The Rev. Natalie Owens-Pike

a photo of The Rev. Natalie Owens-Pike

I’m a second-generation woman clergy, and a second-career minister who sees the beauty in following the Holy Spirit along the winding paths of our lives. I am a connector of people who loves a church coffee hour, and I believe in the potential of a church pew to connect us across differences or disagreement. I am a reverent optimist who asks big questions of God.

To me, God’s house is a place of belonging, and there is a place here for you. My first theologians were LGBTQ+ Sunday school teachers in the large Unitarian Universalist congregation where I was raised, and the Black women who were my fellow public school teachers and showed me a Christianity that liberates, not dominates.

I have found glimpses of God’s loving presence on a winding Mississippi Delta road, in hospital rooms as an intern chaplain, in the laughter of teenagers, food shared around a potluck table, or paddling a canoe on a Minneapolis lake.

I’m grateful for the holy playground of hybrid ministry, where your belonging is not diminished because you participate online. Ordained in the United Church of Christ, I am a member of the fifteenth cohort of the Next Generation Leadership Initiative (NGLI) for promising young ministers of the UCC.

I’d love to recommend the next fiction book you’ll love, suggest a restaurant you might have never tried, or compete over our Wordle scores.

Hometown
Minneapolis, Minnesota

Education
Bachelor of Arts in American Studies, English Literature and History
Macalester College

Master of Divinity
Yale Divinity School

Previous Roles
Executive Director
Breakthrough Minneapolis at Blake

Corps Member
Teach for America

High School Spanish Teacher
Mississippi Delta

Some Favorites

To Read

  • Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer
  • Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston
  • The Night Watchman, Louise Erdrich
  • Poetry by Ada Limon, Tracy K. Smith and Mary Oliver
  • The New Yorker

To Watch

  • TV: Abbott Elementary, What We Do In the Shadows, Station Eleven
  • Movies: Arrival, Any rom-com based on Shakespeare (like 10 Things I Hate About You)