EMQ » October–December 2020 » Volume 56 Issue 4
By RW Lewis
Throughout Protestant mission history, a small minority has felt called to prioritize people groups “where Christ has not been named” – variously called “unoccupied fields,” “regions beyond,” and “unreached people groups.” God raises up these people to ensure that His promise to Abraham is fulfilled and all the “families of the earth” partake in the blessing of knowing God through Jesus Christ. Simultaneously, Satan opposes the advance of God’s kingdom by sowing confusion, fear and apathy.
For the last two hundred years, the Protestant frontier mission thrust has depended on a clear grasp of the remaining task through data, and on field-informed discussion of various “means” to send witnesses and communicate meaningfully. Fervor for the frontiers fades whenever it appears that the pioneering job is done. Today the global Church’s passion and commitment to reach all “unreached people groups” is fading again – although 25% of world population still live in people groups with few if any believers and no viable, indigenous movements to Christ. Why?
This article focuses on two areas: First, factors clouding understanding of the remaining task – confusing terminology, conflicting databases and overwhelming numbers. Second, factors impacting commitment to frontier missions, such as changing global realities and perceived colonial bias of people group terminology, partnership vs. pioneering missions, and the shift toward short-term mission experiences. The huge problems of rising uncertainty about the universal need for Christ, and the power of the gospel, will be largely left for others to unpack.
Reached vs. Unreached: How Confusing Terms Obscure the Task
The terms “reached” and “unreached” have been confusing and often misused from the beginning. In the 1970s some argued that the presence of churches in nearly every country meant the missionary task was over, though much evangelism remained to be done by the local church in those countries. However, Dr. Ralph Winter’s research revealed that roughly 17,000 people groups (over 30% of world population) had virtually no access to the gospel – isolated from existing churches by language and cultural identity.
Winter called these overlooked people groups “the final frontier” and sparked new efforts among these “Hidden Peoples.” He excluded nominally Christian people groups, with Bibles in their own languages, churches, priests, etc. He reasoned that historically revivals and reforms often happen in such groups without any “outside” or cross-cultural missionary help. He also excluded people groups where indigenous movements to Christ were already underway – not because they no longer needed any help, but because the pioneering frontier mission breakthrough had already been accomplished, making cross-cultural mission work less necessary.
By the 1980s, people groups with successful gospel progress became known as “reached” people groups. Conversely, those groups with no indigenous community of believing Christians were called “unreached people groups” (UPGs). For consistency in gathering data, a threshold of “2% or more evangelical” was agreed on for “reached people groups.” And this seemed a reasonable way to measure whether the cross-cultural breakthrough of the gospel had been accomplished. Even if all the missionaries left, 200 evangelicals in a people group of 10,000 (or 20,000 evangelicals in a group of 1 million) should be able to finish reaching the rest of their own group.
The frontier mission goal was to extend cross-cultural outreach into people groups where there was NOT YET a breakthrough of indigenous faith. But the goal subtly shifted when the terms “reached” and “unreached” peoples replaced “hidden peoples.”
Problems Arising from “Reached,” “Unreached,” and the 2% Cut-off
Two Different Meanings
“Reached” was already in use for individuals who had accepted the gospel and “unreached” for all “unsaved” individuals. At the 2019 Evangelical Missiological Society conference, one plenary speaker urged against focusing on Unreached People Groups, saying that there are unreached people all around us, even in our own churches. The 250+ mission professors seemed to agree, so, even after forty years of discussion about Unreached People Groups, they were still confusing unsaved people (unreached persons the local church can evangelize) with unreached people groups (ethno-linguistic people groups that require pioneering mission effort).
“Reached” Caused Pushback
People resisted calling a people group “reached,” even where indigenous movements were strong and self-sustaining, while the vast majority (up to 98%) were still not saved. In response the Joshua Project website published four stages of “reached people groups” – “minimally reached,” “superficially reached,” “partially reached” and “significantly reached.” These categories emphasized the needs remaining among reached groups, inadvertently diluting the focus on “hidden peoples” – where nothing at all was yet started. Forty years later, thirty times as many cross-cultural missionaries still go to “reached people groups” as go to “unreached people groups.”
Databases Became All-inclusive and Overwhelming
The databases were pushed to fairly show the needs of all people groups, rather than listing only those people groups beyond the reach of existing missions and churches. And the databases went even further – adding on tiny diaspora or special interest groups like blind or deaf people. The resulting ever-expanding list of “unreached people groups” became overwhelming, and new laborers lacked strategic guidance regarding where to go.
“Unengaged Unreached” (UUPGs) Focused on Effort Rather Than Results
By drawing attention to UPGs with no witnesses,[1] Finishing the Task (FTT) successfully focused on a reduced number of people groups and revitalized a vision for frontier work. However FTT deleted “unengaged” list large people groups with no gospel breakthrough from their once they confirmed even a couple of long-term witnesses were in place – even in a massive people group.[2] In so doing, FTT unwittingly skewed attention toward increasingly tiny people groups. This threshold of no witnesses dropped out too many fields where pioneering work was still needed.
The 2% Evangelical Percentage Cutoff was Too High to Identify Fields that Still Needed Pioneer Work
One veteran church movement planter estimated his large people group no longer needed pioneering missionaries long before it reached 0.5% evangelicals (50 evangelicals in a town of 10,000). Once such a movement starts, the work of outsiders shifts from pioneering to partnership with nationals in evangelism. Many UPGs have achieved strong, “self-sustaining indigenous movements to Christ” long before reaching 2% evangelical. These groups no longer need pioneering work even though they may still be included on UPG lists because of the percentage criteria. Further analysis has revealed that a better cut-off for identifying frontier groups where pioneering work is needed is less than one out of 1000 (0.1%) identifying with Jesus.
The “Evangelical” and “Unreached” Definitions Caused Divergence in the Databases Dissonance resulted in disillusionment as charts, graphs and lists disagreed with each other due to differing interpretations of the criteria. For example, in the fall of 2019, a prayer guide for Latin America was published with a graph showing 550 million “unreached people” (meaning “unsaved people”) out of a total population of over 604 million.[3] Yet the same agency’s UPG database listed only 7 million people in “Unreached People Groups” in Latin America and the Joshua Project database listed only 700,000. Why was there such disparity using the same “2% evangelical” criteria? It had to do with who was counted as an “evangelical” or “born again.”
Some organizations included all believers who studied the Bible and spread their faith as “evangelicals;” including charismatics and other renewal movements in older denominations, such as reformation Protestants with infant baptism. Others did not. Nominal Christians were also in different categories.
Counting “Unsaved” Nominally Christian Groups as “Unreached” Peoples Gave False Impressions and Also Caused a Split Between Databases
Ralph Winter originally did not count nominal Christians as having no access to the gospel because they had had centuries of mission work and Bible exposure. Controversy arose about whether “unsaved” nominal Christians are as “unreached” as Muslims, Hindus, etc. Agreeing with Winter, the Joshua Project excluded people groups as “unreached” with more than 5% self-identifying as Christians. However, the International Mission Board (IMB)[4] decided not to distinguish between nominal Christians and people of other religions or atheists – with significant consequences. Many groups ended up as UPGs on the IMB database but not the Joshua Project database. Unfortunately, churches did not realize how these decisions affected the IMB data representations, so they could have been left with grossly false impressions, such as “Europe is as unreached as India.”
Churches Need Simplicity, Clarity, and Hope for Renewed Vision
Most of the confusion involved in the above points cannot be clarified by doubling down on the original definition, because there are inherent problems in the terms and percentages themselves. To help solve this problem, a subset of UPGs that fits the original definition of groups with no indigenous self-sustaining movement to Christ was culled out of the Joshua Project UPG list in 2018. To emphasize the ongoing need for “frontier” or “pioneer” mission work, they were called “Frontier People Groups” (FPG).” This simple act revealed amazing things: huge progress has been made in the last forty years, but also the remaining task is simpler than expected:[5]
- 40% of the UPGs already have self-sustaining movements to Christ underway.
- 60% of the remaining UPGs have no visible progress toward indigenous faith.
- 25% of the entire world’s population is in this subset of UPGs called FPGs.
- 55% of these groups are in India; over 75% are in South Asia.
- 48% of FPG population is in just thirty-one people groups. (joshuaproject.net/frontier/5)
- Over 88% of the FPG population is in just 425 groups larger than ½ million – these 425 groups contain 22% of the world’s population!
It is encouraging to many, especially in the global south, to understand that focusing on just 425 people groups could impact nearly 90% of the remaining pioneering task.
Globalization vs. People Groups: How a Rising Global Culture Obscures People Group Realities
Monocultural but multi-ethnic megachurches in large cities give the impression that identifying “people groups” is no longer important.
“People group barriers” are sometimes presented as not just a thing of the past, but also as evidence of residual racism and colonial “ethnic” constructs. Increasingly, some church planters are encouraged to disregard and even discourage people group identity, terminology, and loyalties. They do not realize that promoting indigenous churches for all people groups actually celebrates their diversity of language and culture, valuing each people group as unique before God. The danger is that, in “multi-ethnic” churches, the dominant culture frequently eclipses all other languages and cultures, giving a mere illusion of diversity.
For example, Delhi, a city of some 25 million people, has perhaps a dozen multi-ethnic megachurches. Audiences have Asian-looking people from Northeast India, dark-skinned people from South India, and a smattering of North Indian natives. Services are in English, the mother-tongue of none, and worship teams sing Western songs projected on large screens. These churches are frequently lauded for bringing the ethnic diversity of God’s people under one roof.
But the popularity of “melting pot” urban churches among Western-educated “global nomads” obscures the people group loyalties of the vast majority of modern city dwellers. Worshipers in those contexts are often urban transplants without their own local ethnic community. These are essentially churches of immigrants, often from “reached” people groups, who already have movements to Christ in other parts of India or in other countries.
As a result, Delhi’s “multi-ethnic” churches have not started movements among the hundreds of sects or ethnicities of Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, and Jains with roots in North India for centuries, neither in Delhi nor beyond. Nor are they greatly impacting large diaspora communities in Delhi of Nepalis, Bengalis, Afghans, etc., whose ethnic loyalties, languages and culture are zealously preserved.
Similarly, even in the West, most urban churches barely engage successfully with people of their same culture, much less large ethnic groups with different languages and cultures. Occasionally there are people in these churches that come from unreached people groups. However, churches usually need the help of special organizations with expertise in cross-cultural outreach to train these Westernized believers to start gatherings in their own languages, instead of merely the trade language they have grown accustomed to using in worship.
People group lists can’t capture the cacophony of cultures in most major cities of the world – nor should they. UPG databases shouldn’t aim to most accurately describe all people groups, but to clarify and direct the global church to send witnesses to those without any movements to Christ. People group affinities resemble Venn diagrams more than discrete circles. Such affinities are not static and largely self-defined. Some people align more with religious than ethnic group identity, like the Tablighi Jamaat (Society of Preachers), a swiftly growing one-hundred-year-old Indian Sunni Muslim reform movement which has reached 80 million, spanning one hundred countries and many people groups.
Planting mono-cultural “multi-ethnic” churches is unlikely to significantly advance the gospel into the least-reached people groups. Even in cities we must seek out those highly defined groups who eschew such conglomerate churches. People group lists are therefore still crucial, despite their limitations. Indigenous movements among minorities are still a priority worth highlighting.
Partnership vs. Pioneering: How Success in Pioneering Shifts Emphasis to Partnering
When churches or agencies prioritize partnering with national churches/believers, fields with no believers are inadvertently excluded.
In history, whenever significant progress was made in winning a people group to Christ, the focus shifted to partnering rather than pioneering. It is happening again. However valuable the partnership stage, the continuing needs of remaining pioneering fields should not be obscured.
When pioneers are successful, they tend to remain rather than advance to areas without witness. Recruiting draws workers to where breakthroughs are already happening, rather than to where there are none. Many “final frontiers” peoples in the 1977 list are now in the “reached” category, most notably the Han Chinese. By 1999, 10% of missionaries worked among the Unreached People Groups, up from under 1% in 1977. However, that number has declined again. Today fewer than 4% of global missionaries work among Unreached People Groups, where 60% of the world’s non-believers live, including the 1% that work with the 25% of the world’s population that is Frontier People Groups.[6]
Popularity for partnering with existing believers is resurgent. We need to avoid bypassing the national workers in reached groups and also in the 40% of remaining UPGs with indigenous movements underway. When evangelism by national believers becomes self-sustaining and widespread, then pioneering work by cross-cultural workers (from other people groups) is no longer necessary. Even before movements begin, if sufficient national believers exist, partnering with them to spark and lead indigenous movements among their own people group is preferable.
However, partnering is impossible if there are no national believers. Sixty percent of remaining UPGs have no sign of gospel progress (FPGs) – 25% of the global population (over 1.9 billion people). Distinct training in pioneering is needed to successfully plant an indigenous movement to Christ in a people group with no known believers. Winning the first few believers to Christ is the most difficult stage of pioneering, followed by effectively training a handful of believers to spark an indigenous movement among their own unreached people group.[7] We must find believers with genuine callings from God for pioneering ministry, and commission them and work and learn humbly alongside them.
Short-term vs. Long-term: How Short-Term Missions Neglect Least-reached People Groups
When churches or agencies prioritize sending short-term teams, fields with no believers are bypassed again. The recent boom of short-term mission trips – which Barna more accurately labels “service trips” or “adventure trips”[8] – absorbs church and “missions” funds without producing movements in areas with little gospel access and no national believers. Short termers not preparing for long term service inevitably help existing missionaries or partner with national believers because they lack language or cultural knowledge. According to one recent study, of the few who continue to long-term service, 48% return to where they previously served short-term – virtually always a “reached” people group.[9]
Short-term teams rarely go into dangerous areas, or to people groups with no believers, although some have distributed literature in these areas or helped during disasters. Around 2 million Americans go on short-term mission trips each year, many on second or third trips.[10] These droves represent substantial financial, health and leadership costs with little more outcome than positive effects on themselves, and virtually no increase in long-term workers, especially for UPG areas. These trips may also do more harm than good to the receivers. Short-term missions have been portrayed idealistically as “locking hands with our brothers and sisters around the world.” Concurrently, however, they put significant burdens on receiving churches, especially poor ones with unpaid leaders and few resources to care for a group of vulnerable foreigners. Meanwhile, efforts to reach unreached people groups are defunded or never even considered. Again, the overall percentage of church planting, disciple-making frontier missionaries among UPG has decreased, not increased, since the year 2000.
Losing Sight of the Frontier Task Because of Loss of Faith in the Gospel
This article has assumed a common goal: taking the blessing of the gospel to “all the families of the nations” (Psalm 22:27; 96:7) – the good news of freedom from sin and death, and eternal life with God through Jesus. Obviously, vision for unreached peoples is also fading for an even more serious reason than those given above: creeping universalism or secularism impacting every area of Western culture. Additionally, concerns for justice, poverty, and well-being (which have always rightly accompanied mission movements), have, for some, become of singular importance. However, historically, initiatives that do not bring people to Christ evidence little lasting change. Finally, belief in hell has faded and it is assumed that everyone is going to heaven, especially those aborted; death is the end of life and eternal life is an illusion. People who have abandoned hope in Christ will have no life-giving message to share, and no urgency to share it.
Conclusion
Throughout history, God has burdened specific people with a passion to reach those who have no chance of learning about Jesus: the Apostle Paul, St. Patrick, Loyola, William Carey, Hudson Taylor, etc. In every case, they spread their own vision and concern by pleading the cause of peoples without hope and encouraging others to join the effort. The consistent pattern for two thousand years has been to identify peoples and places without the Good News and to send witnesses to live among them and reach them.
The latest such wave has been the forty-five-year push to send witnesses to the Unreached People Groups. It has grown increasingly complicated to figure out where the neglected peoples are, as the gospel spreads to more places and a rising number of “global nomads” obscures ethnic realities. Since 40% of the remaining UPGs now have movements to Christ among them, the fact that 60% still need pioneering work has been overlooked. Short-term visits to believers overseas have replaced the determination to send long-term witnesses to peoples with no believers, and no viable, indigenous church movement.
I believe that SIMPLICITY and CLARITY and bringing HOPE are the keys to revisioning the global church about the world’s peoples with no progress of the gospel. It is not necessary to engage every small group or to constantly nuance our people group lists to reach all of these peoples. Movements tend to flow from larger influential groups to smaller. If the global church focuses primarily and urgently on the largest least-reached UPGs, namely the 425 largest “frontier people groups,” indigenous movements to Christ could impact vast populations “where Christ has not been named!”
RW Lewis graduated from Caltech in 1977 and immediately began helping her parents, Ralph and Roberta Winter, publicize their findings about unreached people groups, drawing the first “pie chart” for her father called Penetrating the Final Frontiers. After 40 years of working with her husband, Tim, in the Muslim context, she is still seeking to kindle global passion for the least-reached frontier peoples.
Notes
[1] The global network FTT, now led by Pastor Rick Warren of Saddleback Church (CA), hosts an annual conference for church and mission leaders. See https://www.finishingthetask.com/.
[2] Other mission leaders pushed back and called for focus on large groups they considered “under-engaged.”
[3] See https://www.imb.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Oct19_PrayerPoints_WEB3.pdf.
[4] IMB is part of the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination in the United States, and has a significant commitment to frontier mission. https://www.imb.org/.
[5] The figures are provided by https://joshuaproject.net/frontier/ and the various maps/charts linked there. For a fuller discussion of Frontier People Groups see Mission Frontiers, Nov–Dec 2018, http://www.missionfrontiers.org/pdfs/MF40-6_Nov-Dec_eBook.pdf.
and https://www.ijfm.org/PDFs_IJFM/35_4_PDFs/IJFM_35_4-Lewis.pdf.
[6] https://joshuaproject.net/assets/media/handouts/frontier-peoples-overview.pdf.
[7] Some try to skip this stage by sending inexperienced workers to train believers from nearby “reached” people groups to do pioneering cross-cultural witness, which the former have never done on their own. This historically fails due to barriers of mutual prejudice.
[8] https://www.barna.com/research/despite-benefits-few-americans-have-experienced-short-term-mission-trips/.
[9] https://www.theaquilareport.com/do-short-term-mission-trips-produce-long-term-missionaries/.
[10] https://www.barna.com/research/despite-benefits-few-americans-have-experienced-short-term-mission-trips/.
EMQ, Volume 56, Issue 4. Copyright © 2020 by Missio Nexus. All rights reserved. Not to be reproduced or copied in any form without written permission from Missio Nexus. Email: EMQ@MissioNexus.org.
