Faithful to the Unreached Peoples (1984)
A Panel Discussion from Urbana 84by Christy Wilson
Panel Members: Samuel Wilson, Ralph Winter, Greg Livingstone, Warren Webster
Wilson: Since your mission works with a specialized group, I'd like to start this morning by asking you, Greg, to give us a couple of illustrations of the way your mission spreads the gospel in different areas and groups.
Livingstone: In 2 Corinthians 10 Paul says our task is demolishing strongholds or fortresses. So we need to begin to think about the people of the world as being in fortresses that have big walls around them - walls that keep people out and walls that keep people in, walls that are cultural and walls that are social. There are thousands of people groups in the world which the Bible calls nations.
When Jesus said, "Make disciples of all nations" (Mt 28:19), he used the word ethnos, which means "ethnic groups" as opposed to "countries." There are thousands of such nations in some countries like India where we have three thousand different ethnic groups within one country. By this definition there is not a church in every nation. There is a church in every country, but there are thousands of nations or fortresses that still don't have their first church. So when we speak of reaching unreached peoples, we mean getting the first converts. This requires people who, like Paul, seek "to preach the gospel where Christ is not known" (Rom 15:20), among people groups who are only going to listen to their own people or someone who can become one of them.
Wilson: Ralph, what are the implications for missions strategy of this kind of understanding of people groups? Help us understand a little better.
Winter: The reason God speaks of nations rather than countries is that he's concerned about communication to every individual. Every individual in the world is part of a communication network that I liken to a telephone system. But now some of those telephone systems are out of communication with the world network. So to get to every person, you need to get the message into those networks. The reason these groups are emphasized at this convention is that they communicate efficiently within themselves. And God is efficient. He wants everyone to hear. The way to do it is not to go after every person, but to go after every people.
Wilson: Warren, your mission works at planting churches. Can you use that to help us understand what the task really is? What needs to happen with an unreached people?
Webster: Christian mission has been defined as the concern that where there are no Christians, there should be Christians. We might amplify the definition to say that where there are no churches, no indigenous, reproducing churches, there ought to be churches. As Greg pointed out, there are now Christians in every one of the world's 223 political nations and territories. But because in some places Christians are very few in number or the church is only represented by expatriate Christians, there are at least seven or eight nations where there are no indigenous churches at all. One of our concerns in reaching unreached people is to plant churches in any countries where the church has not yet taken root.
But when Jesus said, "Go and make disciples of all nations," he wasn't simply referring to modern nation-states. In biblical times, nation-states (political units with clearly defined geographic boundaries) were not as common as they are today. When the Bible speaks of nations it is not primarily referring to borders but to people - by their ethnic origins, by their language, by their group loyalty, customs, religion. So we must plant churches among each people group.
Just one example: in Senegal, a predominantly Muslim country in West Africa, you could ask, "Is the church there?" Yes, the church is there. There are probably two thousand evangelical Christians among six million people. But unfortunately, almost all of those Christians are found among three or four of the tribal peoples or biblical nations among the twenty-two distinct tribal peoples in Senegal. That's why our goal in missions must be a church for every people group and not simply a small congregation of believers in every nation on earth.
Livingstone: There are ten to twenty-five million Kurds in the world. They are hard to count because they are so dispersed. Old thinking says you can go to the Kurds in Munich since we can't reach them in Iraq. That is an alternative, but I don't see why we set aside as closed the millions of Kurds in Turkey, in Syria, in Lebanon and other countries. Jesus didn't say, "Go and make disciples of all the nation/people groups you can get a missionary visa for." I agree with brother Andrew who said there are no closed countries, no closed people groups, if you're willing to stay in those countries permanently and not come back out.
Wilson: Ralph, you are considered by many to be the father of this concept. I look at you and look in the mirror in the morning and wonder if maybe it ought not to be the grandfather of this concept. But how well accepted is the whole idea? Greg and Warren represent two agencies that accept it. But we've got eighteen thousand people here who are ready to go. Is it possible for them to get hooked up with a mission agency, zero in on a people group, and actually end up there?
Winter: Well, you asked several questions. Let me say this. First of all, I'm not the father of this. This comes right out of the Bible as we have already noted. It is a little embarrassing in modern missions for us to wake up to the fact that countries are not good enough; we really have to zero in on what Jesus was saying all the time. Most Christians, however, are found within a few people groups. Seven thousand people groups in the world have Christians within them. Another seventeen thousand don't. But this is the result of success. It wasn't that the missionaries by accident all went to the same peoples. They were so successful they got bogged down. But now those national churches can be the basis of a new outreach that will complete the job by the year 2000. And frankly, as I sit here with these people of different agencies (and we've got thousands of missionaries here, from many organizations), it is one of the spectacles of modern times that this idea has come through the mission world almost in what you would call a complete sweep. There are today no major differences of opinion as to definitions or how to do it or what to do about it. And I think it's an imminently feasible task. The number of people in this building right now are no less numerous than the number of mission fields yet to be reached.
Now I don't think it's quite practical for each of you to go and reach one of those seventeen thousand remaining groups. But notice how small the task is. The phrase "a church for every people group" was extended, actually, back in 1980 to "a church for every people by the year 2000." Here is the concept of closure. Never in history has Christ's command been more feasible to do, because of the widespread agreement, the widespread understanding, the collaboration. Mission agencies aren't competing. They're cooperating. This job is within our grasp.
Wilson: I want to comment on an easy error to fall into. It is easy to think of people groups only in terms of ethno-linguistic groups - people who have a different racial color or who speak a different language. But there are people groups in our own universities and cities that are cut off from understanding a witness to the gospel of Christ because no one lives Christianity in their kind of life. The group may not be racial. It may not be linguistic. It might be vocational. It might be a neighborhood. There are hundreds of ways that a group might be formed, and a Christian witness tailored by the Holy Spirit's leading to that particular group is necessary. And that's a place you can start to have a part. Sure, start with the students who have an Asian face on our universities or who come from Africa. Those groups need it too. But there are groups that surround us in the major cities whose life is so encapsulated, so enclosed, that they simply never really hear of Jesus. And we have a chance to work with those groups. Now, besides my reference to that, let's move on to some specific things that eighteen thousand volunteers might do. Warren, where would they start?
Webster: From the standpoint of strategy in reaching unreached peoples, what can we as students, we as churches, we as mission organizations do to reach these people groups? Greg made an interesting reference to the twenty-five million Muslim Kurds in the Middle East. These are people known to us in the Bible as the Medes. Yet they are almost totally unevangelized today. There are probably less than fifty believing Christians throughout twenty-five million Kurdish people. What can we do to reach peoples like that? Let me suggest two or three things. First, whether it's the Kurds or other peoples, we can begin by focusing prayer on them. Second, we can encourage men and women to get training in Muslim evangelism and then go to the effort to learn one or two or more of the Kurdish dialects to be able to approach them in their own language. Kurds are accessible today in Germany, in Lebanon, in Kuwait. Third, we need to locate and train some Kurdish believers in the West to prepare radio broadcasts and cassette tapes for distribution among the Kurds. Fourth, with Wycliffe Bible translators and other similar groups, we need to assess what can be done to get the Scriptures into the Kurdish languages. There is only one New Testament available in about one of twelve different Kurdish dialects. And finally, as a practical step, I would say that we need to begin preparing good Kurdish Christian literature in a script which they can read. Why should the Communists continue to have a monopoly on all the literature in the Kurdish languages?
Wilson: All excellent suggestions. Greg, I know you are just dying to get in here because you train teams to start looking at specific peoples and get them there.
Livingstone: I'd like to mention four seniors, single guys from Penn State, who heard the challenge of Libya. There were 1.3 million Libyans and not one known baptized believer in Jesus Christ among them. These four guys got people praying. They then started planning how God could fulfill his promise to do all things and get them into Libya to stay and to make a clear proclamation of who Jesus is and make disciples. In an answer to prayer, step by step, within a year they found themselves teaching English in Libya. Did they have opportunity to witness? They didn't have any opportunity for privacy! They had young men in their dormitory room all the time, asking, What does the Injil (the New Testament) teach about this? What do Christians believe about that? And the only time they weren't doing Bible studies or teaching English, they were in the homes of those students showing a Jesus film in Arabic. There are marvelous opportunities if we'll go after them.
Wilson: Beyond that, everyone who is in a university or near one has at hand some resources that are absolutely fabulous. We could begin to so fill ourselves up with information from libraries about some of these groups, so that we can give the Holy Spirit some way to work on our hearts to lead us to deep, committed prayer, perhaps one specific group. The challenge is there. Some might end up together as a group leading a people group to Christ by planting the first church among them. Ralph, do you have any further suggestions with prayer guides?
Winter: There are thirty-six mission agencies and denominations today who promote a little guide called the Global Prayer Digest. Each page is given over to a specific group. I remember reading about the Saluba. These, apparently are Crusaders who were left behind in the Middle East and are still there. They are not Arabs. I don't know what language they speak. They are quite separate from the rest of the people there. They have a cross, but they don't understand what it means. Someone needs to go and help them find out where they came from and what their faith once was. I would have never read about that if I hadn't been reading daily through that little Global Prayer Digest.
A church in Pasadena, Paul Cedar's church, produced a missionary handbook last January that lists all the missionaries that it supports - maybe forty or so - and also lists all the peoples with whom these missionaries are in contact - another thirty-five or forty peoples. You and your church can begin not just to pray and support missionaries but to add this new dimension through this Global Prayer Digest or through Operation World that Patrick Johnstone has prepared. Many tools today that never existed before will allow you to reach through to those realities and begin to set your hearts and affections on the things that God is concerned about.
Wilson: Eric Alexander was absolutely correct in calling our attention to the basic, the essential significance of prayer in all this. Gentlemen, any last, parting suggestions?
Webster: One concluding comment: I would remind all of us that unreached peoples are not just a concept to be defined. They are real men and women who are lost and need to be found. God wants to use us who are his children to find them. In the coming decade the church must make a top priority of getting the gospel to the third or more of the world's people who have not yet so much as even heard the name of Jesus Christ.
Livingstone: And I would like to add by quoting the general director of the North Africa Mission, who said that this is not an exercise in futility. The Lord promised, "I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it." And in the end of the book as it's been pointed out by John Kyle, there will be people from every nation there worshiping the Lamb.
Wilson: Hear the deep concern that rests heavy on our hearts that there are people in people groups who will not hear of Christ unless cross-cultural special effort is made to reach them. You can make that effort. And God can bless it.
Samuel Wilson is director of Missions Advanced Research and Communications Center (MARL), a mission and strategy agency that works with existing missions and churches to meet more effectively the physical and spiritual needs of the world. A former pastor and missionary, he has been engaged in missions research for over twenty years.
Ralph Winter is founder and director of the U.S Center for World Mission, a cooperative center for missions research and mobilization to reach hidden peoples, those people groups within which there is not yet any indigenous church. A noted missions innovator and strategist, he is a frequent contributor to Christian periodicals and, the author of several books, including The 25 Unbelievable Years, 1945-1969 and Perspectives on the World Christian Movement.
Greg Livingstone is the chief executive officer of Frontiers, a mission organization dedicated to developing new strategies for a penetrating witness among Muslims. Prior to heading up Frontiers, he served with Operation Mobilization and the North Africa Mission.
Warren Webster is general director of the Conservative Baptist Foreign Mission Society. A former missionary to Pakistan, he is a member of the International Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization, serving on the Strategy Working Group, and an active member of the Evangelical Foreign Missions Association.
Unless otherwise noted, all materials on the urbana.org web site are Copyright InterVarsity Christian Fellowship / USA. All rights reserved.
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