to know that a gift is doing real work, not disappearing into overhead or good intentions. Here is the honest answer for Church4Today: The vast majority of every dollar given goes directly to...
by Tracee Swank | Aug 25, 2026 | immersion, microchurch, Scattered & Sent
Registration for Scattered & Sent: A Microchurch Immersion closes September 1. That is one week from today. If you have been sitting with this decision, here is what I want to say directly: The leaders who most need this kind of experience are often the ones who...
by Tracee Swank | Aug 24, 2026 | church health, community, Kingdom, mission
Every leader who has tried to change a church knows the feeling. You see clearly where the congregation needs to go. The mission demands it. You make the case, you cast the vision, and then you run straight into a wall of resistance you did not expect and do not...
by Tracee Swank | Aug 20, 2026 | change, growth, renewal
You read the book. Listened to the podcast interview twice. Drove two hours to sit in the back row of the church everyone’s talking about and came home with a folder of notes and a plan to run it back at your own congregation. Six months later, still...
by Tracee Swank | Aug 19, 2026 | church health, England, leadership
You did not take up leadership to manage and maintain mission. You took it up because you believed in God’s call for this church, in this generation, to reach more people. Somewhere along the way, momentum quietly faded. Not from lack of effort. From drift, the...
by Tracee Swank | Aug 18, 2026 | challenges, entrepreneur, growth
You believe in what the local church can be. Maybe that belief has shown up for you in quiet ways over the years: a gift here, a shared post there, a genuine hope that congregations you love would find their footing again. That belief matters more right now than you...
by Tracee Swank | Aug 17, 2026 | immersion, microchurch, Scattered & Sent
Registration for Scattered & Sent: A Microchurch Immersion closes September 1. If you have been considering it, here is a clear picture of what four days in Muncie, Indiana, this October will actually involve. You will step inside a living microchurch network. The...
by Tracee Swank | Aug 17, 2026 | church health, community, growth, Kingdom
For most of church history in this country, congregations could assume a baseline. People walking through the doors usually knew the basic Bible stories, recognized the major holidays, and shared some sense of Christian moral vocabulary. Discipleship could start in...
by Tracee Swank | Aug 13, 2026 | change, church, church health, growth
“If we change that, we won’t be the same church.” Someone on your leadership team has said it. Maybe it was you, staring at a giving report or an empty row that used to be full. It sounds like conviction. Most of the time, it’s...
by Tracee Swank | Aug 10, 2026 | church health, community, Kingdom, outreach
Ask most church leaders how their church is doing, and they will tell you about Sunday: attendance, giving, the new sermon series, the building project. Almost no one answers the question by talking about the neighborhood outside the doors. That instinct reveals...
