9 The Task Remaining

Studying this lesson will help you:

• Explain the essential missionary task using and defining the term “missiological breakthrough.”
• Memorize the definition of a people group that refers to the evangelization of people groups.
• Be able to explain the difference between the unimax approach and the ethnolinguistic approach to defining people groups.
• Describe a “frontier people group” and explain why they should be a priority.
• Describe the difference between regular and frontier mission efforts using the E-Scale and the P-Scale.
• Describe the rough percentages of the world’s population who live in unreached peoples and in reached peoples.
• Describe the imbalance of missionary allocation in today’s world.
• Describe the importance of using the mother tongue for establishing churches that multiply and endure.
• Explain the value of ethnic churches in reaching particular people groups.
• Explain the strengths and weaknesses of multiethnic gatherings.
• Explain how global urban migration has created strategic opportunities for reaching the unreached.

Just as mountains can be seen more clearly from a distance, the awesome strategic possibilities of our day can be seen with better clarity by stepping back to get a “big picture” viewpoint. Throughout this course, we have stepped back, as it were, from the present day by tracing the progress of God’s purpose from the time of Abraham until now.

We’ve seen the promised blessing of Abraham extended to the nations. God’s blessing has spread at an uneven pace through history; nevertheless, He has propelled His purpose forward with unrelenting passion. As we come to the present day, we have to be amazed by the magnitude of the many movements to Christ. Never before have so many people followed Christ. Never before has Christ been named in so many languages and obeyed faithfully in such a myriad of cultural styles. Never before has Christ been so viciously hated or His servants so widely persecuted. Yet never before has Christ been so openly worshiped. Could we now be seeing what Abraham saw from a distance? Jesus said, “Abraham rejoiced to see My day, and he saw it and was glad” (John 8:56).

As we consider the realities of our day, we will understand even more clearly what it meant for God to promise blessing through Abraham to “all the families of the earth.” This lesson focuses attention on the efforts to distinguish the peoples of the world in a way that helps us complete the task of evangelizing every people group so that God is served and loved by some within every people.

Christ has given us a narrowly defined task to finish. We are mandated to bring about flourishing communities of obedient faith in every people group. From this beginning, or breakthrough, in every people group, God intends to bring forth some magnificent surprises that exemplify the fullness of His kingdom to come.

I. Great Progress and a Paradigm Shift

Bruce A. Koch begins with a short review of Ralph D. Winter’s address at the 1974 Lausanne Congress. Because Christianity had been growing rapidly in the decades before Lausanne, many churches and mission leaders assumed that the churches at that time were sufficient. Winter highlighted that there were many people groups in which there were few or no churches that were culturally relevant. He highlighted the need for new culturally relevant churches that would make it possible for people to follow Christ without severing ties with their families.

Winter clarified that Jesus’s mandate to bring the gospel to “the nations” did not refer to countries; instead, the wording Jesus chose was ethne, referring to extended families and cultures with a common identity, shared language, and shared values. Winter called for a focus on people groups, pointing out that thousands of people groups had no church that would be welcoming to them.

A. Four Approaches to People Group Thinking. In the years that followed, Winter brought more clarity to what was meant by a people group. Koch summarizes four different ways that people groups have been defined:

1. Blocs of peoples help to summarize the global task. There are several ways that people groups can be categorized, helping us describe the global task: by religious affiliation, ethnic commonalities, and others.

2. Ethnolinguistic groupings to help mobilization and preparation. People groups share a self-identity with traditions, history, and language.

3. Unimax peoples distinctively focus on movements to Christ. A unimax people is the maximum sized group sufficiently unified to be the focus of a single movement to Christ, where “unified” refers to the fact that there are no significant barriers of either understanding or acceptance to stop the spread of the gospel.

4. Social groups can be useful for evangelism. Bowling league, running clubs, and board games groups are just a few examples of tremendous settings for effective evangelism.

B. The Essential Missionary Task. The essential missionary task is to establish a viable indigenous church-planting movement that has the potential to renew extended families and transform entire societies. It is deemed viable because it can grow on its own. Indigenous means that it is not perceived as foreign. As a church-planting movement, it continues to reproduce intergenerational fellowships capable of evangelizing the rest of the people group without outside assistance.

It can be helpful to distinguish between “regular mission” and “frontier mission.” Amid many unreached peoples, there is no viable, indigenous church-planting movement. And so, those who are pursuing mission work in those settings are doing “frontier mission.”

• Regular mission. Involves efforts to make disciples and bring about blessing and transformation within cultures where churches are already well established. The focus is on strengthening and expanding the existing Christian community.
• Frontier mission. Focuses on achieving breakthroughs within “unreached people groups” who have little to no access to the gospel. These groups are often isolated by cultural, linguistic, or geographical barriers.

II. Completing the Task of World Evangelization R. W. Lewis reflects on that same historic moment sparked by an address by Ralph D. Winter (her father) at the 1974 Lausanne Congress. His presentation revealed an uncomfortable reality: Over 60 percent of the world’s population remained beyond the effective reach of existing churches. At that time, because there were churches on every continent and in most countries, it was common to presume that the day of sending missionaries was over. Contrary to this popular belief that the mission movement was nearing its end, Winter reoriented the vision of the church by explaining why “pioneer” cross-cultural mission should be the foremost priority of God’s people everywhere.

A. Recognizing the Task. Winter’s now-famous pie chart (see an updated rendition on page 372) exposed a neglected reality: Vast segments of humanity had no access to the gospel. Winter’s way of visualizing the work catalyzed many to act. New mission agencies emerged, and others recalibrated their focus toward reaching “all peoples.” The principle of prioritizing the peoples with no access to the gospel continues to be a strategic way of approaching the task as one that can and must be finished. Unreached peoples are not the neediest peoples—they are the remaining ones.

B. Prioritizing the Least Reached Peoples. Strategic progress required more than generalized awareness. Researchers collaborated to identify specific unreached people groups (UPGs). However, it became clear that many UPGs had church movements within them but had not yet met the 2 percent threshold. A new designation—Frontier People Groups (FPGs)—was recently introduced to describe groups with less than 0.1 percent Christian presence and little or no known gospel movement. These groups now represent the most urgent work of global mission.

C. Fifty Years of Progress: 1974–2024. While the global population has doubled since 1974, the number of Christ followers has quadrupled. More significantly, the number of FPGs has dropped from seventeen thousand to approximately five thousand—reducing the unreached portion of the world from 60 percent to 25 percent. This should be tremendously important for God’s people. God, with His people, is finishing His work of evangelizing all peoples!

III. Present-Day Realities

A. Barriers to Reaching Frontier People Groups. Most FPGs are located within Muslim and Hindu cultural spheres, where following Jesus is often seen as a betrayal of cultural or religious identity. These settings will require specialized, long-term pioneer workers with deep contextual understanding. Lewis outlines eight factors contributing to the continued neglect of FPGs.

B. The Challenge of South Asia. India stands as a unique missiological challenge. Despite a long history of Christian presence, over 40 percent of the world’s FPGs reside in India. The complexity of the caste system challenges conventional definitions of “people groups,” requiring a flexible and context-sensitive missiological framework. Movements among tribal or Dalit communities rarely extend into middle or upper castes, emphasizing the need for tailored strategies. The term “Dalit” refers to the untouchables or outcastes, the lowest level of the caste system.

C. The Great Imbalance. Despite Winter’s strategic call more than fifty years ago, the allocation of global mission resources is still not distributed in a strategic way. Approximately 96 percent of Christian workers serve in areas with established churches. Only 1 percent are engaged in pioneer efforts among FPGs. For instance, although India has half the world’s FPGs, it receives only 10 percent as many missionary workers as Africa.

D. Ways to Move Forward Effectively

1. Language and Location. Seven of the top ten FPG languages are found in South Asia. Language acquisition of Hindi or Urdu alone opens ministry access to over 700 million people. A focused effort on high-density language regions will greatly enhance the effectiveness of mission mobilization.

2. Urban Frontiers. Global urbanization has created new frontiers. Megacities now host sizable immigrant communities from FPGs. While urban churches are often multiethnic, they seldom penetrate culturally cohesive ethnic enclaves. However, when family-based movements emerge within such communities, they can catalyze rapid gospel spread.

3. Mega-peoples and Language Clusters. So-called mega-peoples (with more than a million people) are people group clusters, such as large groupings like the Rajput or Brahmin castes. These people group clusters are often culturally similar and influential among other groups. Beginning a church-planting movement in one part of a mega-people can open the way for further breakthroughs.

IV. Peoples in Cities

Chris Clayman tells his story of moving to Mali in West Africa to help reach the unreached Wassoulou people. Despite significant cultural engagement and spiritual openness, an illness forced him to move back to the US. He visited New York City to possibly meet people from West Africa. In the city, he had a God-arranged encounter with a Wassoulou Christ follower. This encounter opened new opportunities to develop relationships with other Wassoulou people. The complex urban environment made it possible to build relationships with not just one but many people groups.

A. Global Migration and God’s Purposes. Global migration is one of the major trends of our time. Regardless of the cause—be it persecution, war, famine, or pursuit of freedom and economic opportunity—migration is not merely sociopolitical or economic; it is a part of God’s redemptive plan to gather all peoples to Himself. The interplay between ethnic groups in urban contexts creates opportunities for the gospel to flow between groups that would not have been possible in other settings. Rapid urbanization is bringing Christians and unreached peoples into proximity as never before.

B. Multiethnic Church-Planting Possibilities in Cities. People in cities often learn other languages by necessity, making it possible for people with different languages to gather in one place. This is why most multiethnic churches are found in urban settings. Multiethnic churches can be safe entry points for seekers from UPGs, yet these churches often fail to engage the questions they have due to cultural assumptions and linguistic mismatches.

It is impossible for one church to adequately disciple people from myriads of cultural, religious, and familial backgrounds. Ethnic churches are necessary to disciple and evangelize whole communities in their heart language and culture.

V. The Missiological Breakthrough: Mother-Tongue Churches Barbara F. Grimes explains the value of pursuing mother-tongue ministry to bring about mother-tongue disciples and churches that impact their entire society. Her key concern is the decision about which language to use in mission work. Too often, the choice of language is based on what is expedient for the communicators instead of what is valuable for the hearers. Grimes stretches our vision beyond the question of which language will be adequate for basic communication to which language will be best for facilitating a people movement. The vision should always be more than merely bringing the message to every language. Instead, our vision needs to focus on what can happen from every language: worship toward God and witness to society.

A. The Best Outcome: Mother-Tongue Churches. The prime value of using the local vernacular is seen in terms of enduring, fruitful churches.

B. The Expedient Distractions. Grimes points out two ways that appear to offer shortcuts through the difficulties of language learning and translation.

• Multilingual Populations. Beware of attempting to use a trade language that only some members of a society may understand. Consider the perceptions and attitudes about what is foreign and what is credible. Realistically consider the number of people in that society who may lack fluency in the second language.
• Bilingual Brokers. Another temptation is to work through an interpreter. Leadership development is severely diminished with this method.

VI. Globalization and Ethnicity

The dynamics of globalization affect how we understand the peoples of the world and our mission. Miriam Adeney gives a biblical and practical perspective on the idea of ethnicity in a rapidly changing, interconnected world. The boundaries and distinctives of ethnolinguistic peoples are blurring. Is a people-specific approach to mission still valid?

A. Globalization Tramples Ethnicity. The “creative destruction” of globalization tends to homogenize and devalue the particularities of cultures. How shall we respond? Ethnicity counters the dehumanizing bent of globalization. The gospel affirms and redeems ethnicity in our world.

B. God’s View of Ethnicity. We already read this section in lesson 2. Adeney argues that the value of ethnicity is found in God’s creation of humanity.

• God-given creativity ordained that humans would create culture.
• God-affirmed community formed shared identities and (in a good sense) family pride.

C. Ethnicity and Mission in a Globalized World. Adeney offers four recommendations:

1. Affirm the Local. While we must judge patterns of idolatry and exploitation, those who pursue mission should love local culture, language, arts, industry, and all that is distinctive. Avoid a one-size-fits-all approach.

2. Be Pilgrims. In a globalized world, we should expect that cultures will increasingly overlap and change. The identity of peoples will blur and blend. Many balance multiple ethnic identities and a variety of heritages. “It is important to respect the way people identify themselves at any particular time; however, doing so may scramble our categories or lists of people groups” (p. 300).

3. Build Bridges. Forces of globalization push people to be satisfied with superficial relationships and fragmented connections. Mission efforts should aim to step into the margins and bring about profound and meaningful connections between ethnicities.

4. Nurture Ethnic Churches. “Ethnic churches are justified not only for pragmatic reasons—because they work—but also because they are rooted in the doctrine of creation” (p. 301). Every church must welcome people of every race and culture. Some flourish in multicultural churches. Others treasure ethnic traditions. “Separate congregations are not bad. What is bad is a lack of love” (p. 301). Diverse ethnic churches have great value as they constitute a mosaic of cultures, enriching God’s world.

VII. The Great Hope of Glory: Every People Brought Home to God Why is it so important to evangelize some from every people group? If it were a matter of drawing as many individuals as possible, we could do this quickly and easily by evangelizing people amid people groups with many churches. Why are we attempting to do evangelism in lands and among peoples who resist and oppose evangelistic mission efforts? There is a wonderful reason we are pursuing the hope of some from every tribe and tongue, every land and lineage. That reason should not be surprising to those who know the Father heart of God: Our Father God is drawing people to Himself as if each people were a son or a daughter to Him with a name.

Hawthorne describes how the Apostle Paul recorded his prayer in Ephesians. He was convinced that the Father was bringing His entire family—a family of peoples—back to Himself.

This biblical prayer brings glory to God; but it also calls for God to bestow glory upon humanity. The glory God has in store for the peoples of the earth is the fulfillment of His purpose for His global people—that, together as one people, all the diverse nations would be honored to experience their worship being received by God in the beauty of His joy.

Conclusion of Certificate Readings for this lesson.

After studying this section you should be able to:

• Describe ways that digital tools are helping to advance world evangelization.
• Explain why radio broadcasts continue to be an important resource for world evangelization.

VIII. Using Digital Tools in Evangelization and Planting Churches It is no secret that in the past few decades, we have found ourselves in a globalized, digital world. Broadcasting messages by radio or television has increased our ability to convey the gospel to many different places and peoples.

A. Missions in the Digital Era. D. G. Wynn points out that broadcast media, while important and fruitful, are being deepened and strengthened with digital tools. More than half the people on the planet use the internet.

Many are discovering ways to use newer digital tools to connect with unreached peoples. They are turning the one-way communication of broadcasts into connections in which people thrive in relationships.

Wynn mentions several tools or strategies being developed to fulfill the Great Commission. Tech communities are constantly developing new tools and strategies.

• Bible Access. Many tools are available that help people read or listen to the Bible using digital devices.
• Education. Several seminaries offer courses online, bringing people together from different continents.
• Disciple-Making Training. Disciple-making movements are using the digital space to form friendships that build group or communal relationships.
• Prayer Movements. The global church is finding ways to pray with each other and for each other in ways that we haven’t seen before.

B. The Role of Radio. Tony Ford describes why radio is still playing an important part in world evangelization. Many of the least evangelized places have limited or no access to the internet. Radio still gets through. For those who are illiterate or partially sighted, gospel broadcasts convey the message.

Radio still gets through where government or religious leaders try to stop people from hearing the gospel. In times of warfare or disaster, radio broadcasts prove to be helpful.

IX. Recognizing Complex Layered Identities

Chris Clayman presents a figure displaying a common immigrant journey using the example of a Muslim woman from Bangladesh. She was a child when she moved to New York City. Follow her story in which her personal identity takes on different aspects. Her identity has several dimensions. A Chinese American eventually leads her to follow Jesus. A multiethnic fellowship is involved. Eventually, she discovers an online community of believers. She is essentially discipled by this community.