Providentially, we feel God has us in a place where we need to be. The timing seems to be correct. As the pandemic rages outside, I continue to work from our single 10×13 apartment room in teaching Nepal’s teachers/professors at the MTh level. Now, I am partnering with a remote institution outside the valley. This program will produce a curriculum to be utilized all across Nepal online. The plan is to reach the villages and even those outside of Nepal for training pastors.
One of the biggest concerns in Nepal is that students come to the valley/capital only to never return to their villages. Even if they take online courses from the valley, the idea is to seek a chance to either do work in the valley with seemingly ever an eye ever to going outside of Nepal for work. Quality jobs here are hard to come by. Churches rarely can support a pastor full-time.
Few have the wherewithal to stay in the country or in the outer districts to develop Nepal from the village areas which seems to be what would be best. Most wish to seek a chance to go outside and earn a living or degree to work out of Nepal and send funds home. Most students who can go abroad for studies also find work to send support back to Nepal. Those natives who work in other nations are the main backbone of the Nepali economy.
As I enter the fourth phase of our mission here, I have sought the opportunity to do what I began before coming to Asia. Our first was to get settled full-time in Nepal as I have made many visits since 2009. The second was to complete my Ph.D. Each of these have been completed.
The third phase remains ongoing. We have purchased land upon which to build where we can securely do ministry out of without fear of reprisals or persecution from landlords concerning about our activities. As we await a chance to build due to the present conditions of lockdown in Nepal during the pandemic, we are saving funds for the costs of construction and hope to begin in 2022. The fourth is to support the academic community here in teaching and producing content.
One way to succeed in this fourth phase is to find a way to support work where others dare to tread and help the less fortunate as I once worked in rural America. The other is to bring excellence to such places. I have found the quality of education here is lacking in considerable ways. Most of the materials are outdated and offer problematic views not at all helpful to the situation here at hand.
I discussed with a pastor back home when I first came to Nepal full-time as to what was the best way to minister here. He was a seasoned pastor who had travelled the globe doing crusades. His wisdom was keenly sought. The conclusion was training the local pastors to go into the remote areas already equipped with the languages and cultural backgrounds and do the bulk of the work.
There are over 125 languages in Nepal alone. Like the Apostle Paul working in Ephesus, it is best to send those out into the more remote landscape for the mission in the Laodiceas, Colossaes, etc. Furthermore, the valley is swelling with church plants. Nepal as a whole is as well.
The need is to train pastors who are presently unable to facilitate properly their churches due primarily to the lack of appropriate training. They can read the Bible but remain untrained in how to properly study it and ascertain the meaning behind the text. Correct application can thus be problematic. Many cults pouring out of South Korean proclaiming other “Christs” among American versions of Jehovah Witness and Mormonism only compound the issues further.
Without appropriate training in rightly dividing the truth, traditions are pitted against one another making discernment a hard chore for most. While often not practiced anywhere, it is said in many a master’s level biblical program, any pastor preparing a single weekly sermon should spend 18-20+ hours in preparation to rightly divide the word of truth. While this is the ideal, it rarely ever gets practiced. I can say I agree having my head in the Scriptures doing my research daily is a huge blessing of which I wish to pass along to others as much as possible. I can read passages much better once I spend ample time on understanding them using the tools and libraries I have accumulated down through the years and can pass on some of it to others.
Many are chosen as pastor in some villages simply because they are the main person who can read. The better qualified have left for greener pastures. Nepali language is quite a difficult language to learn to read and write. Even the institutions in the valley have now grown, with lots of natives who are no longer finding churches to pastor in the valley and subsequently have turned to the institutions for garnering teaching positions to make ends meet.
The problem then is materials from which to teach as much of it is copyrighted and hard to come by here. Amazon tried to ship to Nepal prior to the pandemic, but many found the orders were hard to get. Some simply never showed up. Nepali customs can be tricky.
Christian books and materials also are deemed worth making trouble over with the authorities who see it as a chance for graft amid foreign donations. Books never arrive. Most like myself live in a rented 10×13 apartment with their entire family and have little space for books. Even Kindle will not open many titles due to intellectual property rights.
Most of the literature is contextualized solely for a Western mindset. Already at a disadvantage when reading them with English as a second (or subsequent) language compounded by the biblical languages, the additional hampering of modern theological systems based on Western paradigms makes some natives feel as if they must surrender many of the Eastern ways to copy and replace Western waste over the top. It is somewhat analogous to formatting a hard drive from Linux to Windows and many free items must now be purchased at great cost. However, the Bible came from the East and living here one is much closer to the biblical worldview than often is allowed in many of these Western systems.
It has been stated that Nepal was one of the fastest-growing churches globally in recent surveys (prior to the pandemic), but the quality of pastors has not kept pace with the number of church plants. Through this mission, I can work unhindered, albeit locked down during the pandemic, using my laptop and all the skills and knowledge from my Ph.D. and previous years of service to create content to reach those who would not otherwise have access to such quality materials and learning. I am seeking to add content in Logos Bible Software to aid me in the research to update their current resources. Logos so far has not been a problem to open resources for the most part or being open upfront on which items cannot prior to purchasing.
Their curriculum was translated over 25 years ago from materials freely available at that time. No one knows even how old that material was at that time. One knows in academia how much can change in that time and much of the more recent research is out of reach here due to copyright issues. Plus, it needs to be revamped where an appropriate context can make it useful for the everyday person here who will come in from the fields and mountain terraces to take the courses each evening. Much of the manual labor has not changed here over many long centuries. Once I create the content, it can be freely translated and used all across the region of South Asia and even beyond.
We think this is all quite providential. As they prepare to send me all related data to update their existing platform, I will continue to complete the current Master’s Level course I am teaching. It concludes in the month of May. I tell everyone I am blessed.
I feel terrible and have deep sorrow for all those affected by the pandemic. At the same time, I see God’s hand of providence at work in throwing open doors even as he closes old ones to pioneer God’s plan to reach Nepal through its very own sons and daughters! I just received reports of a young pastor here who had just planted a church recently succumbing to the virus leaving behind a wife and two small children. Life here is intense amid a shortage of O2. The gov’t’s constant infighting has only exacerbated all issues.
Someone has recently graciously helped to upgrade my library in Logos for much better studies in the Hebrew Bible commonly known as the OT. I thank God for their timely gift! I do know in all my travels across the globe in missions, I find that a lack of understanding of the HB/OT leads to all sorts of errors in reading of the NT materials which leads to other problems in additional areas. Thus, it has become quite evident in my formal training that a lack of understanding in biblical theology has led to poor results in the fields of systematic or practical theology, especially in apologetics. I have always been drawn to this material since I took biblical courses from my Pentateuchal professor, Dr. Victor Paul Hamilton, who first opened the Scriptures to me academically in a way to begin seeing the Bible as one should and not as one wishes it to be.
I am trying to balance out the rest of my library for more biblical theology and NT studies. Doing my Ph.D. in the Pentateuch, I already had much in the HB. I have noticed it is far easier for me to teach courses related to the HB because I have invested much into it in my library while there are still some gaps. Logos makes researching from Nepal much easier to produce classes. One can see our YouTube channel for examples of what all we can achieve.
It is hoped from this we can develop programs from the simpler certificate level programs offering diplomas to eventually offering graduate level studies. I hope from this foundation, they will be able to better develop their own theology contextualized for life here in South Asia and point them toward eventually creating their own content with this as a model from which to build upon for future generations. They are seeking to begin English classes in 2023 and are in process of getting ATA accreditation which has been postponed due to the pandemic. By virtue of this project, all their current courses can receive significant upgrades and get translated with expansions into courses presently unavailable due to a lack of content.
To this end, I began working here as any would and have slowly evolved into more intricate ways to support the natives in allowing them to do more ministry. I find if I go and try to do what God has gifted them for, it produces limited results. If rather, I can empower them to use their gifts I feel it can yield far better results. I can give one poignant example.
Recently, one person asked me how I would teach the Pentateuch. They told me they thought the best way was Christ-centered preaching. Mostly, people here do not practice much critical thinking and rather like to have the content given to them which they can memorize, parrot on an exam, and regurgitate afterward. I told them I would rather teach the Pentateuch so one understood the Pentateuch in its own right.
With my students being Christian, the Christ-centered part would occur naturally or supernaturally by the Holy Spirit as a result–the fruit of my labor and theirs as students. I just need to faithfully teach it in its own right and let it stand for itself. My approach focuses on the treasuries waiting the diligent students such that any Christ-centered connection would come of its own accord without my assistance necessarily to give them some mantra in which to follow and hence teach others to recite without truly engaging the text for which God intended. Such knowledge is freedom.
Seeing the Pentateuch or any biblical text for what it is will open the more boring aspects into why all these strange passages take up so much of God’s Holy Writ. This approach will empower them to interact not only with the text but make it come alive for their audiences. Transformation will follow suit as this process occurs within the Holy Spirit’s working. Of course, having garnered this perspective, subsequent classes then can be very fruitful in seeing how the rest of the story unfolds later in the biblical revelation on into Church History and doctrines having first established these proper underlying principles in which to build this understanding on for a more sure foundation from which to see its infinite beauties hidden to those unfamiliar with what lies behind the original biblical narrative. God bless you all for your continued support of my family here to allow us to be here and offer them the support they need in these trying times!
