Our Staff

Rev. Emily M.D. Scott (she/they) Emily believes that Christian practice holds rich possibilities that call us to reach out across boundaries in love, learn through discomfort, and build relationships that bring God’s realm close. Queer and nonbinary, she is committed to building communities of faith that dismantle fear and hate, affirm LGBTQ+ people, and confront racial injustice.

Prior to serving at First Presbyterian, Emily served as pastor of St. Mark’s Lutheran Church and founding pastor to Dreams and Visions in Baltimore. These two congregations, one historic, one just a few years old, built a unique partnership, sharing a building, pastoral staff, and a commitment to their neighborhood and the LGBTQ+ community. Together with leaders, Emily founded Baltimore’s first gender-affirming, pay-what-you-can thrift store, the Skylight Boutique, focused on providing needed clothing and gender-affirming accessories for the trans and LGBTQ+ community.

From 2008-2017, Emily served as the founding pastor of St. Lydia’s Dinner Church in Brooklyn, where worship is a full meal shared around a dinner table. Emily and the congregation were involved in combating police brutality and advocating for affordable housing with organizations such as Faith in New York. St. Lydia’s sparked a wider Dinner Church movement, and is now a national model for new church starts.

Born and raised in Middletown, CT, Emily earned her M.Div at Yale Divinity School, receiving the Alumni Award for Distinction in Congregational Ministry in 2016. Raised an Episcopalian, Emily received the gift of ordination through the Lutheran Church, ELCA, and is now delighted to be serving in a Presbyterian setting. Emily is the author of ‘For All Who Hunger: Searching for Communion in a Shattered World,’ released in Spring, 2020, receiving starred reviews from Kirkus Reviews, Booklist, and Publishers Weekly. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Baltimore Banner, the Christian Century, and the Hopkins Review.

Martha Smith is the office administrator, the “go to” person keeping track of the church calendar, building space scheduling, in addition to assembling the Sunday Bulletin and Inkling Newsletter.

A member of First Presbyterian Church of New Haven since 2001, she has served on Session and enjoys singing in the choir.

Patrick McCreless is Organist and Director of Music at First Presbyterian Church of New Haven, where he has served since 1999. As Professor Emeritus of Music Theory at Yale University, Pat taught music theory in the Department of Music, of which he was Chair in the years 2001-2007. He holds a Master of Music in Music Theory from the University of Michigan, and the Ph.D. in Music Theory from the Eastman School of Music of the University of Rochester. Before coming to Yale in 1998, he taught for fifteen years at the University of Texas at Austin, where he was Associate Director of the School of Music, and five years before that at the Eastman School of Music. As a scholar, he has published on a wide range of musical topics—the music of Schubert, Wagner, Elgar, Nielsen and Shostakovich; the history of music theory; music performance and analysis; and music and rhetoric. In recent years he has lectured on these topics in Spain, Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark, Russia, Brazil, and China, as well as in the US. He also holds church music and congregational song dear to his heart. He delights in choir leadership, and always welcomes new singers!