Mission Yearbook: APCE event speaker preaches that ‘You are enough’

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Miatta Willson, associate for the Office of Christian Formation in the PC(USA), at the 2026 APCE event.

When a parishioner facing job loss amid government chaos asked the Rev. MaryAnn McKibben Dana “What is even the point?” she felt utterly unprepared to answer.

The Washington, D.C.-area pastor had just listened to the man describe jumping through bureaucratic hoops under constant threat of termination while grieving his cousin's untimely death. McKibben Dana's instinct was to seek expert guidance, more training, better tools — anything to fill what felt like a deficit in her pastoral toolkit.

“I thought to myself, I am not equipped for this moment of ministry,” McKibben Dana told hundreds of Christian educators gathered at the Association of Partners in Christian Education Annual Event. “Anybody else feeling that way?”

Her solution was to invite a mentor to meet with area clergy, hoping for concrete skills to address the trauma their congregations faced. Instead, the mentor spent the entire day focusing on the pastors themselves — their gifts, their leadership and their inherent capacity.

“I remember feeling so frustrated,” McKibben Dana said. “Just pour some stuff into my brain. I don’t know enough for this moment.”

But her mentor, trained in family systems theory, kept redirecting them. “What you have to offer is you. There’s no magic category of information that’s going to make this easier," she said. "It’s just you, and you are enough.”

That message became the foundation of McKibben Dana’s keynote address on self-love, the second of four daily themes drawn from Jesus' greatest commandment. The Annual Event was held in Pittsburgh, the hometown of Presbyterian icon Fred Rogers.

The conference followed a progression with sermons by the Rev. Theresa Cho and workshops tying to the daily themes explored in each keynote address. On the first day, the Rev. Paul Roberts addressed the command to “Love God.” The next day, McKibben Dana explored “Love Self,” while “Love Neighbor” was the topic for Rabbi Evan Moffic the following day, and on the last day, workshops and closing worship held space to contemplate what it means to “Love Others.”

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The Rev. MaryAnn McKibben Dana

McKibben Dana opened by sharing her husband's childhood encounter with Rogers, whose mother attended the church in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, where her husband’s father was pastor. True to form, Rogers bypassed the pastor to focus entirely on the 3-year-old boy.

“It’s all about the kids, and that is who he was,” McKibben Dana said, calling Rogers “our patron saint,” whose spirit infused the gathering themed around love in all its dimensions.

McKibben Dana challenged Rogers’ famous advice to “look for the helpers” during difficult times, arguing it creates an unhealthy hierarchy between helper and helped. Drawing on physician Rachel Naomi Remen’s work, she distinguished helping — which implies inequality and creates debt — from serving, which recognizes the relationship between equals.

“"When I help, I feel satisfaction, but when I serve, I have a feeling of gratitude,” McKibben Dana said, quoting Remen. “Service rests on a basic premise that the nature of life is sacred.”

She grounded her talk in the mantra “we are creative, resourceful and whole” — words from coaching training that undergird her leadership work and her book “Better Than Normal.” 

McKibben Dana used statistics about the “median American” named Jessica to illustrate how societal structures cater to averages rather than celebrating human diversity. She screened a video of artist-activist Alok Vaid-Menon explaining how gender-nonconforming people face violence because they remind others of the authenticity they’ve repressed in themselves.

“Can you help me get free?” Vaid-Menon asked. “Not can you help me help you?”

McKibben Dana connected this to Genesis 1’s sevenfold repetition of “God saw that it was good,” arguing that religion isn’t about solving wickedness but helping people touch what was always true.

She closed with a story from the TV show “Shrinking” about a woman named Grace who escaped an abusive relationship only after hearing friends’ testimonies about her inherent goodness.

“It is grace that allows us to love self with our heart, soul, mind and strength,” McKibben Dana said.

Beth Waltemath, Communications Strategist, Presbyterian Life & Witness (Click here to read original PNS Story)

Let us join in prayer for:

Christopher Abney, VP, Director of IT, Presbyterian Foundation
Ruth Adams, Director, Assistance Program, Engagement & Church Relations, The Board of Pensions

Let us pray:

Lord, you have called us to bring your good news. Help us to minister faithfully in our congregations, neighborhoods and municipalities so that your love may be known and your church may be strengthened. Amen.

Mission Yearbook: Rabbi explores what it means to love our neighbor

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Photo by Sincerely Media via Unsplash

Rabbi Evan Moffic, who serves Congregation Solel in Highland Park, Illinois, took on the topic of loving our neighbor during his illuminating talk at the Annual Event of the Association of Partners in Christian Education. He used the Jewish tool of Midrash to study Leviticus 19:18: “You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.”

Moffic called Midrash “the Jewish sage’s way of making a timeless text timely.” He cited 10 ways of understanding the Hebrew word “Re’a,” a core term in Hebrew ethics, emphasizing a relationship of care, friendship and responsibility.

• “Re’a should not be translated as ‘neighbor,’” he said. “We think of neighbor as one next door or someone who knows our dog’s name.” One rabbi taught that it’s anyone with whom we have a relationship.
• Moffic offered a pragmatic interpretation. In the Talmud, a young man asks the greatest rabbi of the time to teach him the entire Torah while standing on one foot. The rabbi said it’s this: What is hateful to you, do not do to another person. “It’s a beautiful way of following the rabbinic tradition of making laws of Torah practical in each generation,” Moffic said. “The underlying idea here is empathy.”
• The most spiritual interpretation is to say that neighbor refers to every human being, which Moffic called “the fundamental underlying principle of Torah. This teaching embodies the core principle of the Hebrew Bible, that everybody is created in the image of God.” This interpretation “is the easiest to teach in principle but the hardest to carry out.”
• More attainable is what Moffic called the contextual approach. In Leviticus 19:17–18, we’re told not to hate anyone of our kin, to reprove our neighbor and not to take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of our people. 
• While the “love your neighbor” commandment appears only once in Leviticus, “love the stranger” appears 36 times. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks points out it’s much easier to love our neighbor than to love a stranger, but Torah “calls us to love the stranger as we love the neighbor, to expand what ‘neighbor’ means,” Moffic said. But one could argue the opposite, that it’s easier to love a stranger than your neighbor, he said.
• Theologian Martin Buber, who gave us the “I and Thou” framework, would say that our definition of “thou” determines our definition of who our neighbor is. “Does a refugee with documents change the ‘thouness’ of the person?” Moffic asked. “I don’t think it would for Buber.”
• The French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas said that every human being has a claim on us, just as we have a claim on others. We’re born with rights, but also with responsibility. 
• The Hebrew word ‘kadosh’ can in translated as “holy,” “but the actual physical meaning is ‘set apart’ or ‘different,’” Moffic said. Sacks suggests that “loving our neighbor is not just something pragmatic — it’s something sacred and holy. It brings us closer to God.”
• Rabbi Maimonides, who lived more than eight centuries ago, said that loving your neighbor as yourself “is not about a feeling. It’s about action,” Moffic said. His Ladder of Tzedakah ranks eight acts of charity from “you only give a little, and you do it grumpily” to “help someone find a job or start a business.” “Maimonides puts love in a practical place,” Moffic said. “It’s about obligations.”
• Moffic’s final interpretation is “the one that may speak to us today.” It’s the covenantal approach. “What I think we can do in today’s interconnected world is extend our responsibility to all people,” he said. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel reminds us that “not all people are guilty, but all of us are responsible.”

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Rabbi Evan Moffic

“Love your neighbor as yourself is about working together to create something good,” Moffic said. “It’s part of the divine task to bring redemption to a fractured world.”

“People of faith working together is now more important than ever. I hope in the coming days we can follow Heschel’s vision,” Moffic said. “Our religious voice is critical in maintaining that expansive voice we’re rooted in.”

Mike Ferguson, Editor, Presbyterian News Service (Click here to read original PNS Story)

Let us join in prayer for:

Ashley Wiley, Administrative Support, Young Adult Volunteers
Vivian Blade, Program Manager, Unification Management Office, Presbyterian Life & Witness

Let us pray:

Dear Lord, thank you for the blessings brought to the many who have been called to serve your mission, We pray that you would bless throughout their lives as they serve others in Christ, in whose name we pray. Amen.

Mission Yearbook: Amid turmoil, Hawkins urges hope and action

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The Rev. Jimmie Hawkins (Photo by Rich Copley)

In the face of national and international turmoil, the Rev. Jimmie Hawkins recently offered encouragement to those who may be feeling weary about the state of humanity.

Hawkins, advocacy director for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), spoke during a midweek chapel service for staff members of the Unified Agency of the PC(USA). 

The online service honored the life and witness of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and paid tribute to other notable figures, including Renee Nicole Good, a mother fatally wounded by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer in Minnesota.  

Using Scripture from Matthew and Micah, Hawkins stressed the importance of nonviolence and noted various crises in the world, from suffering in Myanmar, Gaza, Haiti and beyond to economic struggles and unjust immigration enforcement closer to home.

“Everything is out of sorts, with many of us asking, how do we respond in the face of overwhelming odds when the power and violence of the federal government is acting so brutally, without regard for human rights and dignity, and as important, how do we keep our spirits resonating with positive energy? How do we muster the faith to remain in the struggle?” Hawkins asked.

One way, he said, is by turning to music, a tool that soothed the souls of civil rights legends like King and Paul Robeson during the struggle for Black freedom.

“When our souls are weary, let us wrap ourselves with music that speaks to our spirit and strengthens our resolve,” Hawkins said. “Listen to a little Public Enemy, ‘Fight the Power,’ Kendrick Lamar, ‘Alright,’ or our favorite hymn, ‘Amazing Grace,’ or a spiritual, ‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,’ just to take a break in order to be refreshed for the never-ending march towards justice.”

Hawkins, who oversees the Presbyterian Office of Public Witness and the Presbyterian Ministry at the United Nations, went on to say that protest is the music of faith and energizes faith. He also explained how advocacy and Christianity are intertwined.

“To follow Jesus means to be engaged in the movement for justice,” he said. “There is a connection with the divine purpose when we offer ourselves for the benefit of others. That's why charity makes us feel so good — to be blessed to know that we have helped someone else, albeit temporarily — but advocacy offers a long-term solution, when our protest leads to ICE being removed from our streets, when the war against the Palestinian people is really over and Palestinians are free to govern their own lives, when racial prejudice is not disguised as civil rights. … When the trans community can serve openly in society and the church, and when global poverty becomes the enemy to be overcome.”

As witnesses of Jesus Christ, “we continue to pray, to watch, to speak and then to act,” Hawkins said. “We raise the voice of a God who demands justice and mercy and compassion for the stranger, for the poor, for children, for the sick, the marginalized, the homeless and the incarcerated.”

Regarding the need for peace, he said, “We are called to follow the words of Jesus, to put our sword back into its place and to understand that violence has no place in God's kingdom.”

After briefly returning to his musical theme, he concluded by saying, “We are indeed following our faith and doing everything that we can to echo the words of Jesus Christ, who said that the greatest commandment is to love the Lord, your God with all of your heart, mind and soul, and to dare to love your neighbor as you love yourself.”

Darla Carter, Communications Strategist, Presbyterian Life & Witness (Click here to read original PNS Story)

Let us join in prayer for:

Nicholas Stark, Associate for Lending Services, Presbyterian Investment and Loan Program
Erika Nazaryan, Administrative Support, Jinishian Memorial Program, Presbyterian Life & Witness

Let us pray:

Holy God, we thank you for servant leaders who equip your church to fulfill its mission. We thank you for those who give their lives to build up the body of Christ. Sustain them, we pray, by the power of your Holy Spirit. Amen.

Mission Yearbook: Love must be stronger than hate, pastor says

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The Rev. Paul Roberts

The Rev. Paul Roberts, who leads the Justice Center for Sacred Theological Studies — formerly known as Johnson C. Smith Theological Seminary — delivered the opening plenary as part of the Annual Event of the Association of Partners in Christian Education.

Roberts laid out a few “things I presume, and I invite you to presume them with me.”

As people of faith, we commit to continue searching for truth — “not narrative, but truth — even cold, hard, unbearable truth,” Roberts said, reminding those in attendance online and at the Wyndham Grand Hotel in Pittsburgh that Jesus once called himself the way and the truth and the life.

Love is active, not static. “When we choose to love, we are committing ourselves to action,” Roberts said. “We are examining our motives, our belief systems, our practices and our behaviors. Awareness born of self-examination deepens our awareness of the divine presence.”

We honor, respect and protect God’s Creation, including bees, caterpillars, butterflies, wasps, snakes, hedgehogs, lizards, icecaps, soil, coral reefs, national parks, and the Amazon River and rainforest.

“I hope I am not pushing the envelope too much,” he said, “but the presumption is we live in a world that has always been conflicted” and has always been impacted by violence, strife, hurt and harm. “We talk about oppression, manipulation and materialism. None of this is new. It’s our current reality, but it’s not new,” he said. “The charge for us as people of faith is to generate a love that’s more fierce than the harms that confront us.”

God is lovable. While Roberts said he thinks folks at APCE would also presume that, “it’s worth asking, is he or she?” Is God “accessible enough that we are actually able to love God?” Peruse the biblical text, query it, and reflect on it, Roberts suggested: “In our human frailty and our understanding of what’s in the text, is God lovable? I don’t know. I choose to believe so, but I don’t know.”

Roberts’ final presumption is based on 1 John 4:19: “We love because he first loved us.” Those attending an APCE conference “understand, at least to a degree, the intangible personal experience that God is a loving God,” he said. We endeavor to love God “not because we read it in a theological treatise or recite it from the Book of Confessions, not because the preacher said so, not because it’s the party line, but because you and I have a tangible, personal experience with God.”

About 35 years ago, Roberts chose to become a Presbyterian. “I like order and I like to know what’s coming next. I like committees,” he said. “But this is serious, friends. We can only love God because God loved us first.”

He asked: How do we know what it’s like to be in the presence of the Divine?

“Please don’t presume that 11 o’clock Sunday morning is automatically that place,” he said. “That’s important, but it it’s also a day and an hour that’s rife with conflict. It is often governed by our social needs and societal constructs and cultural preferences.”

Then Roberts offered some of his own insights “as a sojourner. I want you to know how I experience God in hopes that you too will be very intentional about identifying those places where you encounter the divine love and are therefore equipped to share the love of God with others.”

One example is the connection “between the food we eat and our spirituality,” he said. “Eating slowly, without waste, can reflect our awareness. … Could it be that by eating food in its most holistic, natural form — raw or lightly cooked — enhances our experience of God’s love?”

Roberts ended his talk with encouragement for those in attendance. “Find a way to be fierce in your pursuit of the divine presence,” he suggested. “All the rest of the conference is moot if we can’t pinpoint the experience of God’s incredible and unconditional love.”

“Let’s be fierce about exercising a love so strong it overcomes hate, violence and all the harms we’re bemoaning,” he said. “Let’s stop bemoaning and let’s start loving, in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost,” Roberts said.

Mike Ferguson, Editor, Presbyterian News Service (Click here to read original PNS Story)

Let us join in prayer for:

Rhea Adams, Service Desk Technician, Information Technology Infrastructure, Administrative Services Group
Donald Jeffries, Facilities Technician, Building Services, Administrative Services Group                     

Let us pray:

God of all peoples, we pray for our neighbors near and far. Help us to see the needs around us and to respond with love. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

Special Offerings Webinar for West Coast Presbyteries and Congregations

Save the Date: Thursday, Sept. 3, at 4 pm PST West Coast Webinar on Changes to Churchwide Special Offerings Have you wondered about the changes to the PC(USA) Special Offerings and what they mean for your congregation? Join us for a webinar scheduled specifically for our western congregations. Hear directly from the Special Offerings staff to learn about: The General Assembly action that sparked recent changes. The specific causes each offering will support. A brand-new grant opportunity through the World Communion Offering. We will wrap up with plenty of time for your questions and feedback.

Beat the Crowd, Register Early

Even if you cannot attend, sign up. The webinar will be recorded and shared with all registrants. P.S. – You can invite your friends from the rest of the country too, but this time was set just for you!

Thank you for generously supporting the Churchwide Special Offerings.  If you have any questions, reply to this email or call us at (800) 728-7228, Ext. 5047.

Mission Yearbook: Seminary offers free and low-cost resources for worship

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Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary

For the past five years, I’ve lived in coastal Maine and have brought queer theology sermons and trainings into more than two dozen churches across the state. I’m on the board of OUTMaine, the largest service provider for queer youth in the state, and we frequently receive requests from churches for someone to preach, guide Bible studies and answer basic questions about LGBTQIA+ people. Many of these congregations are in towns with less than 1,000 people, but a hunger to know more and do better is not determined by a community’s population. From fishing villages on the Canadian border to industrial rust belt towns that dot the state’s interior, I’ve brought unabashedly progressive queer theology — delivered in a spirit of love and understanding — and watched communities wrestle with these truths.

One representative congregation invited me to lead Bible studies as they discerned whether to become an open and affirming congregation; the community was evenly split. Many of the folks who struggled with this choice did so because they believed the Bible expressly forbade homosexuality and expansive gender identities. 

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The Rev. Benjamin Perry teaches at a congregation in Maine. Perry is also Director of Communications at Garrett Seminary (Photo courtesy of Benjamin Perry)

I led two Bible studies. The first engaged so-called “texts of terror,” offering different interpretations for those habitually misunderstood passages. The second offered a queer reading of the Joseph text, inviting congregants to experience how queer people are present in the Bible and ways LGBTQIA+ people have found ourselves in its pages. 

Our conversation was rich; tender reflections from queer congregants swirled alongside honest confessions from people who still struggled to move beyond the theologies they’d long held. But we held each other together in dialogue, opening space for the Holy Spirit to move through our midst. Last fall, the seeds we planted blossomed: The congregation voted unanimously to become an open and affirming church.

I share this anecdote not because this community is unique but because they are typical. Many rural churches contain myriad perspectives, and a palpable yearning for ways to know God that knit love across difference. Cis heterosexual elders want better ways to understand and interact with queer grandchildren. People are hungry to move beyond the polarization and alienation that afflict public conversation.

But to nurture growth in ways that are honest, compassionate and wise instead of ones that are rooted in shame, we need different stories — we must bring the revolutionary biblical scholarship that liberated my own moral imagination into forms that are accessible to laypeople. And what is somewhat unique about the congregations I serve is that they have ready access to an experienced queer theologian and facilitator who happens to live nearby, and who will work for a fraction of my normal speaking fee because I believe in this ministry. That’s not a service many churches can expect.

That’s why I’m so excited about Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary’s new online platform, The Garrett Collective. A digital library of free and low-cost theological resources, the Collective offers videos, prayers, liturgies, Bible studies and more, created by dozens of ministers, scholars and subject-matter experts. The resources are housed in a beautiful, Netflix-style display and can be downloaded onto a device so people can access them offline — especially useful in rural parts of the U.S. where internet can be limited. More than just static resources, the Collective also has classes and cohorts where people can study and engage these materials alongside other Christians. 

As Garrett’s director of Communications, I’ve had a front-row seat to watch the incredible passion our development team has poured into this platform and even contributed a few resources of my own. It’s a stunning gift, one that holds the potential to bridge the gap between the theological academy and the kinds of communities I serve.

When all of us come together, we can better nurture people who are often treated as an afterthought or punchline, but who deserve the same robust theologies that helped other folks expand how we think about God and neighbor. The good news is meant for all.

Benjamin Perry, Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary (Click here to read original PNS Story)

Let us join in prayer for:

Chris Abney, VP, Director of IT, Presbyterian Foundation
Angielee Acevedo, Lead Housekeeper, Stony Point Center

Let us pray:

Gracious God, we thank you for your transforming power through our Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ. We pray for the many people who know you through the witness of Garrett Seminary. Amen.

Mission Yearbook: Pastor says God meets us in shared grief

The Rev. Theresa Cho, who preached during opening worship at the Annual Event of the Association of Partners in Christian Education, noted in her sermon that the fog is so prevalent in her city, San Francisco, that it has its own Instagram account: Karl the Fog.

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The Rev. Theresa Cho

“He uses it to troll us,” said Cho, the pastor and head of staff at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, which is “a hop-skip away” from the iconic — and often shrouded — Golden Gate Bridge.

“Bridging the Gap” was the theme of APCE’s annual gathering, being held online and at the Wyndham Grand Hotel in Pittsburgh. One of Pittsburgh’s monikers is the “City of Bridges.” The Steel City is home to at least 446 bridges.

Cho used Matthew 22:36–40 and three passages about Noah — Genesis 6:9–22, 7:24 and 8:14–19 — as her preaching texts.

She noted that bridges not only cross bodies of water  but they also connect communities together. “Our world, our country, our neighbors need communities connecting together more than ever,” she said. She wondered aloud just when the current atrocities around the world and across the country will cease.

“I wonder if that’s how God felt in this story in Genesis, that life itself is corrupt to the core,” she said. In Genesis, God gets angry and floods the Earth, but before that God instructs Noah to build the ark and fill it with every species.

She asked: How does a loving, compassionate God behave in such a way?

“I get it. I’m angry, too,” Cho said. This is not an angry God, but a grieving God, she said. “Grief can lead one to destroy the very thing that was lovingly created,” she said. “Here in the midst of grief, we find God pushing all of God’s buttons. God cries and grieves for 40 days, shedding enough tears to flood all Creation.”

After 40 days, God makes a covenant with Noah, but after the floodwaters recede, the flood hasn’t changed much. The animals that emerge from the ark have not changed their nature, she said. “What changes is God and God’s approach to humanity” with “unlimited patience and forgiveness.”

She asked: Why choose grief for discussion during opening worship? As author Cole Arthur Riley said, grief keeps us human, Cho said. “For many who have experienced profound grief, we know it is something that never leaves us,” she said. “As educators and pastors, we are trained and conditioned to take on the grief of the world. It can be hard to tend to our own grief, our own losses, our hopes and dreams, our passion and identity. But God promises to be with us and help us carry our grief.”

At the end of 40 days, “Noah reminded God that faithfulness has a way of rearing its stubborn head,” Cho said. “God knows what we go through and promises us that in the co-grieving, we will be together.” She called God “the rainbow bridge that unites us to all that God has called good.”

“May we be reminded that God is ever-present, so we have the strength and courage to cross any bridge that comes our way. Our neighbors need us to show up,” Cho said. “The good news is there’s never a bridge we cross alone.”

“Along with other co-grievers, we walk together. Amen.”

Mike Ferguson, Editor, Presbyterian News Service (Click here to read original PNS Story)

Let us join in prayer for:

Beth Zornick, Vice President, Customer Business Systems, Plan Operations, The Board of Pensions
Princeton Abaraoha, Global Ecumenical Liaison-US, Global Ecumenical Partnerships, Presbyterian Life & Witness

Let us pray:

Loving God, stand with us all, we pray. Remind us to notice, encourage, and listen, and inspire us to lead with your Son’s heart. Teach us again how to follow, how to learn and how to lead in your merciful manner. Amen.