When Ujjwal Rai was growing up in Nepal, it was one of the poorest countries in Asia. It still is.
Rai’s dad did what he could to get ahead and provide for his family both financially and spiritually—he worked hard at his business and at being a good Hindu.
“He would do anything possible to get salvation,” Rai said. When Rai was 9 years old, his dad found out his mom had been secretly reading a Bible she’d gotten from the neighbor.
Initially upset, Rai’s father eventually tried reading the Bible himself. Both parents became Christians, and the family joined the neighbor’s church—a Presbyterian congregation planted by Korean missionary Abraham Chae and his family.
Grace and Ujjwal Rai / Courtesy of Ujj Rai’s Facebook page
Nine-year-old Rai converted to Christianity too. He loved ministry, and when he was old enough, he enrolled in Presbyterian Theological Seminary in India, where he majored in theology and accounting. After college, he started helping his father with church planting and microfinance in Nepal.
“The theory was if we could through microfinance make some resources available to the Dalit [outcast class] parents, they could have some extra money to send their kids to school,” Rai said. It worked well enough to catch the attention of community leaders, who slandered Rai in the newspaper, then beat him, then burned his hand.
In 2014, Rai moved to the United States as a refugee.
Before long, he was chasing the American dream with the same energy his dad used to chase salvation. Rai got an MBA from Utica University, then enrolled at Harvard University for a second master’s degree. He and his wife, Grace, started a grocery store, launched a tax preparation company, and developed an app for farmers, cooks, and consumers to connect.
Ujj and Grace as children / Courtesy of Ujj Rai
“It’s interesting how much the capitalism gets you,” he said. “The gravity of it is hard to fathom. You are on a treadmill of working hard and getting more.”
And then, a few months ago, Rai and his wife switched directions entirely. Rai sold the app, but he isn’t using the proceeds to start a new business—or even a social ministry. He and Grace are using it to help plant healthy Christ-centered churches in Nepal.
“I really do care about social issues,” Rai said. “But I’m seeing a priority needs to be set. The gospel is the solution to all human problems. All our problems are the result of sin. That only gets healed through the grace of Christ through the Holy Spirit.”
The Gospel Coalition asked Rai what prompted him to give up on the American dream, why his parents don’t like his suburban life, and what it’s like to plant churches in Nepal.
You were a poster child for the American dream—a kid from a developing country who worked hard, went to school, and was financially successful. Why did you stop chasing that?
I started in America with nothing—I was working 18 hours a day at a gas station. My priorities quickly changed. I stopped talking about ministry and was working as many hours as I could for the next thing on my list—a car, a house in the suburbs, my savings account, stocks.
I think I was trying to prove my worth—that’s the feeling the American dream feeds into. That clicks super quick with first-generation immigrants. I’m like “Let me prove myself.” And American capitalism is like “Yeah, brother. You can do it. Keep pushing yourself. You can work 7 days a week, 18 hours a day!”
And you don’t feel bad because hard work isn’t morally wrong. In fact, it feels morally right—I’m working hard. I’m not stealing from anyone. I’m not living off the government. This legalistic righteousness builds up. And you think, Why do I need to be in ministry? If I earn money, I can give $300 to three pastors who can do 10 times more ministry work than I can. That’s fantastic logic if you think about it without prayer and a personal relationship with Christ.
After a while, I started to feel conviction from the Holy Spirit poking me. My wife and I fasted and prayed and decided to sell my start-up to finance church planting. But I didn’t feel peace. In fact, I felt fear.
When I told that to my Harvard chaplain, she asked me, “How is your relationship with Christ?” It was like a slap in the face, because my relationship wasn’t good. I had gone from relying on myself to achieve the American dream to relying on myself to build a ministry. Either way, Christ was not at the center.
I was thinking about it as a transaction, but our primary call is to know Christ, to have a relationship with him. So I shifted into the ordinary means of grace, including praying more, reading more in the Bible, and starting to preach at church. I also started journaling.
And now I don’t feel conviction or fear, but joy. It’s not the joy of getting your start-up funded, which is temporary, but a joy that transcends fear.
The American dream was attractive to you, but not to your parents, who still live in Nepal. What did they think when they came to visit you?
My parents visited last year, but they didn’t like it at all. When you’re in Nepal, you wake up and go to your neighbor’s place to chat. Then you go to the tea shop to chat. If you’re in ministry, you’re always intentional about looking for opportunities to share the gospel in those conversations.
When my parents were in the United States, they asked, “Who is your neighbor?”
I’m like “I don’t know.”
“You don’t go to your neighbor’s?”
“Nope.”
My wife and I are really busy. She runs her own tax company, and I was working on my start-up and finishing Harvard. It was hard for us to even gather around the table for dinner. My parents probably thought any efforts we had at ministry were doomed.
They probably did! I know they’ve been helpful to you as you begin to help plant churches in Nepal and India. How is that going?
Nepal and India are primarily Hindu, and it’s hard to be a Christian there. Our churches are small, and our pastors are bivocational. Right now we have three—a plumber, a schoolteacher, and a tuk-tuk (like a cab) driver. My father and father-in-law have both been in ministry a long time, and they are helpful in identifying potential church planters.
Ujj Rai (right) with friends doing evangelism in Nepal / Courtesy of Ujj Rai
One thing we struggle with is a demographic gap—because many men between the ages of 20 and 40 are moving to the Middle East to become migrant workers, they are missing from the church. There are a lot of challenges with this, especially if you’re complementarian.
Another challenge is buildings, which are important for us to have so that the church has some legitimacy and doesn’t come across as a cult. My wife, Grace, is in Nepal now, overseeing some church construction.
One joy has been the ability to do some microfinancing in the congregation. We don’t get the pastor involved, because we’d prefer for him to focus on his pastoral calling. So a committee of elders distributes microloans and the community provides accountability—if you took 300 rupees to buy a goat and now you aren’t taking care of your goat, they’ll know.
Church construction in Nepal / Courtesy of Ujj Rai
I am working to add accountability and structure to the whole effort. This year, we brought the church plants under the authority of our church, which is the Nepali Community Church in Utica, New York. I am also reaching out to people to mentor me, building a board, and working on having more legal structure.
I can see how the Spirit is changing me to rely less on my skill and more on God. For example, I’m helping a church in Nepal right now that was planted by a missionary 13 years ago. The missionary just left and the church doesn’t know what to do. If they would have come to me last year, I would’ve been like “Let’s come up with a strategy, build a framework, and find stakeholders.” But now I asked them, “Can we just pray for a couple of weeks about what God wants for this church in this season?”
I keep going back to the Heidelberg Catechism—I belong, body and soul, in life and in death, to Jesus. I am praying, “God, use me. But above all, let me grow in your grace.” That is the most important thing.
The Gospel Coalition