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Today, representatives of these 200 plus aggrieved churches announced today that they've gone off on their own and formed a new organization called the National Evangelical Association of Belize. Today, we reached out to the new association, and their President, Pastor Lance Lewis, was unable to give an interview. He did authorize Pastor Scott Stirm, the Vice President, to grant us comments, and he explained to us via phone what this new association means to the Church Community outside of Belize City:

Scott Stirm, VP - National Evangelical Association of Belize
"Well as we stated in our press release, there have been some difficulties with the (BAEC) Belize Association of Evangelical Churches which resulted in them sending a letter of suspension all national leaders. We pursued meeting together for two months - requesting a meeting and we were not able to get a meeting with them and so all of us have been working together on a new national plan for BAEC - all the nationwide chapters, all the nationwide leaders and what we have done is we've taken that plan and we've taken that constitution and that is our constitution. That's what we are stepping forward with. Nothing has changed for us. We had 36 different national executives in the BAEC and so 30 of us were suspended and so it's those 30 executives plus the 200 churches that we represent that have formed this new association and so again, we are staying positive and proactive. We want to do what God had called us to do in the nation and to be able to do that with a heard and spirit of unity and togetherness."

"The sudden situation is a done deal. The senator for the churches is supposed to represent all of the church and so it's not just representing the BAEC. Part of the difficulty that we had was that in the last nomination of senator from the Evangelical Association, that nomination took place with about 50 or 60 leaders coming together from all over the nation. This last nomination took place from 5 or 6 Belize City leaders and so that right there is the nature of the difficulty. The senator for the church represent the church as a whole and so we obviously will be pursuing relationship with that senator as representing the church. But can churches from Belize City push out 200 churches nationwide?"

Daniel Ortiz
"What if persons outside the church take the view that because this new association has been formed, there is a continuous rift that keep expanding and so there isn't total unity as you would want from all the churches within the Evangelical society?"

Scott Stirm, VP - National Evangelical Association of Belize
"Well obviously we pursue that. Again, we pursue a meeting to be able to sit down with the BAEC Belize City chapter for 2 months and they ignored us and so we felt that we were left with no other option."

Stirm made the point that the executive members of this new association will try to mend fences with the Belize Association of Evangelical Churches - which is basically now only the Belize City Chapter of the former membership. He told us that they await a meeting to try to find common ground once again.