AUG UST 2026
With Christ at the Center
VO LU M E S S N O. 8 ( V 2)
CONNECTIONS Our students participated in PASSPORTmissions in July and had a blast! They spent the week participating in mission work and worship, but also found time to have lots of summer fun with each other!
From the Senior Pastor xciting news! Providence will have E a field education resident who will learn and serve with us during the upcoming academic year! ou might be thinking: That’s Y great! Now, what exactly a field education resident? ell, field education is a key W element of good theological training. Divinity students spend time serving in local churches— maybe for the summer, maybe for the school year, maybe as an ongoing part-time job—where they get to test their gifts for ministry, learn from experienced ministers, and receive a practical introduction on what it's like to actually serve on a church staff. ith the support of a grant from the W Lilly Foundation, the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of North Carolina (CBFNC) is testing a program to place students at CBFNC-supported divinity schools as field education residents in CBFNC-supporting churches. For this pilot project, CBFNC has asked a handful of healthy churches in North Carolina to consider hosting a resident beginning in the fall. That’s where Providence enters the conversation. I shared this request from CBFNC with our ministry leadership team, our Church Council, and our Human Resources Committee. All three
groups enthusiastically endorsed the idea. Re-establishing a viable ministerial training program at Providence has been a Send Apostles goal in our Providence Will strategic plan since 2018. This partnership with CBFNC is a gigantic step in that direction. We don’t yet know who our field education resident will be—we’re supposed to find out sometime later this month—but my ministerial colleagues and I are already developing a learning plan to introduce her or him to all areas of our church’s ministry. The truth is that good ministers need to be able (and willing) to do a little bit of everything, everywhere, at any time in order to get the work of ministry done. Our goal is to help this minister-in-training become comfortable with this reality so that he or she will be prepared to lead effectively—and with excellence—in a local church one of these days. Our field ed resident will be on campus roughly 15 hours per week. CBFNC is covering 75% of the stipend for the resident; our portion ($2,500) will come from an existing designated fund that’s already earmarked for “ministerial interns.” While our entire ministry leadership team will all be actively involved as mentors for our resident, Amy Brown has graciously volunteered
to serve as this person’s on-site supervisor. If we end up hosting more residents in the future, then this supervisory responsibility will rotate amongst the members of our ministry team. I am very glad that we have this opportunity to help raise up the next generation of church leaders. It is both a great privilege and a great responsibility. I am confident that Providence will be a good setting for this person to be a field ed resident. Please start praying now for God to prepare our resident to learn from, and with, us—and for God to prepare us to be a welcoming and encouraging place where our resident can grow as a minister. I am grateful that we get to do this good work together! May the peace of Christ be with you!
Lee Canipe Senior Pastor
SERMON TEXTS THIS MONTH August 2 August 9 August 16 August 23 August 30
Genesis 32:22-31 Matthew 14:22-23 Genesis 45:1-15 Romans 12:1-8 Exodus 3:1-15
NOTE: The previous version of this issue included errors in the Financial Snapshot. This version has been updated.