Grounded: How One Queer Pastor Spent a Lifetime Finding a Ministry Home

At the young age of ten, Natalie Benson knew she wanted to be a pastor. After seminary, she wasn’t so sure anymore. But once she finished her internship at a queer-friendly church in Santa Monica, she knew she had indeed discerned her call at an early age.

“I fell in love with parish ministry again,” Benson said. “It’s a privilege and a joy to be with people through their joys and sorrows and the different parts of life they face.”

To tell the story of Benson’s voyage from sure to unsure to absolutely certain requires a lot of stops along the way. It’s a story of many small nudges of guidance and a healthy amount of youthful bravado.  

“I loved church from a young age,” Benson said. “I was ten years old when I told my pastor that I wanted to be a pastor, and though he wasn’t always able to grow with me and support me as my call grew, I’m so grateful for what he did for me. He would bring me on communion calls. He had me preach my first sermon when I was 15.”

While still in high school, Benson—whose keen sense of justice and fairness was honed in part by her parents—noticed that her church could be more welcoming to the families of the low-income apartment complex nearby. And then she decided to do something about it.  

“I went to the church council and said we should do something different,” Benson said. “So my sister and I decided to put on a VBS and bring those families to our church and have a meal and fun and fellowship together. And that became my life for 3 or 4 years every summer.”

Seeing the gathered diversity that bridged gaps between race, ethnicity, and class had a major impact.

“In those moments,” Benson said, “I would look around that room of all these families eating together who had taught me the love of Jesus and these other families who were new, and I thought, This is the Kingdom of God. This is what I want to be doing.”

Lest we begin to assign an unspoiled piety to this adolescent version of Benson, she is quick to point out that she wasn’t always motivated in ministry by angelic desires.

“I was a little frustrated with faith by the time I graduated from high school,” Benson said. “There was a big megachurch next to my school, and a lot of kids went there and they exhibited a very exclusive faith. And it made me frustrated and spiteful, and it says you have to live a certain way to be loved and that my queer friends couldn’t be there. So it was almost out of spite that I studied more about ministry.”

While in college, Benson got involved in the campus interfaith ministry and the experience transformed the way she saw her own faith.

“I was having questions about faith and was frustrated with the way I saw my faith lived out in the world, especially among those in power,” Benson said, acknowledging that her involvement allowed her “to focus less on that frustration and think more about faith and spirituality in general, and on cooperation and mutual understanding and respect.”

“It made me ask what are the connections between my Lutheran faith and what I value about interfaith cooperation and to have the space to make those connections.”

After college, Benson attended seminary at Yale Divinity School, a choice made with deep intention.

“I wanted to go to an ecumenical school because learning about faith in the context of others had been so beneficial to me,” Benson said.

However, that first year in seminary was upended by the COVID-19 lockdown, which led Benson to an important self-discovery.

“I sat with myself for the first time in my life, and I realized I was queer,” Benson said. “It was transformational, and my faith changed in a lot of ways, too. I returned to the contemplative, childlike faith that I’d forgotten in all my years of trying to produce fruits of my faith.”

Benson went back to seminary with a renewed sense of faith and mission while still sitting with an uncertainty about the specifics of her call. She knew she was called to ministry, but what kind?  

This question led her to seek out an internship that would allow her to be her fully queer self while still taking the time to discern whether she was called to parish ministry or some other form of Kingdom-building work. She found it at St. Paul’s Lutheran in Santa Monica, California, a church that specifically dedicated their internship slots to those who are openly queer.

“They affirmed me and showed me the joy of being church together,” Benson said. “They gave me foundation in my confidence in my call and in my pastoral identity.”

From there Benson stepped into a brief interim role at St. Matthew’s Lutheran in North Hollywood before discerning it was time to seek a full-time call, which led her to King of Glory Lutheran in Fountain Valley, California.

“There’s been nothing but people truly welcoming me as their pastor with open arms and open hearts in the fullness of who I am,” Benson said. “We’re on the RIC journey now and it feels like a privilege to join in on their journey that started well before I got here. I’m excited to see where the RIC process will lead them.”

Benson has been on a journey with many stops since the age of ten, but even though her spiritual journey continues, she now feels like she is exactly where God wants her to be.

“It feels really good to be grounded somewhere,” Benson said. “I don’t come into this call with my own agenda or goals. I just really loved the people I’ve met in my first year; they’re such earnest and good-hearted, intentional, loving people who love being together and love sharing God’s love with others, and I’m on board with wherever they feel God leads us.”