Pastor Lataya Simpson

Senior Pastor | Technology Advocate | Compassionate Leader

 

Pastor Lataya Ballard Simpson serves as Senior Pastor of St. Matthew's United Methodist Church in North Houston, Texas. With a heart for inclusive ministry and expertise in integrating technology into worship, she brings warmth, innovation, and deep theological insight to every setting.

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Since an early age, the Rev. Lataya Simpson defined ministry as serving God by serving others. For nearly 30 years, she has been blessed with various opportunities to live out this paradigm in diverse settings. From the age of 15, Lataya began leading a small group in her High School, teaching Bible Study every week for 3 years. During college, she was hungry for ways to get involved in ministry and combined her passion for ministry and academic studies in broadcast journalism to volunteer in ministry media at her church. After graduating with a BA in Broadcast Journalism and a short-lived career in journalism, Lataya decided she wanted to do something other than report bad news. She wanted to serve and lead in her community. 

 

In 2006, she founded Christian Networking Group, a diverse organization that connected thousands of people to help bridge the gap between faith and business. Lataya accepted her call to pastoral ministry in 2011. She was blessed to find a mentor in her own home, following in her husband’s footsteps to become an Ordained Elder in Full Connection in The United Methodist Church. She and he attended SMU Perkins School of Theology, earning the Master of Divinity degrees consecutively; he in 2017, she in 2018. Her first appointment as a pastor came in 2016 while still in seminary. From there, she spent a year as a hospital Chaplain and, for the past 3 years, has been serving as the Associate Pastor of Bellaire UMC, located in the city of Bellaire.  

 

In addition to being a servant leader, Lataya is a wife, mother, and friend. “Faith and family are my top two priorities, but I’m blessed that my calling enables me to enrich both of these.” She and her husband, Rev. Johnnie, are parents of three amazing children. 

 

Lataya is passionate about personal development, social/emotional wellness, and racial, cultural, and cognitive diversity. Her first book, More Than Pretty: 7 Beauty Secrets That Could Change Your Life, was self-published in 2014. She has written several children’s books on these topics and hopes to publish many more in the future.