“I want my ordination to be a vote for the church,” Michele Hershberger said in her response to being ordained by South Central Mennonite Conference for Christian ministry in Mennonite Church USA on Sunday evening, Nov. 16.
Despite indications that the church has fallen on hard times and is broken and wounded, Hershberger said, “God uses the church to love and heal and save the world.
“(As a Christian minister) I get to be the person that God has always intended for me to be-to be this small part of God healing and loving the world. I’m casting my lot with God’s people.”
Hershberger’s ordination marked the denomination’s recognition of, and affirmation for, her ministry of teaching at Hesston College and church-wide leadership in preaching and drama.
Hershberger, who is chair of the Bible and Ministry Division at Hesston College, joined the faculty in 2000 after receiving a master of arts degree in theological studies at Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary, Elkhart, Ind. She has been a frequent speaker and playwright for Mennonite youth conventions; a youth pastor with her husband, Del, in Hubbard, Ore.; an author of God’s Story, Our Story: Exploring Christian Faith and Life, a catechism resource for Mennonite Church USA; the project associate for The Giving Project; a renewal speaker/preacher; and a college and high school teacher. She has assumed additional leadership roles in youth ministry and drama and written several other books as well as curricula and articles for periodicals and academic journals.
Marion Bontrager, an overseer in South Central Mennonite Conference, as well as Bible professor and Hershberger’s colleague at Hesston College, led the ordination ceremony at Hesston Mennonite Church, where Hershberger is a member. Bontrager noted two ironies. One, many people assumed that Hershberger was already ordained since she has been involved in Christian ministry for 20 years and has “preached with power,” he said
Secondly, Bontrager said, “I’m leading in the ordination of my department chair, as a partner in the Gospel.”
Bontrager had first talked to Hershberger about her call to ministry when she was a student at Hesston College.
Earlier in life, Hershberger’s father John Dale Schrock had also observed that Michele was “born a preacher” as she lined up her dolls and “preached” to them. But being a preacher and being female seemed incongruous at that time and place.
Participants in the service of ordination included faculty members Megan Tyner and Jim Yoder who performed a drama, The Servant; John C. Murray, Hesston Mennonite Church pastor, and Howard Keim, Hesston College president, who gave the call to worship from Luke’s account of the Annunciation and also led in the benediction; Dave Greiser, Pastoral Ministries director, who preached on II Corinthians 6:1-10; and four witnesses-Velma Yoder, from Hershberger’s home church, Sycamore Grove Mennonite Church in Garden City, Mo.; Ken Kropf, from Zion Mennonite Church in Hubbard, Ore.; Cheryl Hershberger, Hesston Mennonite Church minister of congregational life; and Kaely Miller, Newton, Kan., a sophomore at Hesston College.
A group composed of ordained men and women, Hershberger’s family, college faculty, staff, and students, and friends surrounded Hershberger for the laying on of hands and prayer after she was formally ordained, bestowed with a red stole, and given a certificate.
In his sermon, Greiser said that ministry requires a new way of seeing people and circumstances. The phrase from II Corinthians 6:10, “as having nothing, and yet possessing everything” is Michele’s life phrase, he said.
The minister’s task, he said, is to love even when love is not returned; to live simply without many expectations; and to be honest and frank, even though it makes you vulnerable. He commended Hershberger for persevering in serving when the church was not ready to ordain her.
Greiser warned of two pitfalls: believing that people can’t change and believing that people don’t need to change. “Peter and Paul say we can become far more than we are now,” he said. And, “we do need real change.”
In God’s new person, we see “someone who is graced,” Greiser said, noting that “Michele has received the grace of God . . . and is conscious of it.”
Secondly, preachers need “fire in their bones – an urgency in the way the Gospel message is proclaimed. . . . We stand near the edge. . . . (The church will) become missional or dead.”
Third: Present the Gospel message clearly, putting no obstacles in the way of the student or listener. “Communicate the Word to unlock its meaning,” Greiser said. “Live it out in your own life.. . . The medium (teacher/preacher) is the message.”
Finally, Greiser urged Hershberger and all ministers to persevere through persecution and hardships, to resist the temptation to quit and coast toward retirement.
Quoting Joe Leichty, associate professor and program director of Peace, Justice, and Conflict Studies at Goshen (Ind.) College, and a former long-term missionary in Ireland, Greiser concluded, “Plant the seeds, let them go; know no outcomes, need no credit; do all for the glory of God.”
Susan Miller Balzer is a free-lance writer in Hesston, Kan.