Many ministries focus on how they can bring the Gospel to a population of people known as “the unreached.” But who qualifies for that name? How unreached are the unreached?
According to Ed Weaver of Spoken Worldwide, “At least in the terms that I think [are] generally accepted in mission circles, it would be 2% or less evangelical believers in a given population or people group.”
This definition operates on the idea that if a people group’s evangelical population reaches 2% or higher, “there’s a sense that there’s enough local church momentum to be able to take over the mission of the Gospel to that people group,” Weaver explains. “There’s enough critical mass, if you will.”
But if a local Church only makes up 2% of a people group, are they really equipped with the skills, resources, and contacts they need to effectively reach their neighbors with the Gospel? There may be believers, but growing Christian networks need Bible schools, seminaries, Scripture translations, and more to “really deepen the existing believers’ basis in Scripture.”
Then you come to Spoken Worldwide’s focus: oral populations. In some cases, a people group may rely primarily on oral learning. However, they may have only been provided with written resources and discipleship tools.
That means “the ability to expand the number of believers, to expand the capacity of disciple-making, to expand the capacity of church planting, and those people groups can be extraordinarily limited, but yet it falls on the category of a reached people group, because it’s more than 2% Christian.”
SOURCE: Mission Network News, Alex Anhalt
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