Good partnerships are good for all the partners. At their best, partnerships blossom into healthier communities beyond the partners. This is true for marriages, friendships, working relationships, and the missional work of the church. A good partnership makes us good for the world.

At baptisms especially, Presbyterians love to talk about water. Some of the more adventurous baptizers even splash some of the water out of the font to remind those gathered to celebrate of their own baptism.

Birmingham’s history of civil rights set the stage for the Association of Partners in Christian Education (APCE)’s Annual Event, held in the city Jan. 25–28, with pre- and post-event touring and learning opportunities around Birmingham and Alabama available to participants.

The most recent exegesis ordination exam has resulted in a deluge of concerned and critical social media comments from clergy and others saying that requiring seminarians to exegete one of the most difficult texts in the Bible, Judges 19:1-30, “The Levite’s Concubine,” has caused many candidates for ministry to be re-traumatized after suffering previous harms.

A Lenten devotional from the staff of Unbound: An Interactive Journal of Christian Social Justice will highlight Native American and Indigenous voices and perspectives, from Ash Wednesday to Easter.

Last week as part of the Association of Partners in Christian Education’s annual event, it fell to the Rev. Elizabeth Boulware Landes to lead the workshop “The Language of Grace.”

“You have a ministry with your investments,” Greg Rousos, president and CEO of the New Covenant Trust Company, told participants in a recent webinar.

By way of photo submission, Presbyterians are invited to tell the world the ways their church, worshiping community, mid council or organization is carrying out the Matthew 25 invitation.

“We never outgrow fear,” John Pavlovitz said in his second plenary at last week’s annual event of the Association of Partners in Christian Education. “As we get older, we just trade in our terror for more age-appropriate models.” Pavlovitz, a pastor, writer and activist from North Carolina, then described the two responses we have at any age to the storms that scare us: “We become frozen or frantic.”

Whatever Covid stage churches find themselves in — post-pandemic, a return to in-person worship, a re-evaluation of what hybrid worship looks like, whatever the case — “we need to be attentive to the way our sermons are being offered to people,” the Rev. Dr. Peter Henry said Wednesday during the monthly “Equipping Preachers” webinar offered by the Synod of the Covenant.