‘It’s just you, and you are enough’

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.

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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 Thursday 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 Jan. 21-24 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 Wednesday, the Rev. Paul Roberts addressed the command to “Love God.” On Thursday,  McKibben Dana explored “Love Self,” while “Love Neighbor” was the topic for Rabbi Evan Moffic, and on Saturday, workshops and closing worship held space to contemplate what it means to “Love Others.”

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 forthcoming book “Better Than Normal,” which will be released in April.

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.

She then invited participants into small group discussions around these questions:

• What makes the commandment to love yourself difficult to live out?
• What practices help you feel deeply loved?
• Where have you seen the helper/helped dichotomy in congregations, and how might we shift toward mutual service?
• How has the church upheld or disrupted the privatization and commodification of self-care?

McKibben Dana serves as pastor, writer and ministry coach in Herndon, Virginia. She authors a weekly newsletter called The Blue Room. Her most recent book is “Hope: A User’s Manual,” and her previous books are “God, Improv, and the Art of Living” and “Sabbath in the Suburbs.”