EAST PROVIDENCE — An interim pastor has been named for Newman Congregational Church in Rumford as the Rev. Dr. Laurene Bowers steps into the role on a temporary basis.

Bowers leads the congregation for the first time on Palm Sunday, April 2. A special coffee hour will immediately follow worship so that members and guests can officially welcome Bowers.

Bowers comes to Newman from Christ Church in Bethlehem, Penn., where she served as lead pastor. She has 40 years of ministry experience including six years as Conference Associate Minister for Congregational Life and Vitality with the Penn Central Conference of the United Church of Christ, where she helped churches with the search and call process for settled and interim pastors.

Coincidentally, she served as Senior Pastor at First Congregational Church in Randolph, Mass., from 1998-2011 to where Newman’s former pastor Sylvia left to take on a similar role. Last fall, Sylvia vacated his position at Newman, which he held for some nine years beginning in November 2013, to take over the ministry at Randolph’s First Congregational, about an hour north of East Providence on the outskirt of Boston.

This will not be Bowers’s first pastorate in Rhode Island. She previously served Sayles Memorial Church in Lincoln as Pastor for 7 years in the early 90’s.

Bowers is the author of several books published by Pilgrim Press, including Becoming a Multicultural Church; Transformative Worship; Designing Contemporary Congregations: Strategies to Attract Those Under Fifty; The God Beyond Organized Religion, and she has a new book coming out on the future of American Christianity. She holds three Master’s degrees and two Doctorates and has been a Professor of World Religions at Quincy College.

Bowers and her husband, also a UCC pastor, have a home in Narragansett, where they plan to move permanently to be closer to a son who lives in Federal Hill and a daughter and son-in-law, the parents of their two grandchildren, who will be living in Massaschusetts.