Lutheran Bishop in L.A. Announces Resignation : Ministry: J. Roger Anderson will become pastor of a church in Sun City West, Ariz.

Lutheran Bishop J. Roger Anderson of Los Angeles, who has overseen more than 150 churches in a five-county synod since 1988, has announced his resignation to become pastor of a church in an Arizona retirement community.

Anderson, 58, who lives in Thousand Oaks, was the first Los Angeles-based bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, the nation’s largest Lutheran body formed from the merger of three denominations in 1987.

Anderson would have been up for reelection next June, but he recently announced that he wanted to return to parish ministry in Sun City West, Ariz.

“The call from the congregation came as a complete surprise,” said Anderson, whose resignation is effective Sept. 1.

“But, in the back of my mind, I’ve wanted to return to parish work for the last five or six years of my ministry.”

The Church Council of the Southern California (West) Synod will meet this weekend to appoint an interim bishop and decide whether to elect a new bishop at a special assembly in the fall or wait until the regular meeting next year, said Barbara Price, an assistant to the bishop.

The synod embraces 155 congregations and nearly 60,000 members in Los Angeles, Ventura, Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo and Kern counties.

With Roman Catholic Cardinal Roger M. Mahony and Episcopal Bishop Frederick Borsch, Anderson in November signed a covenant of mutual support involving the three church bodies in the Southern California area.