From Rice Paddy to Light on a Hilltop
In late 2007 when BCM Nepal director Rev. R. Vaidhya knelt with other ministry leaders and BCM president Marty Windle in a rice paddy outside Kathmandu to dedicate land for a church, there were many reasons this seemed humanly impossible. A landlocked country high in the Himalayan mountains, Nepal was perhaps most famed for possessing the planet’s tallest peak, Mount Everest. It was also the world’s only remaining Hindu state, a monarchy whose king was deemed the incarnation of a Hindu god. Preaching any other faith was against the law. Permission to build a church would be out of the question.
Then there were the necessary funds. Nepal’s remoteness and the difficulty in transporting materials up steep mountain roads made construction costs several times what they were down on neighboring India’s flat plains. If God wanted BCM Nepal to build a church, He would have to provide a miracle.
BCM’s ministry in Nepal had begun almost two decades earlier. The Nepalese monarchy could prohibit the overt preaching of Jesus Christ in their kingdom, but they could not seal its borders. India held any number of excellent Bible colleges where Nepalese Christian leaders traveled to study God’s Word. There they came in contact with BCM India’s exploding ministry of church planting and children’s outreach. By the early 1990s several Nepalese graduates of Indian Bible colleges (names withheld) had organized to form BCM Nepal. Sharing God’s Word was risky. Churches met in homes or the open air. One BCM ministry leader shares of his own visit to a Kathmandu house church when the police burst into the service. Arresting the pastor, they hauled him away.
“Don’t worry,” the church members assured the BCM ministry leader. “This happens all the time. He should be released by evening.”
Sure enough, the BCM ministry leader managed to track down the pastor that night. The police had warned him to do no further preaching of Christian beliefs, or they’d be back to arrest him again.
“What will you do?” the BCM ministry leader asked.
“The same as I have done,” the pastor replied. “Preach God’s Word.”
While proselytizing youth was also illegal, inviting neighborhood children to classes on morals and ethics was permissible. Through Christ’s parables like the Prodigal Son or biblical stories, children learned not only ethics, but of a Creator God who loved them enough to send a Savior. As children returned home to share stories they’d heard, curious parents came to see what was being taught. Some removed their children, but others returned for the worship services. By the time Rev. Vaidhya knelt with local and international leadership in that rice paddy, BCM Nepal’s five pastors along with many more volunteers were spearheading dozens of house worship services and children’s ministries in four districts of Nepal. To dedicate this land was an act of faith that one day the door would open to construct a public testimony of God’s church in their community, however impossible it now seemed.
Then the humanly impossible happened. In 2008, a ten-year Maoist insurgency ended with the abolishment of Nepal’s long-reigning monarchy. Under the new Communist coalition, the Hindu state was proclaimed a secular republic. While official restriction on religious freedoms remained, these were no longer being enforced. The door was now open to construct a church building.
Then another miracle. Through BCM’s first President’s Council in October, 2008, a gift was designated for church construction in Nepal. On November 29, 2009, more than 180 local believers joined BCM Nepal director R. Vaidhya, President Marty Windle, and an international leadership team to dedicate Milestone Church on the outskirts of Kathmandu, Nepal. The final construction did not end up in the rice paddy where the believers had originally planned, but atop a nearby hillside, placing the church building beyond reach of monsoon floods.
As BCM Nepal leaders sums it up: “A dream and prayer that began in the middle of a rice paddy is today a light on a hilltop.”
In 2009, more than five hundred new believers prayed to accept Christ through BCM Nepal ministry. The doors have opened wide for gospel preaching, youth and women’s outreaches, teacher training, and other ministries, and BCM Nepal leadership is taking full advantage of this new freedom. But there is still much need for prayer: pro-Hindu nationalists, including the deposed king, have been agitating violently for a return to a Hindu monarchy. Maoist insurgents in contrast are agitating for stronger communist control of the government. A new constitution has yet to ratify official freedom of religion in Nepal.
Please pray together with BCM Nepal leadership:
That whatever God permits in their nation’s future political landscape, they will remain faithful in boldly sharing the gospel.
That like their first church building, BCM Nepal will be a “light on a hilltop,” shining the radiance of Christ’s love into the heart of this Himalayan nation.
