ICMA and NAMMA: Strengthening a Partnership for Seafarers

The longstanding relationship between the International Christian Maritime Association (ICMA) and the North American Maritime Ministry Association (NAMMA) was strongly represented at this year’s NAMMA Conference in Philadelphia (4-5 August 2026), bringing together maritime ministry and seafarer welfare leaders from North America and beyond.

ICMA’s presence was particularly evident in an address by the Rev’d Mark Nestlehutt, Chair of ICMA’s Board of Trustees, who brought greetings from the Association and reflected on the deep historical and practical links between ICMA and NAMMA.

Taking up the conference theme, “Windows to the World”, Nestlehutt placed the relationship between the two associations in a much longer historical context. NAMMA’s roots predate ICMA by more than three decades, while ICMA was established at a meeting in Rotterdam in 1969. The connection, however, goes considerably deeper than age or organisational history.

“NAMMA was the model for the creation of ICMA,” Nestlehutt told delegates. He explained how European seafarers’ ministers who had served in the United States experienced the North American model of ecumenical cooperation and later asked why the same approach could not work internationally. That experience helped lay the foundations for ICMA.

Nestlehutt described the connection in memorable terms: “When we talk about NAMMA being ICMA’s DNA,” he said, the relationship is not simply about shared leadership or the memorandum of understanding between the organisations. “The DNA dates back to the very creation of ICMA.”

That shared DNA is above all rooted in ecumenism and cooperation. Nestlehutt recalled that ICMA’s formation in 1969 brought Christian traditions together in a way that allowed seafarer ministry to become more fully ecumenical. It was, he said, a model “predicated on collaboration”, rather than denominations competing with one another. The shared focus increasingly became the immediate welfare and social needs of seafarers arriving in ports.

This commitment remains central to ICMA today. As Nestlehutt observed, cooperation enables members “to work together and to respect one another in the work that we do and realise that we’re stronger in those partnerships”, whether serving seafarers, mariners, fishers or, in the inclusive language he used, “the people of the sea”.

The conference itself offered a visible example of that breadth of partnership. Alongside NAMMA’s President, who serves among ICMA’s Trustees, participants included the Secretary General of The Mission to Seafarers and representatives connected with the Danish Seamen’s Mission, the Naval & Military Bible Society and the Seamen’s Christian Friend Society, as well as other North American representatives of societies belonging to the wider ICMA family.

ICMA’s relationship with NAMMA was also recognised beyond the Christian maritime welfare community. A video message from the Secretary-General of the International Maritime Organization acknowledged ICMA and NAMMA, as ICMA’s regional member in North America. The message provided an important reminder that cooperation among ICMA members is connected to a wider international effort to ensure that the welfare and rights of seafarers remain visible within the global maritime sector.

Nestlehutt developed that international perspective through the conference theme. Seafarer welfare organisations in different countries are not simply doing similar work, he suggested. They are serving the very same people.

“Many of us are working and serving the exact same seafarers,” he said, pointing out that a seafarer encountered in New York or Philadelphia may later arrive in Europe, Asia or another part of the world where another ICMA member is waiting. This creates the possibility of what he described as “continuity of care”.

When concerns arise about a seafarer, relationships between organisations and ports can allow colleagues elsewhere to be alerted appropriately, without sharing confidential information. For Nestlehutt, such cooperation has a simple objective: “to make sure that we’re always trying to make a seafarer’s life better for our having been a part of it, ever how briefly that might have been in that moment.”

A practical example came from ICMA and NAMMA’s shared work in training. Nestlehutt recounted how learning at a NAMMA School in Houston later helped colleagues respond to seafarers aboard a detained tanker in Sweden. Knowledge and contacts developed in North America were carried across the Atlantic and applied to a real welfare challenge thousands of miles away.

“That’s what it means when we work together and try and advocate for the needs of seafarers, regardless of what port they’re in around the globe,” Nestlehutt said. “It’s the way we can strengthen our work together by doing these things in partnership and in tandem, and not looking to compete with one another.”

That partnership extends from training to international advocacy. ICMA maintains NGO delegations at both the International Labour Organization in Geneva and the International Maritime Organization in London. Nestlehutt emphasised that this representation gives ICMA a voice in international forums where systemic problems affecting seafarers can be addressed. Individual chaplains and welfare workers can make an immediate difference to a seafarer or crew, he observed, but repeated problems across ships require action at another level.

“If we hear time and time again that the same seafarer or crews of multiple ships are having the same problem, we know that it’s a systemic issue,” he said, “and we can only address systemic issues at the IMO and the ILO, and that’s why it’s so important that we have our voice at these international bodies.”