The Unreached: Why ARen't We Focused

Last week I listened to an interview with Justin Long on The Missions Podcast. The topic was a discussion of what is meant by the term “Unreached.”  Justin is the Director of Global Research at Beyond. He’s a missiologist, researcher and statistician whose handle on the numbers of lost in our world is quite helpful.

I wanted to share something that Justin challenged the listening audience with. There are nearly 3 billion unreached peoples in our world today. Despite this reality, the majority of missionaries and mission spending continues to go into work in countries and among people groups where the church is already established. This leaves the nearly 3 billion unreached with very little access to the saving news of the gospel.

Here was Justin’s challenge.

​If there is so little effort put toward reaching the 3 billion unreached in our world then one of a number of options must be true.

1. Either God doesn’t care about the unreached and so He is not calling anyone to go to them.
2. Or God does care and He is calling His church to go to the unreached but we either a) are unaware of the realities of 3 billion people outside of access to the gospel or b) are somehow too distracted to be able to hear God’s call or  c) are being disobedient to God’s call.

The first option does not reflect the heart of God and so we are left to wrestle with the second options.

The interview is one that I want to invite anyone involved in mobilizing the church toward work among the unreached to listen to. It will do much to bring clarity to our understanding of unreached, a term that is increasingly being used in all sorts of context. Justin and the hosts do a great job of teasing out the nuances of what we mean when we talk about the Unreached.

[Listen Now]

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Further Resources

• Your In Charge Activity  (part 2)
• The Nuances of the Unreached Definition by Justin Long 
• David Platt on the Unreached 
• Reclaiming the Meaning of Unreached by Marvin Newell 
• What Unreached is Not by Justin Long 
• Balance by Justin Long 
• What We Mean by Unreached by Zane Pratt of the IMB 
• 100 Largest Unreached People Groups List at Joshua Project 
• 31 Largest Unreached People Groups Prayer Guide
• Understanding the Remaining Missions Task​​