“Converted in Nepal: Being Church,” part III
by Robert K. Martin
This is the third blog in a series I’ve called “Being church”. In this series I’ve tried to describe how church is actually a verb. When Christians gather together, we are not ‘church’ because we call ourselves a church or because we belong to a congregation or because we built a nice building with a steeple. We become church when we gather and live together in Christ-likeness. We become church as we bear-forth or incarnate the life and ministry of Jesus the Christ.
I’ll have more to say about what it means to be church in the next blog, but now I would like to move on to a description of a community in whom I experienced Christ and the Christian life more intensely, more intentionally, than anywhere else. Note especially how the Bishram community is made up of oppressed people who are reaching out to others who are oppressed. They sustain their communal life through fellowship, sharing whatever they have in common, giving to those who have need, reaching out to those beyond their community, and also through much prayer and study.
My encounter with Bishram Ministries in Nepal began vicariously a few years ago. My sister Patti had visited Nepal on a mission trip, worked with Sister Asangla and Pastor Dan of Bishram Ministries. She returned aglow with the radiant enthusiasm of a new convert. As she told me of their evangelistic ministry in Nepal, I tried to be an attentive brother to her, but truth be known I was rather dismissive of the whole thing. For one thing, Nepal is pretty far away from my daily concerns in Kansas City. And another, Patti and I are on different ends of the theological spectrum, and I was not too interested in her “brand” of evangelism. Proselytizing Hindus and Buddhists and converting them to Christianity is out of my spiritual comfort zone. Over the years, as she repeatedly asked me to travel with her to see Bishram ministry for myself, I politely but resolutely refused. After a while, however, my excuses were running out (especially since I was going to be on sabbatical for a year) and I finally said to her that I would need to hear about the ministry from someone more…well…more academically legitimate. Immediately, she replied that “Billy” “who taught somewhere in Dallas” could tell me about it. Well, the name “Billy” did not strike me as very authoritative, but I reluctantly agreed. Shortly, I received an email from Patti that was in effect a virtual handshake between “Billy” and myself. When I inspected the name on the email, it was none other than the respected theologian, William Abraham. Now, she had my attention.
Soon, Billy and I had a conversation about Bishram, and he convinced me that for many reasons I needed to go. So, I did in January 2008. And the rest of this story is about my experience of an amazing community that is the closest approximation of the early church in Acts chapter 2 that I have ever encountered. Do I now sound like a convert?
If I was going to go halfway around the world, I didn’t want to be just a spectator, so I offered to teach and preach as it would be useful to them. It was arranged for me to teach students in their school of ministry, to teach church leaders in a village, and then to preach whenever needed. I would arrive on Saturday, have Sunday to relax and recover from travel, then start teaching in the school of ministry on Monday. Patti would join us the following Thursday. Then we would travel to western Nepal so that Patti and I could teach in a 2 day conference.
Nepal is a study in stark contrasts. Fertile valleys and rich, biodiverse jungles stretch out between majestic peaks of the Himalayan range. Nepal is an ancient civilization and slowly making its way into the 21st Century. With 80% of Nepali people being Hindu, Nepal is the only official Hindu state in the world. 10% are Buddhist; 4% are Muslim; and Christians are lumped in the “other” category with less than 1%.
Nepali culture is as beautiful and attractive as the awe-inspiring natural environment. The people are gentle, friendly, and family-oriented. Everywhere you see people walking arm in arm, talking freely, smiling and laughing easily. Their hospitality is legendary; as a culture, they give freely of whatever they have.
However, Nepal is one of the poorest countries in the world that faces seemingly intractable obstacles. Their government is nearly incapacitated by incompetence, political infighting, insurgencies, and corruption. Fuel is scarce and only intermittently available. Electricity is on for a maximum of 16 hours a day. Maoist and Tarai factions extort money from people and businesses on a regular basis, and their political rallies can shut down whole sectors of the country. Nepali culture is highly stratified by a complicated and rigid caste system and an absolute hierarchy of men over women.
Sister Asangla, her family, and everyone in Bishram ministry were the Christian incarnation of that Nepali graciousness, attending to my every need. Without exaggeration, without hyperbole, the community of Bishram ministry is a communion that challenges what we have come to call “church” here in the US. Their faith is born and sustained in struggle, in lack, in suffering. They experience and witness to God’s miraculous and transformative power in very real and tangible ways. To be with them – even for a short while – is to be convicted of my (our) idolatrous need for material goods and financial security. They give sacrificially; whereas, for the most part we give out of our surplus. The grace by which they live day to day amidst hardship exposes the materialistic poverty of our faith. As I returned to the US, I left convicted of my many spiritual limitations.
What exactly is Bishram Ministries? I must confess it took me a while to understand it, to get the whole picture. Structurally, Bishram is centered in Kathmandu, the capitol city of about 800,000, and is founded and led by Sister Asangla and Pastor Dan, both of whom were working in different churches prior to founding Bishram in 2001. Their mission was to form disciples in a transformative community that is always in mission. As I have said, Nepali society is highly stratified between classes and genders. Sister Asangla and Pastor Dan (of Brahmin lineage) joined together to create a biblical community where there is no division in Christ, and that is exactly what they are doing. As I experienced their communal life in the school of ministry and during the conference, I saw men serving and women leading, and people from all castes joined together in a common life. What the Spirit has done through them is to transform small bits of Nepali society into egalitarian communions that aim to accept, nurture, and disciple each person in the community. It is truly humbling and inspiring to experience such a transformative communion, in which people’s lives are radically changed and through which the community becomes a ‘city on a hill’ that itself proclaims the gospel by the sacrificial love of one for another (John 17:21).
Right now, the central community in which Sister Asangla and Pastor Dan are the leaders is the mother church of a loosely structured Bishram organization. There are other smaller congregations in the Kathmandu area, and still more church communities that have been founded in villages and towns across Nepal. Over the few years since the founding of Bishram, the Bishram mother church has prepared and sent ministers to start new Christian communities, and these become ‘daughter’ churches. These daughter churches range from very small in number to 150 or so believers. Each of the congregations are unique, for each is a manifestation of the indigenous culture of their specific context. This is to say that Bishram does not try to duplicate itself; it doesn’t franchise itself. Rather, their intention is for the gospel to be planted within a particular community and for the church to emerge organically as a Christian incarnation of that culture.
The Bishram mother church is the hub of several important ministries. First, there is the school for ministry that Brother Temjen, Asangla’s very capable brother, directs. This is primarily a residential school that trains people to be leaders in existing churches or to start church communities in other areas. People who have the potential and the drive to serve the church in leadership are sent to live in the school for 2 – 3 years. Of course, these students are poor and have no livelihood while they are in school, so they must depend upon Bishram ministries to support them for all of their needs.
The school has an academic curriculum that itself is challenging and transformative for the students, many of whom have only minimum education when they arrive and very little if any theological training. But the school is a community in and of itself in which the students learn a very different, and more communal, way of life. They live together and share just about everything in common. They unlearn the oppressive divisions of caste and gender. They practice spiritual disciplines of study, prayer, and mission. Words fail to convey the intensity and transformative power of the school of ministry. I’ve seen the lives that have been radically changed: a drug addict who writes and performs Christian music that is used in many of the churches, an untouchable woman (the lowest caste) who has become a leader and teacher in a church. These are only two of many whose lives have been radically reoriented and redeemed, whose gifts and talents are now contributing to the church’s life and mission.
The school for ministry is like the heart of the Bishram organization for it takes in those whose lives seem to be depleted and used up. The school involves them in a redemptive community in which they discover their gifts and are given the skills to use their gifts effectively. They are equipped and sent out into the body of Christ to build it up, to edify it, to renew it.
A second focus of Bishram ministries is to administrate and develop the network of churches. Sister Asangla and Pastor Dan are in regular communication with the pastors and leaders of their daughter churches, in order to train them and to support them in any way they can. Bishram has developed a creative network of teachers who travel among Bishram churches and other churches to teach and encourage the people in their faith and daily life. Most of these pastors need supplemental income to survive, and the mother church supports them as much as possible. However, funds are very tight as you might imagine, so pastors and church planters have to be self-reliant as well.
Bishram has always been concerned with not only the spiritual but the material needs of people. The third aspect of their ministry is to cultivate external relations (e.g., other ministry organizations) to bring in medical missions and job training, for example.
These three forms of ministry are all evangelistic and missional; they are means of spreading and incarnating the Word of God. Because it is illegal to proselytize and to evangelize through mass media, the primary way that people hear the Word of God is for Christians to witness to them, personally, by word of mouth. So, the believers in Bishram churches share their faith, they share their experiences of God’s transforming power, they talk about the new way of life they find in Christ, and they invite others to experience it for themselves in worship services and bible studies. In this respect, each believer is cultivated to become an evangelist.
Bishram churches are like congregations, but I hesitate to call them congregations because to American ears that word may give a wrong impression. In America we have so compartmentalized our lives that we tend to think of congregations as institutions that exist side-by-side with other institutions and to which we dedicate part of our time. Because daily life is very difficult in Nepal, and Christianity is a very small minority, I cannot stress enough the life-giving nature of their Christian community, a communion in which they share a common life and share one another’s burdens, and lift each other up in love. Of course, there are degrees of involvement among the ‘believers’ and others who attend (they emphasize belief and discipleship rather than ‘membership’).
But it is important to get a sense for the intense and sustained life these people share with each other throughout the week. Obtaining basic necessities is a daily struggle, and most people endure great hardship and suffering. Because of grossly inadequate sanitary conditions, many are quite ill. There is an interdependence in the Bishram community that most Americans can scarcely imagine: they depend upon one another for their very lives. They are in small groups together and talking to one another throughout the week. In many respects, the Bishram churches are their life. For those who have converted from other religions and have been shunned by their families, the Bishram community has become their closest family and provides a life-line of survival.
Ok, I am a convert. This is the real deal. I have never encountered a Christian community that so closely approximates Acts chapter 2, in which an oppressed community gathers daily to break bread, shares their possessions, studies and prays, ministers in the marketplace, and rejoices in the gracious love of God who does great and awesome things among them. My experience with Bishram has profoundly affected me; I have returned a better disciple of Christ.
In the next blog, I will try to draw these three examples together and come up with some principles for what the church is and how we can be more fully the church.