{"id":38817,"date":"2018-06-29T09:25:25","date_gmt":"2018-06-29T13:25:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/news\/?p=38817"},"modified":"2018-07-13T12:06:31","modified_gmt":"2018-07-13T16:06:31","slug":"shankar-rai-to-address-bhutanese-nepali-youth-at-national-convention","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/news\/2018\/shankar-rai-to-address-bhutanese-nepali-youth-at-national-convention\/","title":{"rendered":"Shankar Rai MDiv, MAOL &#8217;18 to address Bhutanese-Nepali youth at national convention"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Shankar Rai has a message for the youth of the Bhutanese-Nepali Churches of America (BNCA) this summer: Love God with all your heart and soul, yes \u2013 but also with your mind.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Rai graduated from Eastern Mennonite University this spring with <a href=\"https:\/\/emu.edu\/cjp\/grad\/dual-degrees\">a Master of Divinity degree and an MA in Organizational Leadership<\/a>, and is a featured speaker at the second BNCA Youth Summit July 5-7, 2018, in Lima, New York.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/bncayouth.org\/#about\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">BNCA Youth<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> was formally introduced at the BNCA National Summit in Houston in 2014. The organization seeks to grow \u201cpassion for Jesus while emphasizing Christian morality, intellectualism, and Christian holistic development\u201d in people in their 20s and 30s. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Approximately 90,000 Bhutanese refugees have resettled in the U.S. since 2008, including Rai in 2010. He has planted and pastored Bhutanese-Nepali churches in Baltimore, Maryland, and Harrisburg and Lancaster, Pennsylvania. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Addressing a younger gathering fits well with Rai\u2019s capstone integration project at EMU, titled \u201cPassing faith to the next generation,\u201d and will give him a chance to address a disparity within his community.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/news\/2018\/04\/capstone-integration-projects-eastern-mennonite-seminary-spring-2018\/\"><strong>Read about other Master of Divinity capstone projects.<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u201cI want to see balance,\u201d he said. \u201cOur people have big hearts for God, but how can we love God holistically \u2013 with our minds, too?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_38819\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-38819\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-38819 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/is\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/43\/2018\/06\/20180314-Shankar-Rai-003-1000px-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/43\/2018\/06\/20180314-Shankar-Rai-003-1000px-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/43\/2018\/06\/20180314-Shankar-Rai-003-1000px-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/43\/2018\/06\/20180314-Shankar-Rai-003-1000px.jpg 1000w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-38819\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Shankar Rai&#8217;s family came to Christianity as do many Bhutanese people, he said \u2013 as the result of a healing.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">As a child who lived from 1996-2004 in one of seven refugee camps for Bhutanese in eastern Nepal, Rai was a natural learner whose brothers were also top students. But in the Nepali-speaking world, he said, Christianity is at times looked down on as attracting less-educated people from lower castes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">His family came to Christianity as do many Bhutanese people, Rai said \u2013 as the result of a healing. His father, a truck driver, had become severely ill from food poisoning, a sickness that continued for nearly a year and that witch doctors as well as traditional and modern medical practitioners were unable to cure.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">However, Rai\u2019s grandmother heard \u201cthat if a Christian prays, people can get healed.\u201d A former leader of a Hindu sect, she challenged a Christian pastor in the neighborhood: \u201cCome and pray for my son. If my son gets healed, I will be a Christian.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">While full recovery would take another year, Rai said that after being prayed for, \u201cthe medicine started to work\u201d for his father \u2013 and his grandmother\u2019s family became the first in their village to be Christian, in 1993.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Healings such as these have resulted in what Rai describes as \u201cdeep passion of our people to love God,\u201d Rai said. But that means that \u201cmuch of our Christianity is more about early church experiences \u2013 such as of healing and speaking in tongues \u2013 rather than focusing on knowing God through scripture.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Now with his own seminary and university training, Rai hopes to help BNCA churches become sustainable for, and sustaining to, future generations of Bhutanese Americans. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u201cBNCA will be very different 20 years from now,\u201d he wrote. \u201cOur needs and challenges will change. Our vision and mission will be different. And our priorities will not be the same.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Shankar Rai has a message for the youth of the Bhutanese-Nepali Churches of America (BNCA) this summer: Love God with all your heart and soul, yes \u2013 but also with <a href=\"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/news\/2018\/shankar-rai-to-address-bhutanese-nepali-youth-at-national-convention\/\" target=\"_self\" class=\"more-link\">... read more <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">about Shankar Rai MDiv, MAOL &#8217;18 to address Bhutanese-Nepali youth at national convention<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":265,"featured_media":38818,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17562,8845,17594,265],"tags":[6795],"feature":[17427,17425,17426,17241],"class_list":["post-38817","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-digest","category-emu-at-lancaster","category-ma-in-organizational-leadership","category-seminary","tag-diversity","feature-emu-home-page-feature","feature-featured-seminary","feature-myemu-feature","feature-news-feature"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.6 - 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