Marcella Hershberger devoted 23 years to Mennonite Mission Network and its predecessor agency, Mennonite Board of Missions — first, from 1998 to 2012, then from 2017 until her retirement on January 29, 2026. through her warm personal touch and attention to detail, she touched the lives and ministries of many domestic and international service workers.
Marcella Hershberger is no stranger to working through transitions. During her first stint with Mission Network and Mennonite Board of Missions (MBM), she received a humorous certificate from her coworkers: “Congratulations to the person who has run through the most bosses.”
“It was a little joke,” Hershberger said, “like I was running people out of the agency.”
She was hired by Peter Graber in MBM’s partnership department, then shifted to assistant for the international ministries department. Hershberger worked briefly for Ron Yoder, who left for an international assignment. This was followed by a merger between the General Conference Mennonite Church and the Mennonite Church that prompted two retirees — Lawrence Greaser, then Alice Roth to serve as interim international director during the transition. , Eventually, James Krabill, ran the department for many years.
One of Hershberger’s responsibilities was to send annual report reminders to workers. “A lot of the workers dreaded their annual report. Every year they had to do one, Hershberger recalled. While regional directors were responsible for reviewing and responding to those reports, Hershberger always read them.
“I tried to make a point to send a note back to the worker — even if it was two sentences about how I enjoyed reading it. Just to let them know that they were being read.”
One long-term worker thanked her, noting that they felt like their report “fell into a black hole.”
“I knew that the directors read them,” Hershberger said. “But they were busy and didn’t always have time to respond to every worker. So, I did, and it was just a way of saying, ‘We’re here.’”
Those connections, along with the personal relationships she developed with international workers, left her grateful for her first chapter at Mission Network. She left in 2012 to pursue a new calling of pastoral service. She became a pastor at Bonneyville Mennonite Church in Goshen, Indiana.
“They hired me out of the congregation,” Hershberger said. “I became a pastor for the first time in my life while I was in my 50s, but I loved it.”
A fortunate return
Unfortunately, the pastoral position couldn’t last. Hershberger’s husband became ill, going in and out of the hospital “like a revolving door,” she said. He was unable to work, and with medical expenses piling up, they needed reliable health insurance. God’s hand set to work to bring Hershberger back to Mission Network.
She was delivering a Mary Kay order to someone in the Newton Mission Network office when a former co-worker, ChloAnn Stalter, stopped her and said, “Your old position is available. You should apply!”
Hershberger laughed it off at first. But Statler insisted more seriously, “Marcella, I think you need to apply for this.” She applied and was rehired, working with many of the same colleagues and reconnecting with some of the international workers. “It was perfect,” Hershberger said. “I could just slide back in with benefits and full-time work, which is exactly what we needed at that point.”
She served again as assistant for the international department until the organization underwent an internal restructure, moving her into the role that she held until retirement: Divisional Coordinator for Ventures. In that role, supported the Ventures Division’s Senior Executive, collaborated with the Global Partnership coordinator and assisted the directors of Constituent Engagement and Training and Resources.
The beginning of a journey
When Hershberger first applied at MBM in 1998, the job required a reference from a pastor. she had been absent from her church for a year, yet her pastor graciously provided one, for which she remains grateful.
Hershberger’s absence from church stemmed from a traumatic living situation during a Study-Service Term in Honduras for Goshen College. “I felt unsafe. I felt like God dropped me off and abandoned me,” Hershberger said. There were two adult sons in the home who acted inappropriately, and that trauma tainted not just her view of those men, but of Hispanic men in general.
Working at MBM opened her eyes to the work of God occurring around the world, and it began to heal Hershberger’s heart. A male international worker from Chile opened his country’s first shelter for domestic violence victims. She also met members of a choir from a Mennonite church in Spain.
“To meet Hispanic men that were safe was really important,” Hershberger said. “It started a healing process for me. Combined with reading all the prayer letters, that was what helped me go back to church.”
Her path unfolded from not having a church, to working for a religious institution, to becoming a pastor herself. Though her time at Bonneyville Mennonite Church was brief, she was able to continue pastoring eventually. She reduced her hours at Mission Network to three-quarters time in 2022 to begin pastoring at Hudson Lake Mennonite Church in New Carlisle, IN.
“I love it,” Hershberger said. “I feel really blessed.”
Continuing down her path
Part of the reason Hershberger knew it was time to retire was because her responsibilities at Hudson Lake Mennonite Church were beginning to shift.
“I have an aging congregation who thinks that I’m young,” she said. “Some of them have fallen and been injured; some are or are thinking about moving into other living situations such as Greencroft (a Goshen area retirement home). They’re in transition themselves, and they need more for support from me.”
Retirement from such a long-term position doesn’t come without challenges. “The difficult part is how many goodbyes I’ve had to say over the years,” Hershberger reflected. “I’ve seen a lot of faces come and go. The good side of that is that we’ve hired some very good people. It’s good to see new and qualified people come into the agency.”
Post-retirement, Hershberger will continue pastoring at Hudson Lake Mennonite Church and enjoying her dog-sitting adventures — an endeavor that she never sought to start but that was a “happy accident” that she continues to love.
“Everyone at Mission Network is very committed,” Hershberger said. “People are there because they believe in what they do. I’m not worried about what will happen at Mission Network [after I leave], because I know that God’s work will go on and that there will be good people to do it.”
