Arbin Pokharel on Shepherd Leadership in the Nepali Reformed Churches
The Nepali Reformed Churches are learning about biblical ecclesiology and shepherd leadership to become more Christ-centered and to prepare for a potentially turbulent future. Churches around the world can apply this learning in their own contexts.
Arbin Pokharel was born Hindu, grew up in a Christian orphanage, studied in the U.S., taught at a seminary in India, and with his wife, Bimala Shrestha Pokharel, founded Cross-Way Church in Kathmandu, Nepal. Cross-Way is now the mother church of more than forty Nepali Reformed Churches congregations. Many NRC members and leaders are first-generation Christians who lack access to theological education. In this edited conversation, Arbin Pokharel discusses why biblical ecclesiology and shepherd leadership are crucial for Christ-centered ministry.
Can you give a brief history of Christianity in Nepal?
Nepal is a majority-Hindu country where Hinduism, Buddhism, and animism have coexisted peacefully for more than two thousand years. Over five decades in the 1700s, Catholic missionaries were allowed to build two churches in the Kathmandu Valley. But they were expelled in 1769 along with seventy baptized Christians. Just across the border in India, Christians prayed for nearly two hundred years that God would again open Nepal to the gospel.
In 1951, the government opened its borders to international Christians and organizations. They could build hospitals, start schools, and share their professional expertise in industrial and rural development—but they couldn’t proselytize. Missionaries on both sides of the India–Nepal border kept praying. The first Protestant church began in 1952 with twenty-five members. Since then, Nepali churches have seen the power of God advance the gospel through evangelism, charismatic healing, and other gifts through God’s Spirit. Christianity has grown rapidly despite poverty, persecution, and government oppositions.
How has Christianity changed in recent generations in Nepal?
Many people—especially those who’ve been marginalized—came to Christ through an experience of healing from spiritual oppression or physical illness. Others converted because of the caring they experienced from Christians. That is still true among evangelical, charismatic, Pentecostal, Reformed, and other Protestant churches. In the 1970s and 1980s, while Nepal was a monarchy, Christians were persecuted for not viewing the king as an incarnation of god. In fact, our pastor was forced to leave Nepal. Yet the church kept growing.
While I was abroad from 1992 to 2004, church growth exploded. Second-generation leaders were very strong in contrasting the church with Hindu society and culture, like “We don't do puja [devotional offerings at home and in temples]. We didn’t wear tikas [religious markings on forehead or body].” Now, in a third generation of church leaders, we're trying to say, “Okay, during persecution we had to identify ourselves, but let's not keep defining ourselves by who or what we are not and [what we] do not do.” In the NRC, we appreciate what we inherited. We focus on living as God’s people through hospitality, healing, prayer, and celebrative worship that includes lament.
Why did you choose to do your DMin thesis on Nepali church leadership?
In 2005, my wife and I founded Cross-Way Church. In 2007, she took ownership of a Christian coffeehouse, Higher Ground Café, which has become Higher Ground Nepal (HGN), a social enterprise with three businesses and a nonprofit wing that helps vulnerable women and children experience the love of Christ in their life situations. In 2007, I and others began planting churches. I also taught at Reformed and Presbyterian Seminary in Kathmandu and served as its board chair for seven years.
After fifteen years of wide exposure to Nepali churches, it was evident that an emphasis on evangelism, church growth, charismatic gifts, and traditional ways of leadership had increased the numbers of Christians and churches. But giving less attention to theological education or biblical forms of leadership kept the church from committing to sustained discipleship. Too often the church’s outreach has been limited to evangelism, seeking merely verbal response to acceptance of Christ.
In my 2020 Fuller Theological Seminary DMin thesis, “A Strategy for Equipping Pastoral Leaders of Nepali Reformed Churches,” I explained that churches have grown far and wide in Nepal, but the roots are shallow and the fruits of discipleship are scarce. Nepali churches need a foundation of Reformed biblical ecclesiology, shepherd leadership, intentional mentoring, and spiritual disciplines to strengthen discipleship and develop patient endurance for a potentially turbulent future.
Please describe Reformed biblical ecclesiology.
It is quite common to meet Nepali Christians who have come to faith because they or a family member has experienced healing. But churches are filled with disappointed people who lack the complete healing and miracles they desire. They keep going to church as a sort of insurance in case a family member becomes ill. Pastors have encouraged this miracles mindset to keep attendance and meet budget. But this faulty ecclesiology and this flawed leadership don’t align with God’s mission for the church.
Studying the Bible shows us that the triune God created the universe and everything in it so humans would recognize God’s image in each other as they relate to their creator God, to each other, and to the whole creation in right relationships. The Hebrew scriptures use the word shalom to describe these right relationships, which lead to universal flourishing, wholeness, justice, and joyful wonder.
God revealed through Jesus and the New Testament that Christ is Lord, and the church is his body, which mean churches must conform to Christ’s nature and character. Carefully designed churches visibly practice being the body of Christ. God calls us to worship to re-enact our identity. God sends us out to into the world to bring Jesus into every sector of life by living the gospel mission.
What has been the prevailing model of church leadership in Nepal?
The early missionaries trusted God to provide leadership to the sprouting young church without taking unnecessary control. They imprinted the church with a zeal for prayer, evangelism, and service leadership that inspires many leaders today. But most church leaders in the first two generations did not have a formal theological education. Biblical and theological studies were not available until the late 1980s. And limited resources made churches feel unable to invest in new and emerging leaders.
So Nepali church leadership was heavily influenced by the surrounding politics, religion, and culture, such as the caste system and class consciousness. After continuing to witness despite hardship and persecution, leaders often felt entitled to senior leadership honors and sustained church support. They appointed church leaders who were loyal to them and assigned important positions to family members rather than electing gifted leaders.
Foreign mission organizations often give more to churches that emphasize or claim persecution. Another influence on leadership is that the pastoral theology taught in training schools and seminaries is often a loosely contextualized version adopted from Western textbooks.
What is the shepherding model of ministry you describe in your thesis?
Church leadership should be like no other found in the world. I often ask students how we learn to lead. We discuss how our parents, teachers, neighbors, society, education system, politics—and, deep down, our own personality and ego—drive our leadership goals. Jesus was the prophet, priest, and king that God provided. Rather than self-aggrandizing, Jesus led as the Good Shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep. That is why church leaders need to reframe contextual frameworks for spirituality and leadership, shifting from person- and power-based authority to a more biblical model of shepherding.
True leaders are not distant or domineering. God’s shepherd leaders are called to lead in a way that people and creation may flourish to their fullest potential and bring honor to their King. This community is called to be hospitable to everyone within its reach for the sake of the gospel. Shepherd leaders depend on the Spirit and prioritize knowing people through relationships. The church learns through the reciprocal pattern of receiving and giving in relationships, from brokenness to healing, from joys and celebrations to worship.
What are the challenges to raising up biblical churches and shepherd leaders in Nepal?
From studying Nepali ecclesiology of nearly seventy-five years, it’s evident that God’s Spirit is alive and active in evangelism, healing, preaching, planting, and growing churches in Nepal. Our resilience as a church comes from being grounded in Christ, bearing his cross in the local context, and keeping the mission in focus. Church leaders need to be grounded in biblical ecclesiology in order to mobilize practice-based communities.
Most Christians in the NRC are recent converts, new in faith. Churches are vibrant, and people appreciate our teaching. There’s an eager desire to learn about Christian faith. But poverty, distance, and Nepal’s mountainous geography often prevent people from attending Bible college or seminary. And there hasn’t been a tradition of active listening and spiritual discipline. Both are necessary for mentoring leaders in local churches.
How do you make sure local church leaders are mentored?
My thesis project included writing a manual on mentoring for pastoral formation and running two sets of four-day trainings with pastors and church planters and another set with seminary faculty. After group mentoring was introduced to NRC pastors and leaders in 2017, many wept because of the opportunity to lay down their burdens and vent grievances. They requested to never gather together as leaders without such a session. We four Cross-Way pastors gathered wide input that helped us refine the training for use in national, regional, and local settings.
These experiences confirmed that people learn best through vulnerable relationships within a practicing community, where shared and evaluated experiences shape learning and provide motivation for transformation. Local pastors have committed to mentoring specific people according to agreed-on schedules.
How else do you equip pastors to do Christ-centered mentoring and ministry?
RPS curriculum now includes pastoral mentoring for formation and offers free lessons on its website. Through our Xway TV YouTube channel and Cross-Way partnership with Words of Hope broadcast ministry for radio and video lessons, we help subliterate people train up into pastors and nurture church communities.
Cross-Way hosts an annual worship renewal conference that engages people through interactive panel discussions and breakout sessions after plenary addresses. We encourage attendees to ask questions about what they should read, how to apply a gospel vision to their churches, what organizations they might partner with, and more. In conference worship services, people from different cultures and villages share their distinctive forms of dress, dance, and music.
Can you give examples of how mentoring takes place at Cross-Way Church?
Relationships are so important in Nepali culture. The gospel spreads through relationships, and we focus on relationships in mentoring. At Cross-Way, our whole church is divided into church districts and small-group home fellowships. When our four pastors meet with the twenty-five small group leaders, the small-group leaders take turns leading us all in edification and Bible study. They also receive coaching. Each small group is assigned a church plant to visit, connect with, and pray for.
Regarding worship, we’re very intentional to make sure the text and sermon relate to songs and other worship elements. On Monday, I give the text to the worship team. On Tuesday, they present a two-page worship plan to our church leaders and staff. We pray together while reading the text and plan, which helps us decide whether to change a song of response, choose the testimony that would be most helpful, or include a video clip from a worship conference we’ve hosted (or other testimony from that week).
We loosely follow the liturgical year so that the church is shaped after the life of Christ. During Lent, we fast, pray, and discuss how to follow Christ in his journey to the cross. Later we preach about living the resurrection, living the ascension, living the Holy Spirit. In our new sanctuary plan, we scrapped tiered seating. This makes it easier to participate in worship without having everything directed from the stage. Children and tweens stay in Saturday worship long enough to hear testimonies of healing before going to their own worship spaces. At around age 15, teens stay in worship with the adults. Everyone takes part in praying when we gather into small groups to pray for specific concerns during worship. And, of course, the spiritual-physical reality of being Christ’s body is beautifully visible in the church taking part in the Lord’s Supper.
LEARN MORE
Read some of Arbin Pokharel’s life story. He expands on his vision of the church in this excerpt from Cross-Way’s fifteenth-anniversary souvenir booklet. Learn more about renewing churches in various cultural contexts, such as among , Indigenous Christians in North America, and Roma Christians in Hungary.