PCPA 2026 Conference Recap: Strong Conversations & New Connections
This year’s PCPA (Protestant Church-owned Publishers Association) Conference was well attended and full of practical, forward-looking conversations. Our team came away with a mix of valuable client touchpoints, promising new relationships, and a clearer read on how publishers are thinking about AI across the business. As always, Beth Lewis and her team put on a great show!
PCPA 2026: Quick Overview
Perhaps unsurprisingly, AI was a recurring theme across multiple sessions – including the opening keynote. The emphasis wasn’t only on content creation; the dialogue included marketing and analytics, financial management, operational workflows, and related intellectual property questions that are emerging faster than many teams expected. It’s important to track the discussions at these types of industry events, as they show how AI discourse has quickly shifted from theory to practical tactics.
Worthwhile Connections
In this age of remote communication, we always appreciate the opportunity to see our clients in person. At PCPA, we were delighted to connect with current AdvantageCS clients Forward Movement and The Upper Room. In addition to our current relationships, we actively engaged with publishers and vendors to discuss partnerships, software platforms, and industry trends. Establishing personal connections is essential for gaining a comprehensive understanding of the market and its corresponding demands.
Mission Match: a New (and Impactful) Format
This year's conference included a new format appropriately named Mission Match: a structured opportunity for publishers and vendors to sit down together for short, focused meetings centering on the publisher’s challenges and the practical ways a vendor might help. We appreciated the opportunity to make new, purposeful contacts and thoroughly enjoyed the conversations. These interactions brought fresh perspectives and insights that made the conference experience even more rewarding.
Key Moments & Takeaways
As a Gold Keynote Sponsor, we had the pleasure of supporting the conference on a larger scale. Our Director of Client Services, Scott Ghormley, introduced a panel entitled “Your Readers Are Everywhere: Strategies for Meeting Them There”— a timely discussion about showing up in the channels and communities where readers are already spending their time. This keynote paired well with other sessions around content accessibility and audience reach.
Our key takeaways from PCPA 2026:
- AI is no longer a niche topic—it’s influencing decisions across publishing operations, from workflow to analytics to IP.
- Reader reach strategies are expanding beyond traditional channels; publishers are actively experimenting with new ways to meet readers where they are.
- Brief, curated meetings such as Mission Match help parties come together for efficient dialogue. In short, business leaders and software providers need to collaborate more closely to address today’s challenges.
