2025 APCE Annual Event theme shines a light on the role of faith formation
This year’s gathering will be held in person in Memphis and online Jan. 29 through Feb. 1


At this year’s annual APCE event beginning in less than two weeks, more than 500 Christian educators and faith leaders will gather to explore the ways in which Christians struggle and strive, as well as how they ultimately overcome those struggles in pursuit of God’s love and justice.
As fires rage in California, the Southeast continues its slow recovery from Hurricanes Milton and Helene, Americans prepare for another presidential transition and conflicts unfold around the world, the focus of the gathering feels especially timely.
The theme of the 2025 event for the Association of Partners in Christian Education is “A Stirring in our Souls: Wrestling with God and Church Toward a More Beloved Community.” The gathering will use Genesis 32:28 as its guiding text: “Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel; for you have struggled with God and with humans and have overcome.”

According to a letter on the APCE website from the event co-chairs, Tatayana Richardson and Jaime Staehle, the gathering will particularly contend with the ways Christians struggle and strive with God, church and one another.
“During our time together, we’ll wrestle with fallibilities — acknowledging our own shortcomings and the struggles in the historical narrative of the church. We’ll wrestle with disenchantment — navigating that tricky tension between our personal faith and the church’s occasional hiccups. Finally, we’ll unleash our imagination as we call for innovation, openness to new perspectives, and a commitment to envision a church that’s a powerhouse of love, justice, and equality.”
The event will include three days of plenary talks, worship services, and numerous workshops. In addition to the in-person components, APCE is also providing a robust virtual experience for online participants. They’ll have dedicated online hosts and online workshops in addition to livestreaming the main plenary and worship sessions. There will also be an online version of the event in Spanish with its own host.
This year’s plenary speakers are the Rev. Dr. Almeda M. Wright and the Rev. Jeff Chu. Wright serves as Associate Professor of Religious Education at Yale Divinity School and recently launched Communitas, a young adult ministry innovation hub at Yale. Her most recent book is “Teaching to Live: Black Religion, Activist-Educators and Radical Social Change” (Oxford, 2024). Chu currently serves as teacher in residence at Crosspointe Church in North Carolina and as parish associate for storytelling and witness at First Presbyterian Church of Berkeley in California. He also works as an editor-at-large for Travel+Leisure. His new book is “Good Soil: The Education of an Accidental Farmhand” (Convergent/Penguin Random House, 2025).

In addition to the full group events, participants have more than 60 workshops to choose from, with topics including advanced care planning, reclaiming confirmation, understanding Palestine and Israel, and LGBTQIA+ people in the church. There are also multiple opportunities to engage both before and after the main gathering, such as tours of the National Civil Rights Museum and service opportunities. These pre-and post-events must be registered for separately.
In their letter, Richardson and Staehle promise participants a well-rounded opportunity for both learning and fellowship.
“As we journey together through this week, we will commune with friends, new and old alike, we will hear the word proclaimed, we be invigorated by compelling and challenging plenaries, we will find solace and contemplation through the spirituality center, we will find practical lessons and take aways in our workshops, and of course we will enjoy duck breaks to see the Duck Marches in the magnificent Peabody hotel!”
Registration for the in-person event closes on Wednesday, Jan. 22, and will reopen at the event site on January 28. More information is available on the website.
The Association of Partners in Christian Education is supported through a partnership with the PC(USA)’s Office of Christian Formation. The partnership also helps make APCE’s Evento Anual en Línea en Español to Spanish-speaking leaders and attendees with online offerings in Spanish for $10.
You may freely reuse and distribute this article in its entirety for non-commercial purposes in any medium. Please include author attribution, photography credits, and a link to the original article. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDeratives 4.0 International License.