Rev. Dr. Heike Miller was appointed to University UMC in July of 2018. She is a clergy wife, a mother, a learner, and one day may even understand the rules of baseball and preach on something other than her green Ford Ranger (stick shift) and Karl Barth’s Doctrine of Reconciliation. 

Born in Stuttgart, Germany, Rev. Miller spent her childhood and adolescence in the real part of Germany – the Black Forest – where the Kuckucksuhren (cuckoo clock) and Kirschtorte (Black Forest cake) were created, and where kids ride their skis to school in winter. Rev. Miller studied theology at the University of Heidelberg in Germany, the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, and the University of Bern in Switzerland. She was ordained in the Evangelische Landeskirche in Baden (state Church of Germany with roots both in the Lutheran and Reformed Church) in 1999. Reverend Miller furthered her studies to specialize in counseling and group dynamics, spiritual direction, and meditation in Iona, Scotland, Fribourg, Switzerland, and Taize, France. She received her Doctor of Ministry from Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington DC, served as a Military Religious Education Coordinator in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and taught religion at the Lydia Patterson Institute of El Paso, Texas. She has pastored in over 15 different churches, both inner city and rural, big and small, in Germany and the United States, showing off her Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, even when nobody wanted to listen. 

Rev. Miller is happily married to Rev. George Miller, pastor of El Calvario UMC in Las Cruces, who reminds her everyday what it means to be bold and humble and to listen more to John Prine. The Millers have two sons, Lukas and Johannes, and four grown children from George’s former marriage – George, William, Sarah, and Caroline. As a missionary family of GBGM they love to travel, to spend time in God’s amazing creation, read the news and God’s word of truth together, and to learn more from our faithful Triune God every day – until we all make it home.