PLTS Alum: Maria Anderson '14

Article on recent PLTS alum Maria Anderson. Printed in New England Synod Newsletter and excerpted with permission.

By Andrew Merritt

It isn’t easy for Maria Anderson to explain what she’s doing in Portland, Maine. Brand new ideas are rarely easy to define.

“I’m working on a way to figure out how to describe what this is,” Anderson said. “Part of what I envision it to be is also a place for people who maybe don’t think they believe in God, but want to talk about or find a space with people who care about each other, and then together care about their community. It’s a community of faith, but there’s no prerequisite about what you believe or how you understand your faith in your life.

“That’s where it gets tricky and messy. I’ve been calling it an intentional community, that there will be some intention around their time together. It’s really meant to be a place to ask questions and dig deep, and get to know and support each other in ways, that it’s not about the group but about the larger community. Being important actors or parts of making Portland an even better city. Living the Gospel outside of that tiny community.”

That’s a good start. For a little more, we can look at a Mission Development Proposal.

“In New England, where 75 percent of the population does not attend church, the bishop’s staff has been exploring ways to reach out to spiritually curious but institutionally averse persons,” it reads. “2013 Bishop’s Convocation speaker Alan Roxburgh introduced the idea of Mission Communities (MC’s), which began in England in the 1990’s and expanded to the US shortly thereafter. In December 2013, Bishop Hazelwood met with his counterparts in the Episcopal Church, and learned of Bishop Stephen Lane’s interest. Pr. Tim Roser has been advocating for an experiment with MC’s for several years, and was the principal driver of conversations. St. Ansgar in Portland was identified as a partner due to Portland’s demographic of a young adult population, as well as their need for additional pastoral staff.”

In other words, a new community of faith is being planned in Portland, and it’s probably unlike any church you’ve seen. Rather than depend on a strict schedule of meeting every Sunday at a specific building, a Missional Community is designed to be “a flexible, local expression of church, not dependent on typical church buildings or church services.”

In Portland, that will mean a partnership between the synod, the Episcopal Diocese of Maine, and St. Ansgar Lutheran Church. Led by Rev. Anderson, who was called in October to develop and serve the community, the new Missional Community will be “a Christ-centered, relational-based ministry that seeks to invite millennials into an intentional community that seeks to develop relationships with one another, explore questions of faith and serve the community through outreach and justice related service,” said the Rev. Tim Roser, Associate to the Bishop for Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont and Upstate New York.

“It is another legitimate expression of a faith community that is centered in Christ without the agenda of funneling people into a traditional church setting,” he said. “Word and Sacrament will be an integral part of its identity and life.” 

…Portland is a place ripe for the development of a new kind of faith community – one that steps out of the church building and traditional church structure, and into something that meets the needs of the increasingly unchurched culture in the city.

“Portland has a great vibe as being a highly diverse micro-city with an incredible arts scene, residents who are passionate about social issues and a significant population of millennial adults,” Roser said.

A native of Lindstrom, Minn., Anderson graduated from Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary in 2014 with a master’s in divinity, and did her undergraduate work at Concordia College, where she majored in social work.

It’s at Concordia – and in the formative years after her graduation – that Anderson developed a passion for working with people. She also learned an important lesson while working with the Lutheran Volunteer Corps in California that sent her on a path slightly different from the one she thought she’d be on.

“I was going to be a social worker, wasn’t ever going to be a pastor. I was a case manager for people experiencing homelessness in Berkeley, and it was the juxtaposition of that role as gate keeper and rule enforcer, and then what was happening in my church community that helped me see the pastoral relationship is what I wanted, rather than a case worker relationship.”

Anderson said that while working a sign-in table at a woman’s shelter, she encountered a woman who didn’t want to work a chore in order to earn her lunch that day, which had been part of the agreement between the shelter and its clients.

“I had been such a pushover (about letting women skip chores), and this was the day I was not going to be a pushover,” Anderson said. “I just left feeling terrible, and the next Sunday I was the assisting minister at my church around the corner from my job, and I served her communion.

“In that moment, I felt forgiven for our prior interaction, and I realized that was the relationship I wanted.”

That experience can’t help but inform Anderson’s ministry going forward. The goal of the Portland Missional Community will be, ultimately, to bring the gifts of God to the people of God in a way that makes sense for them, rather than through a traditional, prescribed method. Anderson said the effort is so new, it’s hard to even say exactly how the group will meet once it starts to gather members.

“It’s like simultaneously equally terrifying and exciting and hopeful and thrilling,” she said. “It’s scary, but not debilitating scary. It’s that kind of fear that keeps you going. I’m always just reminded that there are prophets and people in the Bible who didn’t think they could do it, or they were scared, but they trusted God and they went for it, and it happened.”

“There’s a huge sense of faith and trust in God in this process, because it’s all about getting on board with what God is already doing in our community, not just doing something cool,” she said. “I see my role in some ways as being a kind of translator, or somebody who’s calling out where the Gospel is happening in our community.