The Nepali Church, with a rich history spanning 70 years, is the fruit of the tireless work
of the Nepali Christians who joined the Western Christian missions when they came to Nepal in the
1950s. These partnerships emerged to ‘preach the gospel and build the global Church’. However,
the missionaries found that they were unable to implement their mission of evangelism and Church
planting, and instead, became involved in social development. While they focussed on social
works, the Nepali Christians embraced the work of evangelism and built the Nepali Church. The
divergence in mission objectives between the Western missionaries and the local Nepali Church
led to separate implementation of the integral gospel. This research investigates how the separate
modes and objectives of the Western Christian Missions and the local Church influenced the public
Christian witness in society, and highlights the need for a meaningful partnership between the
missions and the local Church in strengthening the public witness of the latter. It is an inter- and
intra-disciplinary study, attending to the fields of history, development, mission studies, and
ecumenical relations.