Unreached People Groups: The Church’s Dilemma

Brown and Kenzo, whose fertile minds conceived the idea for this book, have stated it should be a “light” theology of mission for laity and clergy, answering the question, why do we as a church send and continue to send workers to the nations? ¹ If this is to be a “theology,” it must begin with the nature and character of God. So, what is it about God’s character which demands the Church to prioritize its mission to the unreached² or the least-reached in today’s world? The question obviously begs a solid biblical foundation. 

THE UPG MANDATE 

Biblical Missiology 

A plethora of books has been written on this subject. Space doesn’t allow a thorough treatment. Perhaps a few biblical vignettes that others have overlooked will suffice. 

An interesting story emerges in 1 Kings 20-21, helping us to understand the God of the Bible better through the use of contrast. Ben-Hadad, king of Syria, mounts what he hopes will be a magnificent conquest of Ahab and the Samarian kingdom. The odds were stacked in his favour. Ahab’s forces numbered 7,000, while Ben- Hadad’s army consisted of chariots, horses and 100,000 footmen. Despite these uneven odds, Ben-Hadad’s armies were decimated in the first battle. 

Ben-Hadad’s war strategists offered an explanation that precipitated a new strategy based on the following reasoning: 

And the servants of the king of Syria said to him, “Their gods are gods of the hills, and so they were stronger than we. But let us fight against them in the plain, and surely we shall be stronger than they (1 Kings 20:23 ESV³). 

On their second attempt, they chose to fight in the plain but suffered another humiliating defeat, just as God predicted through Elijah. 

And a man of God came near and said to the king of Israel, “Thus says the LORD, ‘Because the Syrians have said, “The LORD is a god of the hills but he is not a god of the valleys,” therefore I will give all this great multitude into your hand, and you shall know that I am the LORD’” (v. 28). 

Two observations arise from this war chronicle. Like most other ethnic groups of antiquity, the Syrians thought of their gods as regional deities, “the gods of our land.” They projected this concept upon the God of Israel, considering Him to be the God of the hill country but not the God of the plains. The true and living God could not allow Himself to be proscribed by a piece of land, a clan, tribe, or ethnic group. He distinguishes Himself as the God of the Universe. If God, the creator of heaven and earth, is the universal God, it would be very strange if He were not interested in every nation or ethne, as the Greek New Testament puts it. 

Secondly, the passion of God of the Bible is to be known for who He actually is, not what finite human minds conceive about Him. Interestingly, the prophet underscored to Ahab how His purpose in allowing him to defeat the Syrians was so “you shall know that I am the Lord.” It wasn’t just the Syrians who embraced a limited and erroneous concept of God. God chose to teach both the Samaritan king and the Syrian generals the truth of His eternal power and universal Godhead. It is reasonable to conclude that the God of the Bible, the creator of the universe and the nations, longs to be known. 

From Genesis to Revelation, the student of the Old and New Testaments encounters the passion and plan of God over and over: 

• As early as Genesis chapter 10, the emergence of nations is encountered in Scripture.⁴ 
• Chapter 11 of Genesis makes it abundantly clear that the creation of ethnolinguistic groups was not just a willy-nilly happenstance but rather God’s doing. God was behind the formation of ethnolinguistic groups at Babel. Furthermore, He didn’t stop creating people groups in Genesis 11. The psalmist suggests God’s creative acts in forming ethnolinguistic groups or peoples is a continuing divine art. After reviewing God’s promises and purposes in Psalm 102, He asks these things be written so that people who are yet to be created might be brought to praise His great Name.
• David saw clearly and often expressed God’s plan for the nations. After reading Psalm 9 recently, I concluded this psalm might well be described as David’s version of the Great Commission.⁵ At the very least, the nations figure largely in this and other psalms.⁶

During the days of preparation for this manuscript, my devotional reading is taking me through the Minor Prophets. The message coming through these inspired oracles is how God is a God of justice and mercy. With both in mind, the Minor Prophets often refer to the nations.⁷ 

What is incredible to me is the scribes of Jesus’ day invested their lives in copying the scriptures, yet missed the point. What on earth were they and the Pharisees reading? It certainly could not have been God’s most recent revelations to them through these prophets. These texts are filled with God’s interest in the nations both for the purpose of judgment and salvation. It is shocking and appalling how ethnocentric the Jewish leaders were at the time of Christ. When Paul was speaking in his defence in Aramaic before the people on the steps of the Roman barracks (Acts 21-22), they listened until he mentioned the word Gentiles. The crowd broke out in murderous chaos. “Away with him” was their spontaneous demand. How could such blatant racial prejudice breed among the people of the Book? 

Any survey of history will reveal the incredible terror, torture, affliction, and injustice the nations have perpetrated upon one another. God aims to make right what the nations have done wrong. Perhaps no prophetic passage demonstrates this more than Joel 3, which reveals what will take place on “the day of the Lord.” 

I will gather all nations and bring them down to the Valley of Jehoshaphat. There I will put them on trial for what they did to my inheritance, my people Israel, because they scattered my people among the nations and divided up my land. They cast lots for my people and traded boys for prostitutes; they sold girls for wine to drink. “Now what have you against me, Tyre and Sidon and all you regions of Philistia? Are you repaying me for something I have done? If you are paying me back, I will swiftly and speedily return on your own heads what you have done (Joel 3:2-4). 

The God of the Bible is keenly committed to both judgment and redemption. God’s commitment to redeem the nations comes through loud and clear in the preaching of the Old Testament prophets: 

“Shout and be glad, Daughter Zion. For I am coming, and I will live among you,” declares the LORD. “Many nations will be joined with the LORD in that day and will become my people. I will live among you and you will know that the LORD Almighty has sent me to you” (Zechariah 2:10-11). 

John makes clear in Revelation 7:9 that God’s purpose and intent is to redeem great multitudes from every tongue, tribe, people, and nation who will stand before His throne clothed in white robes and worshiping Him with palm branches in their hands. It is no wonder Jesus’ parting command to His disciples assigned them to make disciples of all nations.⁸

Because God of the Bible is the God of heaven and earth, Creator and sustainer of all things seen and unseen, and the only universal God unbounded by any territory or region, He legitimately possesses a genuine concern for all nations. 

To omit the key texts in the gospels and Acts regarding the obligations of the Church in this Age would constitute gross negligence. The reader may be tempted to skip the following paragraph because these texts are so familiar. Please don’t. They deserve repetition. 

I’ve been challenged when using Matthew 24:14 as a part of Christ’s mandate to the Church in this Age to take the Gospel to all people groups. They argue that Jesus is answering the disciples’ question prompted by His prediction the Jerusalem temple will be destroyed. Since this event took place in AD70, they say the Gospel of the Kingdom must have been preached to all nations by then. Therefore, it is obviously not applicable to the Church today. They also refer to Paul’s hope to be sent to Spain by the church in Rome, suggesting if he did achieve his goal and succeed in taking the Gospel to Spain, it had penetrated the then known world (i.e. from India⁹ to the western reaches of Europe). 

The reference to “this generation” in Matthew 24:34 is taken to support the view Jesus’ prophecies in Matthew 24 had all been fulfilled. A closer look at the text makes plain how a pre-fulfillment and a fuller fulfillment were clear in the mind of Jesus when He spoke these words. It is a difficult stretch of interpretation to squeeze the prophecies of Matthew 24:27-31 into the period from AD30 to AD70, and it is an impossible stretch to say the Gospel had been preached in the whole world “as a testimony to all nations” before AD70. 

Without a doubt, Jesus’ parting command, the mandate to take the Gospel to every ethnolinguistic group and make disciples among them, His mandate for the Church, is in force to the present. 

The Church’s Historic Response 

Space doesn’t allow detailed documentation of the Church’s obedience to Christ’s parting command over the past two millennia, but a quick overview may add strength to the premise that the Church always understood the mandate Jesus left with His disciples in Matthew 28:19-20. Though the Church’s mission vision did rise and wane over the centuries, it was aware every people group ought to be offered this good news.¹⁰ 

The Apostolic Era: Did the apostles take the parting command of their Lord seriously? When one takes into consideration the New Testament record, other ancient writings, early Christian art, legend, and Church tradition, it becomes pretty clear the apostles (fourteen when adding Paul and Matthias) aimed to take the Gospel to the then-known world at great personal sacrifice and in many cases, martyrdom. Only two apostles’ deaths are recorded in the Bible (James and Judas Iscariot). Most of what we know about the other apostles’ deaths must be drawn from the aforementioned sources. Multiple accounts of where and how some apostles died produce some ambiguity, but natural death appears on the list of possibilities for only five, namely Matthew, Philip, John, Simon the Zealot and Matthias.¹¹ Strong evidence leads to the conclusion at least nine died a violent martyr’s death. 

As Neill observes, the Church of the first Christian generation was a genuinely passionate missionary Church. (1986:21). 

The Middle Ages: As the Church in the Western World became increasingly interested in political power and wealth, it lost its passion for taking the Gospel across cultural and linguistic barriers. For example, in the mid-13th century, the Polo brothers (Marco’s uncles) brought a request from Kublai Khan to the Pope asking for the dispatch of a hundred men of learning devoted to the Christian faith who would be able to teach their faith in various centres in the Far East. Twenty years passed before Rome sent not one hundred but just two monks, one of whom died on the journey. The remaining Franciscan monk, John of Monte Corvina, met with limited success due to the indifference of Kublai Khan’s successor and opposition from the Nestorians, who had been active in the East for several centuries.¹² 

Two observations can be drawn from this incident. First, the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy felt little urgency in carrying the Gospel to the ends of the earth. Secondly, whatever missionary impetus remaining in the Catholic Church was born by religious orders such as the Franciscans, Dominicans, Augustinians, and others. 

The Modern Era: A significant stirring in the Protestant segment of Western Christianity was founded upon reformation theology and fanned by the revivals of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The emergence of strong leaders like William Carey and the emergence of faith-mission societies were also a considerable impetus to the task of world evangelization. The first volley of sent-ones (call them modern apostles or missionaries) arrived on the shores of the unreached areas of Asia, Africa, and the Islands of Southeast Asia. Having occupied the most easily accessible places, others became impatient and formed new faith missions to penetrate inland.¹³ These efforts are relatively well-known, having been well documented in missionary biography and popular media, and easily accessible to the Church today. 

Historically, the transition into a new millennium evokes both fear and a new vision. Some readers may remember the Y2K scare, which permeated the computer world twenty-some years ago. During the final quarter of the 20th century, visionary leaders like Ralph Winter¹⁴ sparked a movement igniting a new passion for reaching every UPG on the planet. He and much of the evangelical church believed Matthew 24:14 quite literally and wondered if it might be possible to finish before the end of the millennium. But first came research, how many UPGs remained? I happened to be assigned by the Alliance Mission in Indonesia to help research its people groups and those in nearby nations to determine how many remained unreached. Both denominational and faith missions worldwide were recruited to do the best job possible with available tools. It was discovered the remaining mission task was formidable. According to Joshua Project’s current research, there are 17,431 distinct ethnolinguistic groups, of which 7,399 remain unreached.¹⁵ 

Today the effort to reach panta ta ethne is shared by churches worldwide. Nations sending the largest group of cross-cultural missionaries are, in order, the United States, Brazil, and Korea. Helping younger churches join in this vast effort is vitally important. In this book, Craig Bundy’s chapter provides an encouraging description of Alliance initiatives to help the younger churches become partners in mission. 

But one huge problem needs to be addressed. The question of priorities will be dealt with next. 

The Contemporary Church’s Dilemma 

Two problems are quickly evident when it comes to the Church’s response to Christ’s Great Commission today, but first, a story. In the late 1990s, the Alliance World Fellowship’s quadrennial meeting was held in Hong Kong’s North Point Alliance Church¹⁶ (NPAC). While there, I learned this church aimed to maintain its mission giving at 80% of total offerings. When giving to missions dropped below the 80% mark, the pastor called for a season of fasting and prayer to raise awareness and concern for mission, which was the church’s stated priority. 

It is to be granted that NPAC is not your average church in Hong Kong. The comparison may not be fair, but it is helpful to know how the average North American church divides its giving: Internal: Salaries 50%, Facilities 22%, Operating Expenses 13%, Outreach: Local 13%, Outreach: Overseas Missions 2%. The most significant part of the two percent of overseas missions resources goes toward ministry among already Christianized people groups overseas.¹⁷ I share this set of statistics not to generate guilt or embarrassment to the readers or their churches. I don’t doubt your church’s division of resources is much different from this. But these statistics and the trends in Canadian Alliance churches give cause for dialogue. What barriers contribute to a weak response to Christ’s parting command? 

Missiological Myopia 

What do I mean by missiological myopia?¹⁸ Near-sightedness is not only a physical disorder. In its spiritual sense, it often afflicts families, churches, and denominations. Humans tend to focus on the matters close at hand, their own situation, circumstances, environment, and struggles. 

Perhaps an illustration from church history will help bring spiritual myopia into better focus. Church historians of the Protestant tradition tend to celebrate Martin Luther’s role in the reformation, and without doubt, there is much to celebrate. His commitment to and love for Scripture was truly remarkable in a day when the Bible was not available in the vernacular and not read by the laity. He also bore a deep and persistent concern for his sin. But the reformation was precipitated mainly by his conviction that Rome was fleecing the German people through the mechanism of indulgences, a sentiment shared by his benefactor Frederick III (Frederick the Wise). In Luther’s intense study of the scriptures to find justification for indulgences and other examples of corruption in the Catholic Church, he came upon his “Cloaca” Experience.¹⁹ He just happened to discover the solution to his sin problem in Romans 1:17, “the just will live by faith.”²⁰ We celebrate the rediscovery of the doctrine of salvation by grace through faith but forget the Lutheran reformation gave very little place to Jesus’ parting command. This is one example of spiritual myopia. 

Fortunately, we have the example of the Czech reformers like Jan Hus, who, sixty years previous to Martin Luther, planted the seeds of the Reformation and was burned at the stake by the Catholic Church for his stand. The Hussites eventually had to flee the intense persecution in northern Czechoslovakia. They walked north into the area of Dresden in Germany and were given land by a Lutheran who had been profoundly influenced by pietism, Count Nicholas Ludwig von Zinzendorf. The flame of Moravian faith was reignited in part through Zinzendorf’s care for these wandering saints, and a much less myopic version of Christian faith and practice emerged. The Moravians launched a 24/7 prayer meeting, lasting one hundred years and a missions movement that brought the Gospel to unreached people groups in the Americas, Africa, Asia, and the Islands of Southeast Asia. 

When a church or a denomination becomes so focused on its local concerns, such as structures, be they physical or organizational, that its response to Christ’s parting command (Matthew 28:19-20) becomes anemic, it becomes decreasingly effective in carrying forward Christ’s parting command. 

How can a church’s elders board and/or the missions committee evaluate their response and determine whether they are doing their fair share regarding the least reached? 

Relational Disorientation 

Another barrier to fulfilling the local church’s role in reaching out to those who have never heard is relational disorientation. If the church leadership decides to increase their commitment to UPGs, their challenge will get tougher. Most church boards or missions committees will be stymied in reaching their goals by relational disorientation. The average layperson sees just about anything beyond their local church as mission. Taking the Gospel to the least-reached ethnic groups in the world is a bit different from taking it to our neighbour. Planting Christ’s Church in unreached people groups requires years of language and culture learning, persistent and intensive prayer warfare, and sometimes decades of plowing, sowing, and watering. 

Often the person in the pew regards a plethora of ministries as mission. Consequently, they see any of these as fair inclusion in the church mission budget. Their interest usually follows relational lines, Suzie wants to disciple students in the big city university, Sam wants to cook meals for refugees crossing an international border, John and Joan want to provide member care for burned-out pastors and missionaries at their retreat in lake country. These are all good things, but all compete for the dollars that might be spent reaching the Uyghurs in Central Asia or the Fulani in North Africa. How does the church deal with relational disorientation? 

Fads and Issues 

Mission philosophy is not immune to the pull of new trends and fads. Organizations pop up when the societal sentiments lean in their direction and appeal to the church to fund their efforts. Of course, poverty relief, racial reconciliation, and others are good causes. Paul appointed Titus and another brother (2 Corinthians 8) to take the offerings of the Corinthian and Macedonian churches to Jerusalem to help Christians there survive the famine.  Should good causes pre-empt a local church from taking the Gospel to the unreached? Maintaining biblical priorities in the mission program of the local church is very challenging. What can a local church do to manage these challenges? What are the options? We can map them out on a continuum:  Zero would represent the church that chooses not to grapple with the UPG mandate at all. Just go with whatever comes up from the membership. A score of four may represent a church that has decided it will earmark at least 40 percent of its mission fund for ministries actually working among peoples who have little or no access to the Gospel and places where no indigenous church exists. North Point Alliance Church in Hong Kong might deserve a score of eight if its generous mission fund is used exclusively for ministries that qualify as fulfilling the UPG mandate. A small or medium church in Canada that raised up one missionary couple whose work is among Tibetans or similar UPG, so all their missions giving supports this one couple (or the mission board through which they are supported) would qualify for a score of ten on the continuum above. 

Conclusion 

The point of this chapter is twofold. First, local churches need to be exposed to the plethora of biblical evidence the Great Commission includes discipling the nations, which consists of all of the world’s unreached ethnolinguistic groups.²¹ Secondly, leadership in local churches needs to determine what portion of their income will be guarded for UP²²G ministries and how much can be justified biblically for other good causes? 

This is an excerpt from the book, On Mission Volume 5. Download your free copy today.

1. This chapter will hopefully fulfill their request and go one step further—consider the how as well. 
2. An unreached people group (UPG) or least-reached people (LRPG) is a people group among which there is no Indigenous community of believing Christians with adequate numbers and resources to evangelize this people group without outside assistance. https://joshuaproject.net/ help/definitions
3. The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. 
4. Genesis 10:5, 20, 31-32.
5. See also Psalm 96:3.  
6. See Psalm 22:27-28, 45:17. 46:10, 47:9, 67:1-5, 72:17, 86:9, 102:15.  
7. N.B. The outpouring of God’s Spirit upon all peoples, Joel 2:28-32; Amos’ prophecies of judgment upon Judah, Israel, Samaria and all their surrounding nations, 9:9 & 12 and His promise of restoration; Obadiah’s judgments upon Edom, 1:1ff, and the coming Day of the Lord for “all nations” 1:15: Jonah’s revival ministry in Nineveh, 3:4-10; Micah’s prophetic ministry to “all nations 1:1, and the good news of the conversion of many nations, 4:2; Nahum’s oracle against Nineveh 1:1 and Assyria 1:13; God’s command to Habakkuk to consider the nations and pay attention 1:3; Zephaniah’s judgments upon Gaza, Crete, Philistia, Judah, Moab, Ammon, Ethiopia, and Assyria followed by a prediction of the redemption of the nations 3:8-10 and Jerusalem’s restoration 3:20; God’s promise to Judah through Haggai involving the nations, 2:7; Zechariah’s prediction of national turning to the Lord and becoming His people, 2:11 and 8:22- 23; God’s affirmation through Malachi that God’s “Name will be great among the nations, 1:11. 
8. In Greek, panta ta ethne refers to ethnic groups and not geo-political entities as we understand the word nation today. 
9. Non-canonical sources and Church tradition record that both Thomas and Bartholomew had by AD70 reached India with the Gospel. 
10. f the reader wishes to get a more detailed history of Christian missions, I’d recommend such authors as LaTourette (1953) or Moffett (1998). For shorter one-volume surveys, Stephen Neill (1964) or Ruth Tucker (2004).
11. https://overviewbible.com/how-did-the-apostles-die/, December 2021.  
12. Neill, 1964:107ff.  
13. Thus we have the Africa Inland Mission and the China Inland Mission, etc.
14. R. Winter founded the US Center for World Mission now known as Frontier Ventures.  
15. This was the work of the AD2000 and Beyond Movement which initiated this research which was assumed by the Joshua Project in 2005.  
16. If you read Chinese you can learn more about NPAC at https://www.npac.org.hk/service.html. A look at NPAC English ministry is found at https://npacem.org/ but here you will only find a limited picture of this church’s ministry.
17. https://joshuaproject.net/assets/media/handouts/hard-mission-facts.pdf  
18. myopia: a condition in which the visual images come to a focus in front of the retina of the eye resulting especially in defective vision of distant objects; 2. a lack of foresight or discernment : a narrow view of something.  
19. See Metaxas, 2017: 93ff.  
20. Quoted from Habakkuk 2:4 and repeated in Galatians 3:11 and Hebrews 10:38.
21. Planting churches among them was Paul’s method of doing so and is still the best approach today.  
22. One way, among others, is to include The Jaffray Project annually in the church calendar.