Practice and Presence: A Gathering for Christians in Health Care Traditional medical and health care training equips practitioners with knowledge of human physiology and biology, skills to diagnose and treat illness, and even the physical stamina to withstand long hours of challenging work. But often missing in this training, is the human experience of attending to the sick and the invitation to view medical vocation as calling. Practice and Presence 2019 “Fear Not: Faithful Health Care in an Anxious Age” seeks to explore, share, and cultivate creative practices regarding health and medicine that emerge from scriptural imagination, engagement with faith traditions, and attention to and reflection on contemporary contexts. Practice and Presence invites health care practitioners, scholars, and students to gather and explore theologically rich ways to support and sustain health practitioners and laypeople in the hard work of attending the sick, to imagine new models for the care of those who are poor or marginalized, and to develop new vocabularies that transform the ways practitioners understand and make use of medicine faithfully. The conference also encourages participants to grow in friendship with one another in the context of shared meals, conversation, and spiritual practices.