An introduction to Latin America Mission Canada.
Who are we?
LAM Canada is in its 101st year of Christian ministry. From humble beginnings in 1921, the earliest missionaries saw themselves as servants of Christ ministering in often neglected and impoverished surroundings. In 2021 we celebrated the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Latin America Evangelization Crusade in Costa Rica in 1921 by Rev. Harry and Susan Beamish Strachan. They had been working as missionaries with Regions Beyond Missionary Society in the Argentinean pampas. Latin America Mission became the official name of the Mission in 1938 and the Latin America Mission (Canada) was incorporated in 1961. As a Canadian registered charity, we are blessed to celebrate 60 years of ministry and partnership with LAM USA, currently a ministry of the United World Mission in the USA.
In 1925, Toronto native Rev. William Thompson and his wife Pearl May were commissioned to go to Costa Rica as missionaries. It wasn’t long before many others followed suit. From Canada, we were a sending base for evangelists, medical professionals, and technicians. Our missionary family and ministries continued to grow. We continue to be devoted to equipping and empowering Canadians and Latin Americans to serve the church of Jesus Christ in Latin and in Anglo-America. Currently, 60 missionaries serve under LAM Canada in 11 countries: throughout North, Central and South America. In Latin America, our missionaries also reach indigenous or pre-Colombian era peoples. In Canada, we are engaged in evangelism, church planting, and bible training reaching out to Spanish and Portuguese speaking immigrants and temporary workers in the farming areas around the Greater Toronto Area. From Canada, we reach out to Portuguese speaking people in Europe and beyond through theological education online.
We remain faithful to the holistic understanding of the Christian mission as represented in the legacy and heritage of the Strachan family and of those who came after them. Their work is a powerful gospel testimony, a legacy we celebrate to this day! We run and support nearly 40 projects through our ministries in various community development initiatives. We prayerfully reflect on our growth and seek discernment of the Holy Spirit and in the study of Scriptures. We cannot work without a God-given vision to our ministries. We want to continue to reach out to this vast continent with the message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and serve the communities where He sends us in all their diversity, challenges, and beauty.
Our work is built on a holistic and biblical understanding of Mission. Partnerships are vital to the communities we serve.
What are our core values?
We are holistic, biblical, empowering, and involved in development. LAM (Can) is an evangelical community that, motivated by our love for the Lord Jesus Christ and in obedience to His commands, partners with Latin and Canadian churches, organizations and projects to strengthen the body of Christ and advance His kingdom in Latin America and beyond.
How do we work?
Where do we work?
LAM Works in several countries: Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Columbia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Peru, and Portugal.
Our Values:
Five distinctives of Latin America Mission.
1.Identification with the culture and the people.
Harry and Susan showed a deep sense of identification with the Latin American people and culture. The local newspaper was as important to them as their morning coffee, and they followed local politics avidly. They embraced local customs and concerns with genuine involvement and appreciation. At one point, early in his career, Harry came under the conviction that as a highland Scot, he was perceived by the Argentines to be aloof and disinterested in them. He made it a matter of earnest prayer, and the Lord gave him a warmth and empathy that changed the quality of his relationships. More important, this sense of Latin American identity re-quired them to know and understand thoroughly the local situation before embarking on any project-even an evangelistic campaign. Harry and Susan spent twelve full months, from January 1920to January 1921 (leaving their children with Christian friends in Kansas City), and traveled by ship, train, riverboat, bus, and frequently on horseback, getting to know intimately most of the countries of the continent before they felt free to establish their new mission.
This same characteristic caused them to place the headquarters in San Jose, Costa Rica, rather than in some city like Philadelphia or New York (both major areas of their economic support). In the campaigns he planned and conducted, Harry always insisted on securing an outstanding Latin American orator to be the crusade preacher and evangelist. His own role, he felt, should be backstage. In the next generation it was Kenneth Strachan who carried this principle to its fullest development in LAM, but it was the incarnational identification of his parents with the Latin American people and their culture that inspired him.
2. The priority of evangelization.
The mission was born in the heyday of Protestant liberalism in America. But Kenneth Strachan emphasized the evangelistic campaign ministry after his father's death by initiating the Evangelism-in-Depth movement, thereby giving maximum expression to his parents' priorities.
Grace, in whom so many of her father's genes were evident, who became the visionary of human development, emulating her mother, working among marginalized women but discovering that true and complete development must seek first to bring those in need to the feet of the Savior.
3. Compassionate response to human need.
Nothing illustrates this quality better than the reaction of the Strachan’s to the miserable street urchins they encountered in San Jose. Ragged, dirty, and sickly, the street children begged, occasionally worked at selling newspapers or shining shoes, and more frequently resorted to theft and violence to secure a living. Susan wanted to do something about it immediately. Harry reminded her-and she agreed with him-that God had led them to Costa Rica to start a ministry of campaign evangelism, and until the Lord should lead them explicitly in other directions, they must not allow themselves to get diverted from this purpose.
So they carried the burden in their hearts and frequently made it a matter of prayer until finally, after leading them through the experience of starting a hospital and understanding better the needs of the Costa Rican waifs, God opened the way to establish a Bible home for children.
This led to the present-day Roblealto Program of Child Welfare, which has become a model ministry of wide and varied outreach and an important part of Costa Rica's social structure.
It is not hard to find other illustrations of this readiness to respond to obvious needs. The bold inauguration of an urban hospital when there were yet no evangelical doctors available.
4. Willingness to break new ground is an essential characteristic of LAM since its earliest days.
"Is there a better way of doing it?" This is a question Harry Strachan must have asked himself frequently. He was certainly quick to experiment with different methods and venues, traveling local trains back and forth to give out tracts and a word of witness, converting a horse-drawn coach a bookmobile, using tents and theaters instead of church auditoriums for campaigns, promoting them with marimba concerts and musical bands.
Before the Bible institute that Harry dreamed about could get started, Susan was already asking herself, "Where are the young men who come as students going to find missionary-minded wives to share their ministry?" And so she began a simple training school for Christian girls that eventually became the Bible institute of evangelists and pastors Harry had envisioned. Their Christian peers credited them with being" one step ahead," and this is indeed apt for these missionary innovators.
5. Personal passion for Christ.
The goal in life for Harry and Susan was to love, obey, and exhibit the person and gospel message of their Lord. In the long run, nothing else mattered.
Harry's early participation in and identification with the American Keswick movement demonstrated this focus. The Keswick movement was a summer-conference outgrowth in Great Britain of the Moody-Sankey campaigns of 1875. It appealed especially to evangelicals of Reformed theological persuasion and had come to be characterized by disciplined piety and missionary zeal. It quickly spread to America and other parts of the world.
This summary of the principles seen in the lives of Harry and Susan Strachan are taken from an article published in International Bulletin of Missionary Research, 1998, “The Legacy of Harry and Susan Strachan,” W Dayton Roberts
Our Statement of Faith
We believe in one God, creator, and sustainer of the universe, who eternally exists in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
In 2021 we are celebrating the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Latin America Evangelization Crusade in Costa Rica in 1921 by Rev. Harry and Susan Beamish Strachan. They had been working as missionaries with Regions Beyond Missionary Society in the Argentinean pampas. Latin America Mission became the official name of the Mission in 1938 and the Latin America Mission (Canada) was incorporated in 1961. As a Canadian registered charity, we are blessed to celebrate 60 years of ministry and partnership with LAM USA, currently a ministry of the United World Mission in the USA.
In 1925, Toronto native Rev. William Thompson and his wife Pearl May were commissioned to go to Costa Rica as missionaries. It wasn’t long before many others followed suit: Dr. Marie Cameron, Don and Jean Longworth, Margaret Acheson, Nancy Koop, Eve Fowler, Hugh and Olive Worsfold, Gloria Amritt, Vicki Ricketts, Jim and Pat McInnes, and Esther Rowe. From Canada, we were a sending base for evangelists, medical professionals, and technicians.
Our missionary family and ministries continued to grow. We continue to be devoted to equipping and empowering Canadians and Latin Americans to serve the church of Jesus Christ in Latin and in Anglo-America. Currently, 60 missionaries serve under LAM Canada in 11 countries: throughout North, Central and South America. In Latin America, our missionaries also reach indigenous or pre-Colombian era peoples. In Canada, we are engaged in evangelism, church planting, and bible training reaching out to Spanish and Portuguese speaking immigrants and temporary workers in the farming areas around the Greater Toronto Area. From Canada, we reach out to Portuguese speaking people in Europe and beyond through theological education online.
We remain faithful to the holistic understanding of the Christian mission as represented in the legacy and heritage of the Strachan family and of those who came after them. Their work is a powerful gospel testimony, a legacy we celebrate to this day! We run and support nearly 40 projects through our ministries in various community development initiatives.
We prayerfully reflect on our growth and seek discernment of the Holy Spirit and in the study of Scriptures. We cannot work without a God-given vision to our ministries. We want to continue to reach out to this vast continent with the message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and serve the communities where He sends us in all their diversity, challenges, and beauty.
Our work is built on a holistic and biblical understanding of Mission. Partnerships are vital to the communities we serve.
Thank you for your continued financial and prayer support.
The historical records of the Latin America Mission are found at the Billy Graham Center Archives, https://www2.wheaton.edu/ under the heading, “Records of Latin America Mission - Collection 236”
Comunidad Educativa Evangelica (CEE)
Fundación Comunidad P.A.S.
Roblealto Child Care Association
Los Pinos Seminary
Walpayamni
The Latin America Mission (Canada) Code of Ethics: A Call to Excellence
As a spiritual leader in the Church and serving through the Latin America Mission (Canada), I am called to Kingdom excellence in my life and ministry. I recognize that this is not possible in my own strength but must be a by-product of the indwelling Spirit of the living God. It is in union with Christ that I am sanctified thoroughly; thereby, being separated from sin and the world and fully dedicated to God, receiving power for holy living and sacrificial and effective service toward the completion of Christ’s commission. This is accomplished through being filled with the Holy Spirit, which is both a distinct event and a progressive experience in the life of the believer (1 Thessalonians 5:23; Acts 1:8; Romans 12:1, 2; Galatians 5:16-25).
Believing this to be true, I dedicate myself to conduct my ministry in the power of the Holy Spirit according to the biblical principles and ethical guidelines set forth in this code of ethics, in order that my ministry be acceptable to God, my service beneficial to the Christian community, and my life a witness to the world. I recognize that the following standards are designed to preserve the dignity, maintain the discipline, and promote the integrity of my calling as a missionary and to be a sign of the coming Kingdom of God.
Code of Ethics for All Latin America Mission (Canada) Members
Biblical principles and ethical guidelines that are pertinent to the life and ministry of our LAM family include:
1. Christlikeness principle: As representatives of Jesus Christ, LAM (Canada) members are to demonstrate a commitment and lifestyle that models the servant-like attitude exemplified in the life of Jesus Christ in our relationship and the rendering of service to others. We commit to pursue in all areas of our lives a life of holiness, of grace and compassion towards others, and to live in the liberty of the perfect law (1 Corinthians 11:1; 1 Peter 2:19-21, James 1:25).
2. Relationship principle: Our Father in heaven is intensely relational. He invites His followers to walk with Him and know Him as “sons and daughters”. He also calls them to the highest of standards in their personal relationships with self, others, and the rest of Creation. Their identity in Christ is defined by the reality and visibility of their love. (Genesis 1:26; 2:18; Matthew 5:23-24; John 13:35, Philemon 8-9)
3. Modelling principle: A member’s private life is not exclusively his/her own. The Bible exhorts leaders to live lives that are above reproach (1 Timothy 3:2). A worker’s witness requires that both the local church and the watching world see the life of Christ, which they proclaim first manifest in the worker’s life.
Therefore:
a. I will limit my freedoms rather than weaken ministry (1 Corinthians 9:27).
b. Although Christians may hold different views on certain behaviours, I will avoid situations that are likely to have a negative spiritual impact on self or others (1 Corinthians 8:9).
c. I will always seek to conduct myself in a way that will not discredit or diminish the public’s trust in Christian leadership.
d. I will responsibly perform my ministry, seeking to lead persons to salvation and to church membership without manipulation and respecting the ministries of other churches and organizations.
e. I will refrain from the use of illegal substances, the recreational use of drugs, all kinds of addictive or dependent behaviour, and other self-destructive habits (1 Corinthians 3:16).
f. I will adhere to the biblical teaching with respect to the use of alcohol. The Bible does not condemn the use of alcohol. It condemns its abuse and elevates the principle of abstinence.
(Prov. 20:1, 23:29-31, 31:4; Rom. 12:8, 14:1-19, esp. v12, 17; 1 Corinthians 3:16).
4. Wellness principle: Godly leaders recognize the integrated nature of body, soul, and spirit and stay attuned to the balance required for effective service. They are to care for their bodies, souls, and spirits in a disciplined and God-honouring way (Psalm 139:13-16; Proverbs 3:1-2; 1 Corinthians 3:16-17; 6:19- 20; 9:2; 1 Thessalonians 5:23).
5. Servant principle: Scripture contrasts the acts of the flesh and the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:19- 25). The flesh is characterized by taking and consuming. The work of the Spirit is characterized by giving and producing. Lifestyle choices and attitudes are to reflect the heart of a servant, not an attitude of entitlement (Phil. 2:5-8).
Therefore:
a. I will seek to conduct myself consistently with my calling and commitment as a servant of God, maintaining a life of purity, integrity, and truthfulness.
b. I will give full service to my ministry and will only accept added responsibilities if they do not interfere with the overall effectiveness of my ministry.
c. I will listen to the needs of those I serve and keep in confidence information shared with me unless it will result in harm to self or harm to others, or as required by law.
d. I will exercise confidence in lay leaders by inviting their meaningful participation, enabling their training, and stimulating their creativity.
e. I will seek to lead the ministry for which I am responsible to achieve agreed-upon goals. I will remain open to constructive criticism and to suggestions intended to strengthen ministry.
f. I will exercise my teaching/preaching responsibilities, giving adequate time to prayer and preparation, so that my presentation will be biblically based, theologically correct, and clearly
communicated, speaking the truth of God's Word with conviction in love, and will acknowledge any extensive use of material prepared by someone else.
6. Stewardship principle: All Christians are entrusted with God’s gifts, resources, and Creation. Leaders are to set an example in the stewardship of such a trust (1 Peter 4:10; 1 Corinthians 9:17)
Therefore:
a. I will strive to grow through comprehensive reading and through participation in professional educational opportunities.
b. I will be honest and responsible in my finances by paying all debts on time, never seeking special gratuities or privileges, giving generously to worthwhile causes, and living a Christian lifestyle.
c. I will give tithes and offerings as a good steward and example to the church.
d. I will not engage in any business where I would actively solicit funds from the people to whom I minister. I will report to the LAM office all funds received in the capacity of an LAM worker.
7. Submission to authority principle: Submission to those in authority over believers is a clear biblical mandate. (Hebrews 13:17). Workers are to walk with humility and willingly submit to those in authority over them. An LAM missionary also accepts to work under the leadership and authority of the local church or ministry which he or she serves (Phil. 2:3)
8. Mediation principle: Disputes between members are to be settled within the context of the Mission, not the secular courts (Matthew 18:15-17, 1 Corinthians 6:1-7).
Therefore:
a. If I believe that I have been wrongly treated by a fellow LAM missionary, a local colleague, the Mission itself or a local partnering ministry and choose to seek redress, I will do so first by seeking mediation for resolving the dispute as outlined in Matthew, and, if it is not resolved I will follow the Process for Mediation as outlined in the Mission’s Handbook.
(Policy in process of development)
Source: Adapted with permission from the Christian Missionary Alliance, Canada.