Rev. Shane Andersen

Shane Andersen was born in Bath, England in 1949 with the name Kenneth Goodenough Jr. His mother and father, Kenneth Sr. and Lillian were involved with the religious organization the Salvation Army, and baptized their son into that faith. They continued their involvement with the Salvation Army when they moved to Australia when Shane was still a young child, and Shane became active within the Army's mission. As a teenager, he was involved not only with the Billy Graham Crusade, but also with his group's street-corner ministry, learning how to preach the Gospel to a wide variety of people. As time went on, Shane found himself being called to a life of further ministry of becoming an officer within the Salvation Army. At the same time Shane was beginning to recognize his feelings of attraction towards other men. When he confessed his homosexuality to his training officer, Shane was told that he homosexuality was sinful and that he would have to leave his training program if he wanted to express his orientation. Shane decided to leave, feeling like God and his church had both abandoned him. Moreover, he felt that God did not love him on account of his homosexuality, and the 21 year old Shane felt he had nowhere to go.

It was by curiosity in 1970 that Shane found the offices of CAMP (Campaign Against Moral Persecution) in Brisbane, which was a counseling and social center for LGBT people in the city. CAMP soon became Shane's community, when he began volunteering and soon enough started counseling others. Shane also took this opportunity to come out to his mother, who cautioned him to not tell his father because of his negative feelings on homosexuality. At the same time, issues of religion and God became less important to him as he focused his energies on working at CAMP.

This was short-lived, however. Shane was walking one day, when he happened to enter a Pentecostal Church. There, a woman he had never met found him and said that God had given her a message to tell him: to “Come back to me, as I have work for you to do.” After prayer, Shane decided to contact Peter Bonsall Boone, who was the leader of the gay Christian group Cross Section in Sydney. In his discussions with Boone, Shane resolved to start a Cross Section group in Brisbane. The group would be started in 1974, and even in its early life became started to make news in the city.

It was also in 1974 that CAMP asked Shane to be the leader in inviting and planning the speaking engagement of Troy Perry, the founder of the Metropolitan Community Church. Shane took this opportunity to shake up his city and advertised Perry's speaking engagement in a variety of media, including newspapers radio interviews and television spots. After Perry's event, Shane and Perry discussed Shane's Cross Section group joining the Metropolitan Community Church. Although Shane did not decide immediately, his group would eventually become MCC Brisbane. In 1975, Shane moved to Sydney in order to train under the Rev. Lee Carlton, and also became more involved in counseling and crisis prevention. He co-founded the MCC Crisis Intervention Centre and phone counseling service, along with serving as its director of training. He also worked as a counselor at Ted Noff's King Cross Wayside Chapel Crisis Center beginning in 1996.

Having worked for a majority of his ministry within counseling and crisis intervention, Shane began to include other interests into his ministry. Although he had been a photography hobbyist for most of his life, it was only in 1998 that he began his MCC Sydney Video and Photographic Ministry. This photography ministry became his main focus, along with occasional preaching. Part of his photography ministry led him to Bali and the Philippines in seven visits from 2004-2011, where he worked with MCC Philippines in flood relief while also giving workshops on photography. After working for MCC Sydney for several years, in 2009 Shane moved to Granville. In early 2010, he founded Outreach Ministries Church (OMC) along with his Assistant Pastor Rev. Chris Syamputra. OMC is an LGBT and human rights church fellowship that has become a member of Amnesty International Australia.

(This biographical statement provided by Shane Andersen, edited by Joel Layton.)

Biography Date: March, 2012; rev. Nov. 2022

“Shane Anderson was my pastor at Forest Park Church in Everett, Washington. I was part of the Lake Stevens Church plant. Pastor Shane was a huge driving force behind growing a membership, until he was taken from our Church, he was replaced with a pastor that didn't have the same hunger for the Church and we failed. I will always love Pastor Shane and what he did for us as our pastor.”
 – as remembered by Brenda Anderson on January 8, 2021

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