MEET MARY HOLDER NAEGELI
pronounced Neg’elee
The Rev. Dr. Mary Holder Naegeli is an ordained Presbyterian (PCUSA) minister who has served Presbyterian and Lutheran churches in the San Francisco Bay Area since her ordination in 1987. She has worked with people of all ages, and through the decades has encountered the full range of leadership and pastoral care challenges, including seminary teaching and hospital chaplaincy. Currently, Mary serves as pastor-in-residence at Walnut Creek Presbyterian Church.
Mary has been involved in the life of the church, in various leadership capacities, since the age of 12 when she started the first contemporary worship band for her large Catholic parish in Bellevue, WA. Her personal commitment to Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior was made at age 17, after which she immediately felt a call to ministry in some form. Meanwhile, she attended Stanford University and earned an AB in music (vocal performance). She met her husband Andy there, and they were married two weeks after graduation in 1975.
Together they set down roots at Menlo Park Presbyterian Church, where Mary served on staff from 1976 to 1987 (minus two maternity breaks in 1980 and 1983). During this time, she attended Fuller Seminary on the nine-year plan, focusing on Adult Discipleship in line with her work at the church. Education and ministry exploration led Mary to discover her primary spiritual gift of teaching, with strengths in leadership and administration. She graduated with a M.Div. in 1987.
She was ordained in the PCUSA on November 1, 1987, to the call of associate pastor for adult ministries at Moraga Valley Presbyterian Church, where she served for ten years. Then from 1997 to 2006, she was senior pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Concord. Her life-long interest in music and worship leadership have given her rich experience in the focal gathering point of the congregation. She is known for her winsome Bible teaching and her ability to sort through complex issues with clarity and compassion in both pulpit and classroom.
About the time her call was coming to a close at Concord, Mary entered the academic realm, as a candidate for the Doctor of Ministry degree and taught six courses as an adjunct professor for Fuller Seminary in Northern California, Seattle, Phoenix, and Colorado Springs. Locally during this time, Mary was the equivalent of a parish associate at Saint Matthew Lutheran Church, contributing teaching ministry, worship leadership, and preaching until December 2016.
Life took an interesting turn in the fall of 2013, when Mary discovered the cause of an unrelenting cough was stage III lung cancer. In a six-month period, from Halloween to post-Easter, Mary underwent chemo and radiation concurrently and had lung surgery to remove the affected lobe. She has been officially lung-cancer-free since April 28, 2014. To God be the glory! Doors opened for her to become a staff chaplain at John Muir Hospital (Walnut Creek) in 2015, where she served for six years until her retirement in 2021.
Out of that cancer experience, Mary wrote Deep Breathing: Finding Calm Amid Cancer Anxiety, chronicaling her spiritual journey through life-threatening illness. Her soul-searching Why I Don’t Pray: Sharing the Struggle with Saints and Sages was completed in 2023. Meanwhile, she continues to teach Bible study weekly at Walnut Creek Presbyterian Church.
Married to Andy, a retired engineer/scientist, she has two adult daughters who live in Seattle with their families: Katy, a lawyer, is married with two children. Judy, a communications director, and her husband reside in West Seattle with their son. Mary and Andy enjoy keeping up with the grandkids, traveling the world, planning road trips, hiking, and taking in the local music/theater scene.
One of these days Mary will finish the quilt she started in 2005.