Rev. Roger Scott Powers

Roger came to Baltimore from Oakland, California, where he was associate pastor of Montclair Presbyterian Church for four years. While there, he chaired the Clergy Caucus of the Oakland Coalition of Congregations, an interfaith community organization of 32 congregations. He was also a leader in the East Bay Interfaith Committee for Worker Justice and California Interfaith Power & Light. He chaired the planning team for the Presbyterian Peacemaking Conference, "A Force More Powerful: Embracing Jesus' Way of Nonviolence," held in Montreat, NC, in July 2003 and he served on the Peacemaking Task Force of San Francisco Presbytery.

Under Roger's pastoral leadership, Light Street is becoming one of the younger congregations in Baltimore Presbytery, attracting young adults in their 20s and 30s. Light Street is becoming a more multicultural congregation with more than 20 percent people of color (Africans, African Americans, and Caribbean Americans). Light Street is a growing congregation: church membership grew by 40 percent in 2007. And, Light Street's mission has expanded to include support for Habitat for Humanity, the House of Ruth, the Baltimore Freedom School, the United Workers Association and a sister church in Cuba, as well as South Baltimore Emergency Relief and That All May Freely Serve: Baltimore.

Peacemaking, which is central to Roger's ministry, has been his passion for more than twenty-five years. From 1982 to 1984, he was Peacemaking Intern of the Synod of the Northeast, based at Stony Point Center. He served on the national staff of Clergy and Laity Concerned, an interfaith, multiracial peace and justice organization, from 1985 to 1988. From 1989 until he began seminary in 1995, he was on the staff of the Albert Einstein Institution, a nonprofit organization founded by Gene Sharp to advance the study and use of strategic nonviolent action in conflicts throughout the world. There he co-edited a 640-page encyclopedia of nonviolent action entitled Protest, Power, and Change (Garland, 1997). Roger has been on the National Committee of the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship since 21993 and currently serves as its co-moderator.

Roger holds a B. S. in Mechanical Engineering from Cornell University, an M. A. in International Politics from the University of Denver, and an M. Div. from Andover Newton Theological School. He is married to Susan Quass, his partner for twenty-three years, who is on the staff of the Wellspring Conference Center in Germantown, Maryland.