ACPE 2026 Annual Conference

The 2026 ACPE Annual Conference, Elevating Community, Deepening Practice, is our gathering for the full ACPE community: spiritual care educators, psychotherapists, pastoral counselors, and the educator candidates who represent the future of this field. This year, we welcome Tricia Hersey, Dr. Bilal Ansari, and Dr. Myron Krys as featured speakers, bringing voices that challenge, ground, and expand our understanding of spiritual care, formation, and the communities we serve.

This year's programming meets you where you are. General sessions dedicated to the updated Accreditation Standards and processes will give educators the grounding they need to move forward with confidence. Every ACPE committee and commission will lead workshops within their areas of expertise, and pre-conference offerings provide dedicated formation spaces for educator candidates, psychotherapists, and pastoral counselors before the main conference begins on Sunday evening. From international partnerships and sustainable program development to peer review practice, this conference is designed to send you home with more than you arrived with.

Registration Information Coming Soon

Pre-Conference Offerings

Featured Speakers

Tricia Hersey has over 25 years of experience as a multidisciplinary artist, writer, theologian and community organizer. Tricia is the founder of The Nap Ministry, the originator of the ‘rest as resistance’ and ‘rest as reparations’ frameworks, and creates sacred spaces where the liberatory power of rest can take hold in collaboration with communities all over the world. Trica’s work is seeded within the soils of Black radical thought, somatics, womanism, and liberation theology, and is a guide for how to collectively unravel ourselves from the wreckage of capitalism and white supremacy.

She holds a Bachelor of Science in Public Health from Eastern Illinois University and a Master of Divinity from the Candler School of Theology at Emory University. She is the author of the New York Times bestselling book Rest is Resistance: A Manifesto, The Nap Ministry’s Rest Deck: 50 Practices to Resist Grind Culture, and We Will Rest!: The Art of Escape. 

Imam Dr. Bilal W. Ansari is a 2011 graduate of Hartford International University where he completed his M.Div equivalency and a 2019 graduate of Pacific School of Religion where he received the Doctor of Ministry degree with distinction upon submission of the dissertation entitled, “Shepherding as Islamic Pastoral Theology: Case Studies in American Muslim Chaplaincy.”

Dr. Ansari began his chaplaincy experience on two military bases in San Diego, California, where he volunteered from 1994 to 1997. He then began working as a professional correctional chaplain, first for the State of Connecticut from 1997 to 2009 and later for the Federal Bureau of Prisons from 2009 to 2011.

Dr. Ansari completed his Clinical Pastoral Education at St. Francis Hospital and later served on its Professional Advisory Committee, as well as the Advisory Committee of the University of California, San Francisco, from 2009 to 2016. He was the first Muslim chaplain at Williams College and served as Assistant Director of the Center for Learning in Action. Dr. Ansari also served as Dean of Student Services and Director of Student Life during Zaytuna College’s initial accreditation process.

Dr. Ansari is Assistant Vice President for Campus Engagement at Williams College, Co-Director of the M.A. in Chaplaincy program at Hartford International University, and an Associate Professor of Practice at Hartford International University. He advances the concept of shepherding as a Muslim model of institutional leadership. His scholarship and activism include service on the Professional Advisory Committee of the Institute of Muslim Mental Health and work in the fields of diversity, equity, and inclusion.