Zion Mennonite Church was organized as a new church in the Virginia Mennonite Conference in 1885. Until 1948, Zion and Trissels Mennonite Church operated as one congregation, with alternating Sunday services in the early years. After a peaceful separation in 1948, Zion began to develop a distinct identity with services at the church each Sunday.
During the first 50 years of the congregation, 1885–1935, Zion ministers traveled widely into the mountains west of Broadway and to the north. They preached in many small communities, including schoolhouses and churches of other denominations. Ministers like Samuel Shank, Lewis Shank, and George B. Showalter gave Zion a distinctive mission impulse with their willingness to travel many miles on horseback and preach to Mennonites and others in remote mountain regions.
By the 1930s many young people from the Zion and Trissels congregations traveled to these remote communities to teach Summer Bible School. The youth lived in trailers, tents, or local homes while they conducted their two-week Bible Schools. Elizabeth A. Showalter was an early pioneer in writing curriculum and developing materials for these Northern District Summer Bible Schools. Later “Aunt Elizabeth” was hired by the Mennonite Publishing House to write curriculum materials for the wider Mennonite Church (MC).
In the early 1960s Jesse and Betty Byler and Don and Martha Augsburger began a new era in Zion history, establishing a church council and a constitution. In 1965 Harvey Yoder stepped into the pastorate and until 1988 he shaped Zion as a caring, missions-minded congregation, accepting people from many walks of life, including college students and Pleasant View Home residents.
During the 1990s and early twenty-first century a number of pastors served the congregation, including John Drescher, Steve Dintaman, Beryl Jantzi, Laban Peachey, Richard Early, Randall Shull, Myron Augsburger, Clyde Kratz, Mike Metzler, and Ervin and Bonita Stutzman. Zion is a member of the Northern District of the Virginia Conference, which is a member conference of Mennonite Church USA.