Unreached people groups: in search of the best words

Over the years, Christians have developed vocabulary to try to describe the lost. One of the most-used phrases is “unreached people groups” or UPGs. It has become so common we take it for granted when we pray, discuss and create our mission strategies. But this language is not in the Bible. Where did it come from?

Decades ago, mission agencies focused on countries in need of the gospel. However, even when missionaries founded new work in a country, many ethnic groups remained without the gospel. In 1974, Ralph Winter, founder of the US Center for World Mission, urged mission leaders to think differently. His term, ‘hidden peoples,’ changed the focus from national borders to people groups.

The term ‘hidden peoples’ begged for a definition. What is ‘a people’?  Using the Homogenous Unit Principle, people groups became defined by ethnic and linguistic affinities, and put into lists. Next, what defined ‘hidden’?  The term ‘unreached’ emerged with the technical designation of a people group with less than 2% evangelical Christians (and less than 5 % of any type of Christian).

Love is the supreme missionary technique. – Ramez Atallah

This alternative to the focus on countries influenced every area of missions and produced a wave of productive new work. Many groups such as the AD 2000 & Beyond Movement, Joshua Project, Adopt-a-People, PeopleGroups.org, 10/40 Window, Finishing the Task and more use UPGs to describe those who need the gospel.

In recent years some have raised concerns about whether this terminology has led to poor strategies in reaching the lost. If a people group is 3% Christian, it can be categorised as ‘reached’ and is no longer prioritized by some churches for mission work.

Additionally, a percentage reveals nothing about quality of faith. There may be many believers, but their faith is only lukewarm.

Ken Baker of SIM adds that while “a UPG orientation has been helpful for raising global mission awareness”, the PG category “simplifies identities for popular audiences. In current mission practice, UPG identities are externally assigned. A particular People Group identity is not necessarily how persons within that group would self-identify.”

There are also many differences within PGs. A PG may be reached in a city, but unreached in rural areas. The older generation may be reached, but not the youth.

Also, trends in urbanization, globalization and diaspora movements mean that PG categories are blurring in settings where many groups live together.

Mission practice is changing too. Some missions now focus on causes rather than UPGs or places. Causes can include anti-trafficking, education for girls, or access to clean water, all combined with Gospel proclamation.

The mission organisation, SIM, now uses the term ‘communities where Christ is least known’ which identifies people in their contexts. Thus, their strategies can accommodate the ‘deaf community in Mali” or “the miners of Potosi, Bolivia.” A community is the dynamic, 3-D context of a person which shapes their identity and narrative.

Even as we wrestle with the best vocabulary, we can remember what Ramez Atallah, General Secretary of the Egyptian Bible Society has said: “Love is the supreme missionary technique.” Just as air can never be caught in a net, so God’s love cannot be caught in our categories; nevertheless, air can fill a net just as God’s love can fill our categories.

In 2024, the vocabulary of unreached, with its successes and limitations, will be 50 years old but the concept of prioritizing peoples without the Gospel is as old as Philip explaining Scripture to the Ethiopian eunuch or the Apostle Paul’s vision for Spain. It is the message behind the parable of the shepherd who sought one lost sheep among 100. (If we extrapolated a definition of ‘unreached’ from this parable, then a people group with 99% believers would still be unreached.)

The wording of the Great Commission has the sense of carrying the Gospel further and further, ‘to the utter ends of the earth.’ Clearly, divine love is thorough, if not efficacious. We serve a God who commands us to invest costly resources and time on endeavors which have the merest chance, perhaps not for years to come, of resulting in one new relationship between Him and someone created in His image. May the Lord teach us to seek out this someone.

UNENGAGED

Over time, the term ‘unengaged’ emerged. This refers to PGs with no evangelical church planting strategy underway (www.peoplegroups.org). The terms ‘unreached’ and ‘unengaged’ have acquired less technical cousins: least-reached and under-engaged.

Mike Latsko writes in Mission Frontiers magazine that “the term ‘unengaged’ is the most offensive in missionary terminology. It is a blatant acknowledgement of the missionary community’s refusal to fulfil the minimal apostolic prerequisite of being present among all peoples and beginning the work of gospel proclamation.”*

*Christianity Today, Why Mission Experts are Redefining ‘Unreached People Groups’