LMC’s Mission for Many Languages~Nepali

Bhutanese Nepali Church of Lancaster

by Deepak Rai

Bhutanese Nepali Church, Lancaster (BNCL) started as a house fellowship during early refugee settlements from Nepal in 2009. BNCL received official recognition on January 1, 2010. Believers began to meet for worship services at West End Mennonite Church in downtown Lancaster. The church is grateful and blessed to proclaim the powerful Word of God in the Nepali language over the last 11 years. Deepak Rai is the lead pastor of BNCL, and his vision for the church is “Church should be a missional body of Christ.” BNCL leadership team is mostly a younger generation who received Christ as Savior after coming to the USA. Working with both the young generation and an older generation combines God’s gifts to accomplish the great commission. 

Pastor Deepak Rai performs a baptism at the Bhutanese Nepali Church of Lancaster.

BNCL’s mission is to reach out to the Nepali community, families, and friends to share God’s love and freedom in Christ. Support, counsel, and prayer for each other are customary practices in BNCL. The Church gathers every Sunday afternoon for prayer and fellowship on Zoom on Wednesday evenings. Youth have a service on Friday evenings. A Mother’s service and house fellowship occur on Saturday evenings. Older generation believers support, advise and pray every day. BNCL is part of the West End Network of churches, and it holds membership with the Bhutanese Nepali Churches of America (BNCA), which comprises 13 Youth Unity Fellowships from neighboring Nepali churches in the northeast USA who meet quarterly. Please continue to pray for the BNCL church and its growth.

The Nepali Language
Nepali, an Indo-Aryan language, is the official language of Nepal and one of the 22 recognized languages of India. Smaller Nepali speaking communities exist in Bhutan, Brunei, and Myanmar. About 25% of the people in Bhutan speak Nepali. Nepali is spoken by more than 17 million people around the world. In Bhutan, native Nepali speakers, also known as Lhotshampa, make up about a third of the population. This number includes displaced Bhutanese refugees.

Historically, the language was called Khas Speech, spoken by the Khas people of southern Asia and also called Gorkhali, which was the language of the Gorkha Kingdom, located in what is today western Nepal. Nepali uses the Hindi alphabet for the written form of the language.

Translate »