by Tracee Swank | Sep 21, 2026 | church health, community, Kingdom, mission, training
For as long as most of us can remember, churches have been measured by one number above all others: seating capacity. How many people can this church gather, hold, and count on a Sunday morning? We rank churches by it, celebrate growth in it, and quietly judge our own...
by Tracee Swank | Sep 14, 2026 | church health, community, Kingdom, mission
Ask most Christians who the sent ones are, and they will think of missionaries, pastors, and people in full-time ministry. There is a quiet, unspoken hierarchy in much of church life. At the top are those who do sacred work, the clergy and the missionaries. Below them...
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 | 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 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 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...
