The Unreached in Your Community: Four Principles for Ministry

3/4/2025

Last week, I introduced Google Maps as a tool for discovering the unreached people living in your city or region. However, finding the unreached around you is just the first step. We need to find ways to engage these communities with love and gospel witness. Today, I’d like to introduce four principles that will lead to loving engagement as you go out into the harvest—the places you’ve discovered using Google Maps.

Four Principles for Gospel Engagement:

Enter every situation with a posture of learning.
Approach every interaction with an attitude of love.
Default to listening first.
Engage with the gospel through discernment.

Learning
As you go out into the community, be intentional about adopting a posture of learning. One of the greatest kindnesses we can show to new Americans—whether refugees, immigrants, or international students—is to take a genuine interest in their lives and cultures. To do this, you’ll need to reflect on your own preconceived stereotypes and be careful not to make assumptions about the people you meet.

In Acts 17, the Apostle Paul spent time exploring Athens, learning about its people and beliefs. He discovered an altar to the “unknown god” and used that cultural reference as a bridge to share the gospel in a way the Athenians would understand. In the same way, we should become cultural detectives, searching for the fingerprints of God in different cultures to understand the deep beliefs, desires, and needs of those we encounter.

Action Steps for Learning:

Visit cultural markets, restaurants, and events to build familiarity.
Learn a few phrases in their language.
Read books or watch documentaries about their home country and culture.
Connect with those experienced in cross-cultural engagement.

Love
As you enter the community, approach every interaction with an attitude of love. Everyone you meet is an image bearer, known by God before they were born. Their differences do not change this truth.

One of the top reasons former Muslims cite for leaving Islam and following Christ is the tangible love of a Christian in their lives. If you are wondering how to love well in cross-cultural relationships, consider 1 Corinthians 13:4-7:

"Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres."

This passage serves as a rubric for love. When unsure how to act or think in a relationship, return to this list and ask the Lord to help you embody these attitudes and actions.

Action Steps for Loving:

Regularly support their businesses.
Offer practical help (transportation, tutoring, navigating life in a new country).
Celebrate their cultural festivals and important traditions.

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Listening
One of the best ways to both learn and love is to listen to people’s stories. Everyone has a story, and most long to be heard.

I remember taking a pastor into a Somali-owned restaurant one day. After a wonderful meal and two cups of Somali tea, I asked the owner how he liked living in America. He lifted his shirt to reveal a scar on his belly—a gunshot wound. He then showed us another scar on his leg. He told us how Al-Shabab soldiers attacked his village, killing the adults and taking the young boys and men. He was shot twice and left for dead. But someone found him, cared for him, and helped him get to the Dadaab Refugee Camp in Kenya. Years later, he was granted refugee status and brought to the U.S.

That had happened over twenty years ago. He went on to tell us about his oldest children, twins, who were in university, and about his businesses—a restaurant and a car dealership. With great emphasis, he told us, “I love America.” His story was far more powerful than I had anticipated when I asked, but it was his story to tell, and I was honored to hear it.

Action Steps for Listening:

Ask open-ended questions:
- What brought you here?
- What do you miss most about home?
- What traditions are important to your family?
If you hear of a hardship or problem, avoid jumping to solutions. Just listen.

Discernment
I once heard it said that evangelicals are often so eager to share the good news that we rarely take the time to hear a person's bad news first. Yet, when we listen, love well, and learn, we prepare ourselves to partner with the Holy Spirit in discerning how best to plant seeds and share the gospel. When we invest this time, we often find that when a person does come to faith, their discipleship journey has already begun organically.

A friend once told me that in cross-cultural relationships, "It's not until the fifth tea that anything significant happens." He didn’t mean the fifth glass of tea but the fifth occasion of sitting down together over tea and conversation—the fifth time of listening, loving, and learning. The more we listen, love, and learn, the more we will see our prayers answered as natural opportunities to share the gospel arise. If we prayerfully persist in being present, God will show up.

Action Steps for Discernment:

As you learn, love, and listen, pray daily for the Holy Spirit to reveal what He is already doing in the lives of those you meet.
Take time to do prayer walks around neighborhoods where you meet the unreached in your city.
Read the book of Acts, imagining what it would look like in your context.

Crescent Project founder Fouad Masri once said, "90% of Muslim ministry is just showing up." So much of reaching the unreached in our cities is simply a ministry of presence.

Step through the door. Say hello. Ask good questions. And then do it again and again and again.

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