CALMS' involvement in Belize came about due to the interest of CALMS' board member, Susan Dick, who has led over a dozen mission trips to the country in the past six years and research done by CALMS' executive director, Reverend B. Steve Hughey.
Based on six separate research projects led by Hughey, CALMS has developed a number of partnerships with existing evangelical congregations and a number of institutions such as homes for the aged and hospitals.
The goal of CALMS' involvement in Belize is to help its partners develop healthier and growing churches/institutions and more effective leaders who can serve their congregations and institutions with greater capacity! For example, a recent CALMS' short-term team helped equip national workers from a variety of churches and from local public schools, prisons and the court system to provide more effective counseling to those they serve. Another group equipped a congregation to share the Good News more effectively with its community.
CALMS is looking for places and situations in Belize where Lutheran congregations might be established-especially where there are no existing churches. Our strategy is to begin first with small groups and to train leaders of small groups and then move to distance education supplemented by seminars led by qualified volunteers in order to equip national missionaries.
CALMS believes it should strengthen existing churches and institutions in Belize and learn from those who are already working in the country about the cultural realities before beginning to plant new churches. We also believe that should begin new work where we find accepting communities with no viable Christian witness.
During the past four years, CALMS has identified dozens of Lutheran groups working in the country on short-term assignments. Most work with existing Christian congregations. Almost none of them have any knowledge of the others who are also working in the country.
There are also a number of Lutheran universities working in Belize. Some of these include Concordia University in Wisconsin; Concordia University in Seward, Nebraska; and Concordia University in Austin, Texas. There is a great need to develop a way to help network these groups for more strategic effect. Since the Lutheran universities tell us that they are interested in doing more spiritual work with their Christian students when they are in the country for biology, ecology or nurses training, we want to work more closely with them to help provide opportunities for such ministry.
By offering strategic short-term projects, coordination and logistical support to these groups we believe that can help them while advancing our own long-term goals by directing their efforts in the proper sequence, and toward more strategic goals that hopefully will eventually lead to successful church planting.
In order to design more strategic projects and provide logistical support for short-term teams, CALMS has called a new missionary to serve in Belize. Peg Wolfram, who served for a number of years in Vietnam and Cambodia, will be serving as a CALMS' missionary in Belize beginning in September 2009.
As CALMS looks to the future, we are planning a "Belize Connection" in 2010 with Lutheran organizations and others that are interested in working with us and each other so that we can make a greater impact on Belizean society and specific people groups and communities. If you represent or know of organizations interested in being part of such a meeting, please contact CALMS at calmsdirector@calms.org.
