wfn.org | United Methodist coordinating Nepal study

[NewsDesk <NewsDesk@UMCOM.UMC.ORG>]

May 13 1999 News media contact: Linda Bloom*(212) 870-3803*New York
10-21-33-71B{273}

NEW YORK (UMNS) - A United Methodist missionary who has a long association
with Nepal is coordinating a study of Christians in the Southern Asian
country.

Norma Kehrberg, who led the United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR)
from 1984 to 1991, discussed the study during a May 12 briefing at the
United Methodist Board of Global Ministries. Kehrberg is a board missionary
on special assignment.

She and eight interviewers conducted 530 conversations with Christians
throughout Nepal during a seven-month period last year. The results will be
published in a document, currently titled The Cross in the Land of the
Khukri, which she hopes will be available by Jan. 1.

Nestled between Chinese-occupied Tibet and India, Nepal has been in the news
recently after the discovery of the frozen body of an early explorer at Mt.
Everest. Nepal is the only official Hindu country in the world, according to
Kehrberg, who noted that "up until 1990, it was against the law to change
your religion."

But that law did not stop Christians from beginning work in Nepal. In the
mid-1950s, Robert Fleming, an ornithologist and science teacher serving as a
Methodist missionary in India, requested permission from the king of Nepal
to study the birds there. Permission was granted and Fleming, accompanied by
a Presbyterian medical doctor, spent several months trekking in the middle
Himalayas.

On a second journey, his wife, Bethel, a Methodist missionary doctor,
accompanied him. During both expeditions, the doctors treated local people
along the walking trails. Because of that assistance, the king asked Bishop
Waskom Pickett, head of the Methodist Church in India, to begin medical work
among women in the Kathmandu Valley.

Picket made the mission an ecumenical effort, bringing eight groups together
to form the United Mission to Nepal. Currently, the organization includes 39
mission groups from 16 countries and works under agreements with the Hindu
government in the areas of health, education and rural and industrial
development.

During the same period of Fleming's visits, a group of Indian citizens of
Nepalese descent decided to share the Gospel in Nepal. Because of
persecution problems, the church had a low profile. Although no statistics
were kept, Kehrberg said it was estimated that about 200 Christians were in
Nepal when she first arrived there as a missionary in 1968.

By 1990, when Nepal's government became democratic, the country had an
estimated 50,000 baptized Christians, and the church's visibility increased.
"After democracy came, it was even possible to hold public demonstrations,"
she explained.

The past decade has brought enormous social change to Nepal as well as rapid
church growth, Kehrberg said. Some estimates place the number of Christians
at 400,000, or 2 percent of the population.

The United Methodist Board of Global Ministries helped fund the study, which
was designed with the assistance of the Rev. Rajendra Rongong and the Rev.
Ramesh Kahtry, the Nepalese pastors serving as advisers.

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