Hello, my name is Fr. John Powers, and I am very happy to be the new pastor at St. John the
Baptist.
I was born in 1987 and grew up in Northeast Minneapolis. I am the younger of two kids, my
sister is two years senior and at the time of writing she and her husband have two daughters.
Growing up my parents both worked for the Church- in addition to his day job at the University
of Minnesota, my dad was ordained a Deacon in 2001 and my mom served in many roles before
retiring as a parish business administrator in 2018. Because my parents both worked for the
Church, I never intended to enter ministry and went to St. John’s in Collegeville, studying
history and intending to become a lawyer. God had other plans, and through the influence of the
Benedictine monks, I began to hear a call from the Lord to something more. After graduating
with that degree in history from St. John’s in 2009 and with the help of a lot of people after 6
years of studies at the St. Paul Seminary, I was ordained a priest May 30th, 2015.
As a priest, I have had quite a number of assignments- I was the associate at Nativity of our Lord
from 2015-2018; the associate at St. Michael and St. Mary’s in Stillwater from 2018-2020, spent
the Covid year of 2020-2021 as the associate at St. Nicholas in Elko-New Market and
Immaculate Conception in Lonsdale, and most recently served as the pastor of Holy Trinity in
Waterville and St. Andrew’s in Elysian while also teaching middle school religion at Bethlehem
Academy in Faribault. While that all looks great on a resume, that long list really doesn’t mesh
with the Benedictine value of stability I learned at St. John’s. I am hoping this St. John’s will be
that place where I can put down roots and I am looking forward to getting to know and to serve
this community as we help each other grow closer to Jesus Christ.
As you can imagine from studying history and being a priest, I have a great love of Church
history, especially the stories and lives of the Saints. My interest in history extends past the
Saints into more general areas- my favorite area is probably early modern Britain. I’m also a big
baseball fan, I like to cook, and one of my goals in Dayton is to get into golf, as most of my
friends golf and I don’t. My biggest goal is the ongoing fulfillment of the promises I made as a
priest, to assist the Archbishop by caring for the people he has entrusted to me, to preach the
Gospel, to celebrate the sacraments, to grow in prayer, and by doing so to imitate Christ. I am
hoping you can help me do this, and I can help you do these things as well.
- Fr. John Powers