Progress in people group missions
AfriGO Team
Adeoluwa Olanrewaju, missionary in northern Nigeria and head of the Research and Strategy Department for the Nigeria Evangelical Missions Association (NEMA) reports: “A review . . . in the first quarter of 2021 shows that 65% of the 72 identified unreached peoples in 1985 were no longer on the Nigerian UPG list. Moreover, 85% of the delisted UPGs have contributed to the sending force of the Nigerian missions movement.”
More recently in 2017, a list of seven unengaged people groups were discovered among Nigeria’s unreached groups. (The term “unengaged” refers to a group where no known active church planting is underway.) This new information catalyzed another wave of missions.
Olanrewaju reports: “It would only take 11 months for Nigeria to be delisted from countries with unengaged groups, and four years later the number of unreached peoples was reduced to 45.”
Olanrewaju goes on to describe the success of church mobilization through means of people group information, and cautions and advocates for cultural sensitivity in collecting data and describing people groups.
Mission Frontiers, Sept/Oct 2021. https://bit.ly/3lRVHYc
