Experience Church deploys real-time Nepali–English translation across its global staff communications

For Immediate Release

PUYALLUP, Wash. — Experience Church, a 36-year-old multisite congregation with campuses in South Hill/Puyallup, Washington; Surprise, Arizona; and Kathmandu, Nepal, has deployed an artificial-intelligence translation layer inside its internal Slack workspace, enabling staff and campus leaders to communicate in real time across a language barrier that has separated its American and Nepali teams since the Kathmandu campus began.

The integration translates automatically in both directions — English to Nepali and Nepali to English — and handles Nepali written in Devanagari script (नेपाली) as well as romanized Nepali typed on an English keyboard, a distinction that has broken most off-the-shelf translation tools. A team member in Kathmandu can now write the way they naturally text, and a pastor in Puyallup reads it in English seconds later.

"These are powerful tools that help us bridge the gap between the language barrier and what we want to accomplish," said Senior Pastor Dennis Cummins. "For the first time, I can communicate with all of my staff — every campus, every country — without language standing in the middle of it."

The deployment was led by Jake Crause, a key member of Experience Church who architected and implemented the integration.

"The goal was never to make people learn a new tool," said Crause. "It was to make the tool disappear. Our team in Kathmandu opens Slack and sees Nepali. Our team in Washington opens Slack and sees English. It's the same conversation."

In Kathmandu, the effect reaches past the staff room.

"This technology helps us invite people who don't speak English and connect them to the broader vision and heart of our pastor," said Pastor Sanjeev, campus pastor of Experience Church Kathmandu. "The vision no longer has to be translated twice before it reaches them."

Why it matters

A multisite church is only as connected as its slowest conversation.

Multisite ministry runs on daily communication — service planning, volunteer scheduling, pastoral care, crisis response. Until now, cross-border coordination at Experience Church depended on a small number of bilingual staff acting as human relays, which introduced delay, lost nuance, and a real ceiling on how much the Kathmandu campus could participate in the life of the wider church. Removing that bottleneck does not just speed things up; it changes who is able to be in the room.

Nepal is one of the most linguistically complex nations on earth.

Nepal's most recent census documented 123 living languages across four language families in a country smaller than Florida, with Nepali serving as the common tongue for roughly 32 million speakers worldwide. Ministry in that environment has historically required either extensive translation infrastructure or a decision to simply operate in separate silos. Experience Church has chosen a third path.

The theology is older than the technology.

Long before it was a technical problem, this was a biblical one. At Pentecost, the defining wonder was not that the crowd learned a new language but that each person heard the gospel in their own. The church's mission has always run through the mother tongue.

"We didn't add a translation tool because it was impressive," Cummins added. "We added it because a leader in Kathmandu should never have to wait in line behind English to be heard."

It sets a template other churches can copy.

Global and multinational campuses are no longer rare among growing U.S. congregations, but internal communications tooling has lagged well behind streaming and giving technology. Experience Church's implementation demonstrates that a mid-sized congregation — without an enterprise IT department — can solve the problem with existing platforms and a capable volunteer.

What's next

The translation rollout arrives during the church's most active season of expansion. Experience Church opens its newest campus in Surprise, Arizona with a grand opening on October 4, following a September 27 preview service, and the same infrastructure that connects Kathmandu to Washington now connects Surprise to both. A campus launching this fall is plugged into a staff conversation that spans three sites and two continents from its first Sunday.

Experience Church also plans to extend the translation capability into volunteer team channels and campus-level coordination, and is evaluating how the approach could support its ongoing work in Nepal, including the Hearts for Nepal Foundation, which serves vulnerable girls in the region.

About Experience Church

Experience Church is a multisite, multinational congregation founded 36 years ago in the Pacific Northwest, with campuses in South Hill/Puyallup, Washington; Surprise, Arizona; and Kathmandu, Nepal. The Surprise campus — the church's newest expansion into Arizona's West Valley — holds Sunday services at 9:30 and 11:00 AM at the Willow Canyon High School Performing Arts Center, with a grand opening celebration on October 4, 2026. Led by Senior Pastor Dennis Cummins, the church is committed to reaching people across geographic, cultural, and linguistic lines. Learn more at experiencechurch.tv.

Media Contact

Dariel Cummins — Experience Church
mail@experiencechurch.tv · 253-845-6880 · experiencechurch.tv

Are you curious?

See for yourself!