CALMS became involved in Guatemala in 2005 when the Lutheran Church in Guatemala (ILG) invited the organization to help expand their human care ministries. Today CALMS helps individual Lutheran congregations through its growing housing ministry that provides low-cost housing for Lutheran and other needy families.
To date, CALMS has helped build two dozen houses and plans to build an additional 108 in the next three years. CALMS' vision is to help the Guatemala partners build not just individual houses but communities of faith. The vision includes using home-building as a strategy to plant new churches in cities where the church has not worked previously.
CALMS has also helped establish a new medical mission for the Lake Amatitlan area (30 km from Guatemala City) working with Dr. Elry Orozco, a Lutheran physician with many years of medical and development experience and in cooperation with his home congregation, "Castillo Fuerte" (Mighty Fortress) Lutheran Church in Guatemala City.
CALMS sends short-term teams from North America who help with both the housing and medical ministries. CALMS volunteers and teams also regularly assist Guatemalan Lutheran congregations with seminars and capacity building projects.
The Beginnings of the Lutheran Church in Guatemala
The Lutheran Church first came to Guatemala with German immigrants in the 1800's. The number of Germans grew as their home country developed a thriving coffee exportation business. As more and more Germans arrived in Guatemala, churches began to be established, served by pastors from Germany. The Germans also maintained their culture in their new land. They spoke German, had their own German clubs and societies, and sent their children to German schools. It was the Germans who established Guatemala's first brewery.
Changes in the World Bring Changes to the Lutheran Church
World War II changed all of that. The Guatemala government seized the land held by German nationals and companies and deported all German adult males. The men had the choice of going to detention camps in the United States or returning to war-torn Germany. That included not only husbands, fathers, and older brothers, but the pastors as well. Once the war ended, many of the men returned to their families in Guatemala. Faced with a church without pastors, they suggested a new idea: Why not look for pastors in the United States to come and shepherd them? This idea came to them since many of the men who went to the United States during World War One were held in detention camps where they were served by pastors of Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (LCMS) who acted as their chaplains. Even in the 1940's, many LCMS pastors spoke German.
Soon an LCMS missionary was assigned to minister to the Lutherans in Guatemala and the Cristo Rey congregation was established in Guatemala City.
Expansion and even more changes
It wasn't long before the Lutheran missionary pastors were at work in other parts of Guatemala. A congregation was established in Zacapa, a major crossroad for Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. In the coastal port of Puerto Barrios, another congregation was born among Jamaican immigrants and other English-speaking residents. Later, the church began ministering to some of the various indigenous cultures in the country.
The Lutheran Church in Guatemala Today
The Lutheran Church in Guatemala has congregations in about 17 locations, including many larger cities and small country villages. Germans, Ladinos, Garifuna, Mayan, and recent immigrants make up the face of Guatemala Lutheranism today. Today there are no LCMS missionaries left in Guatemala and all congregations are served by national pastors and by pastors from the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Brazil(IELB).
The Lutheran Hour in Guatemala
The Lutheran Hour is the evangelistic arm of the Lutheran Church in Guatemala, where it is known as Christ for all the Nations (CPTLN). CPTLN has a popular media ministry, correspondence Bible studies, and outreach to youth in local schools called "Project Joel."
