When we stop to talk to someone on the street or in the shelters in Portland, Maine and introduce ourselves as street pastors, they ask "So, where is your church?" We tell them we are a walking ministry -- "the church is right here!" We bring compassion and communion to the street and the people there who feel estranged from traditional churches.
History
In the spring of 2006 two ordained, UCC pastors felt Spirit-driven to begin a ministry with the marginalized and homeless in downtown Portland, Maine. Our main focus was to learn how we could be pastors in this community, to remember the sacred in the midst of it all, and to decrease the imagined and real boundaries between those who have little materially and those who have much.