We speak of unreached people
groups as these strange people in far away lands that we need to send
missionaries to. Some people have little apps on their webpage with the
"unreached people group" of the day, always an exotic location with an
unpronounceable name and a picture of someone wearing odd clothing with a note
about what a small percentage of people are Christians in that area. In many
ways this is a good and proper reminder of the importance of the work of evangelism, not
primarily digging wells but sharing the Living Water of Christ that redeems
from sin and rescues from hell. What I am concerned about with this notion of
"unreached people groups" is that it almost always focuses on people
who are far away in often unsettled or even dangerous areas.
This concerns me for two
reasons. First, it gives the impression that the Great Commission is all about
going "over there" and for the typical American Christian that is a
daunting task, one made all the more daunting by the way we frame the preaching
of the Gospel as the exclusive function of the clergy and professional
missionary. A short-term mission trip might be OK as a photo op and a check
mark on your religious bucket list but actual evangelistic mission trips are
out of bounds. This is compounded by the general embrace of the futile chasing
of the "American dream" by the majority of American churchgoers which
leaves little money and even less time to devote much to the service of God outside
of a hurried couple of hours on Sunday morning. The net result is that
"unreached people group" is code for "people you don't have the
time or training to evangelize so please make your check payable to....".
The more we divide the people of God from the mission of God the weaker the
church becomes. If you doubt that, please feel free to look around at the state
of the church in America
The second issue is a problem
of definition. Unreached people groups are not all or even mostly "over
there". Many of the most unreached people around can be found sitting in
pews on Sunday morning and therefore are quite reachable. Add to that the
millions of people who have had some sort of non-regenerative religious event
in their life but who have been told they are "saved" and the church
in America Utah Midwest . Of
course doing that might necessitate offending some of our new best friends in
the culture wars....
It is absolutely true that
there huge numbers of people groups who have never heard the name of Christ and
I am all in favor of equipping and supporting largely indigenous evangelists
and missionaries to reach them but it is also just as true that there are huge
numbers of people in the West with a tenuous religious linkage to our culture
religion who are just as lost as a tribesman deep in the jungle somewhere. You
don't get a pass on judgment because you were baptized as an infant or "made
a decision" for Christ once in a fit of guilt. Rather than teaching the
church that all of the lost people are in far away lands, unreachable by regular
people, we should be equipping our churches to reach the millions of
lost, largely unreached people right where we live. It is safer, easier and
more accommodating to a passive religious life to evangelize by check writing
but we do the church and the Gospel itself a disservice when we do. The reality of the mission field being both "there" and "here" demands a serious conversation and a major shift in how we think about, fund and carry out mission work.
Unleash all of the church to
reach all of the unreached, not just a little bit of the church to reach a few
of the unreached groups. There is plenty of opportunity for evangelism and
mission work to go around and most of it is within driving distance!
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