Josh Mann, May 8-9

You might notice that things look a little different this week. Things are going to look different for a couple of weeks...three in fact. Welcome to REACH. REACH is a multi-layered experience intended to inform us about God’s work among the nations and inspire us towards its completion. I’d encourage you to pay attention to the thoughts and feelings the next few weeks provoke.

You might have also noticed the scrolling names on the screen. What are those about? I’m glad you asked!

Jesus said in Matthew 24:14, “And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.” The original Greek word for nations is “ethnos” and refers not to an actual “country” but to an ethno-linguistic people group. He was saying that every culturally unique cluster of people on the planet would be preached to prior to the second return of Christ. This is in line with many references throughout scripture to His desire to bless every nation, for his glory to be known among the nations and for people from every tribe and language and people and nation to one day gather before the throne. That prompts the question, “How many people groups are there?” The world can be divided into 16 affinity blocs (i.e. East Asian) 251 people clusters (i.e. Japanese), and 16,349 people groups (i.e. Punjabi). According to joshuaproject.net, “a people group is the largest group within which the Gospel can spread as a church planting movement without encountering barriers of understanding or acceptance.” Of these 16,349 people groups, 6,644 are considered unreached or least-reached. That term is defined as, “a people group among which there is no indigenous community of believing Christians with adequate numbers and resources to evangelize this people group.”

There are two kinds of non-believers in the world today: those who do have access to learn about Jesus and those who do not. The unfortunate reality is that three out of four U.S. missionaries work among people who do have access to the gospel. Hence, a greater push towards awareness of and engagement with those groups that almost 2,000 years after Christ still haven’t heard of him. The names scrolling on the wall are those 6,644 groups. The first column is the name of the group, the second column is the name of the country in which they live, the third column is the size of the group and the fourth column is the percent evangelical.

This list is both daunting and haunting. But be encouraged. Your people group used to be on that list; it’s not anymore. God has been faithful in empowering regular people to cross cultural barriers to show and tell the good news for centuries. Judging by the length of that list, I don’t think He’s done––nor do I think we’re done.