For the past 20 years, Ray Owens has served as the pastor of Metropolitan Baptist Church in north Tulsa. The church honored him this March, which also marked another milestone for Owens — four decades of serving in ministry.
Owens said his call to ministering came one night in Austin, Texas, when he was working for the state comptroller. He remembers being the only person in the office and seeing someone’s bookmark with biblical scripture printed on it.
“I just had a moment where I felt like God was speaking to me,” Owens told The Eagle in the week leading up to his celebration. “I grew up in church but I never saw myself as being a pastor, a preacher or anything like that.”
The scripture he saw came from 1 Timothy where “Paul was admonishing Timothy to preach the word in season and out of season.” After wrestling with the moment, Owens said he realized what his calling was.
That’s when his ministry started — first as a volunteer, then working with children and eventually becoming a first grade teacher. Twenty years passed before he became a pastor. His draw to Tulsa was simple: nostalgia.
“I actually was intrigued by the Tulsa that I moved to 20 years ago because it reminded me of the Austin of my boyhood,” he said.
While both cities have changed considerably since 2006, Owens said he was drawn by the river running through the city, along with its people, rich history and traditions.
As Tulsa has grown, so has Met Baptist. Owens said membership went from about 300 in 2006 to more than 2,500 now — a number that’s fallen since the pandemic and a period he called “the most difficult time” in his 40 years of ministry.
“How do you pastor people in the middle of a pandemic when the world is in crisis and we’re all filled with high levels of uncertainty?” he recalled.
From that period, Owens learned a key lesson: The church needs to be adaptable.
“It taught us to be learners,” he said. “There is not a single skill set that translates to every context and every generation. The skill everybody needs today is knowing how to learn.”
He said that’s especially true as artificial intelligence becomes more ingrained in day to day life.
To better understand what Owens has seen over the past two decades leading Met Baptist, I asked him to take us behind the scenes of the pulpit — starting with the most shocking thing he’s experienced. For him, it’s been seeing the level of authority people give their pastor.
“I think a person without real integrity can so easily abuse this authority,” he said. “I hope I’ve never been guilty of that, and that’s one of the things I think about a great deal.” He said people call him for a number of things that might feel outside his lane, including employment questions, personal issues and advice on starting a business.
Being the face of the church has also come with a lot of sacrifice, he told me. Owens had to give up some of his personal life and a “good deal of privacy.”
“I think my wife and kids have paid a price that a lot of spouses and children have not had to pay,” he said.
But even when the going gets tough, as it has, he leans on his favorite scriptures starting with Philippians 4:13. “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”
And Ecclesiastes 9:10 — “whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might…” — a verse he said has become his life motto.
Ultimately, though, he says these past 20 years have been a great journey. As for what’s next, the 65-year-old says he still has a few more years of preaching in him.
Much like when he was drawn to ministry, he’ll know when it’s his time to go “when God makes it clear.”
