Western Christian missions’ influence on the public witness of the Nepali Church

The Nepali Church, with a rich history spanning 70 years, is the fruit of the tireless work of the Nepali Christians who joined the Western Christian missions when they came to Nepal in the 1950s. These partnerships emerged to ‘preach the gospel and build the global Church’. However, the missionaries found that they were unable to implement their mission of evangelism and Church planting, and instead, became involved in social development. While they focussed on social works, the Nepali Christians embraced the work of evangelism and built the Nepali Church. The divergence in mission objectives between the Western missionaries and the local Nepali Church led to separate implementation of the integral gospel. This research investigates how the separate modes and objectives of the Western Christian Missions and the local Church influenced the public Christian witness in society, and highlights the need for a meaningful partnership between the missions and the local Church in strengthening the public witness of the latter. It is an inter- and intra-disciplinary study, attending to the fields of history, development, mission studies, and ecumenical relations.