Perspectives Lesson 9 The Task Remaining

Any discussion about the remaining missionary task requires information and research, and that means the use of lots of statistics. Not too many people enjoy facts and figures. I certainly didn’t enjoy my statistics class at the university! However, numbers are important to missiologists, and they will be enlightening to you as we consider “The Task Remaining.”

This lesson is appropriately placed in the history section of the course. Lessons 6, 7, and 8 described the continuity of God’s actions from the 1st Century until the present time. From those lessons, I hope you have recognized how God has been persistently steering His purposes through human history in spite of the all-too-often disobedience and uncooperative behaviors of His people.

In our first few minutes of this session, we will take a another quick look back at the early centuries of Christianity in order to gain some momentum going into new material. My reason for doing this can be compared to the way I had to drive my VW Microbus in 1961. Overall, it was a wonderful vehicle for a growing family. However, it was very underpowered and when approaching hills, it was necessary to speed up so that you could get as far up the hill as possible without downshifting.

You have already learned about several unique individuals and groups who, through their activities and insights, developed the methods and techniques which made missions’ outreach more and more refined and effective. I will highlight some additional people and ways through which God worked in order to keep momentum going toward His goal of world evangelization. My purpose is to illustrate how missionaries through the centuries have used ever-more sophisticated and refined methods to help the Church advance the Kingdom of God.

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Ministry to Jews in JerusalemThe Apostles were, of course, the first to proclaim the Good News. The first audience was Jews in Jerusalem. Their only available Scriptures were the Old Testament writings. The early believers did not make a break from their cultural background. For about 12 years all their activities were centered at the Temple in Jerusalem.

Ministry Outside JerusalemIt was not until the stoning of Stephan that persecution forced the early converts out of the city into the regions of Judea and Samaria. Even though it must have been a difficult chaotic time for believers, Scripture declares that they did what Jesus had commanded: “those who had been scattered preached the word wherever they went” (Acts 8:4). Scripture explains that some of these believers “traveled as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Antioch,” speaking to both Jews and Gentiles (Acts 11:19-21). This was the first significant adjustment in outreach strategy.

Itinerant MinistryThis strategy was defined by Barnabas and Saul. Scripture states that while they were ministering at Antioch, they were singled out by the Holy Spirit to take the Gospel to far away places. They went first to the island of Cyprus, and then on into the interior of Asia Minor.

Itinerant ministry was a major development in fulfilling the Great Commission. Saul/Paul was just the best known of the itinerant evangelists of the generation following Pentecost. There were hundreds, probably more like thousands, of zealous believers who began to criss-cross the known world of the 1st Century. Within 50 years, Christianity had expanded as far as India to the east and to the African continent to the south, and into central Europe to the west. In spite of persecution and relocation, Christianity spread rapidly.

Growth Under PressureThere were continued substantial pressures put upon believers in the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Centuries by Roman authorities, but the growth of the Church continued to increase rapidly. In spite of official pressures and persecutions, people were evangelized and churches were planted in most areas of the Roman empire.

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Unfortunately, church growth hit a wall in the late 4th Century. At the instigation of Constantine, there was a marriage of state government to the Church. This was the beginning of what became known as Christendom. Believers did not handle the freedom and comfortableness of practicing their faith; the urgency and importance of evangelism was lost; the love of most believers became cold; and the eventual result was the so-called “Dark Ages” which lasted from roughly 500 AD to 1300 AD.

Strategies in the Middle AgesDuring the years of the so called Middle Ages, new strategies were required. God sustained His work through the activities of intrepid individual believers and monastic orders, and through unlikely directions. God raised up a number of outstanding, bold, and daring evangelists during the Dark Age years, just as He had raised up prophets in the Old Testament era and men like Barnabas and Saul in the early New Testament era.

Let me mention a few of these evangelists. Ulfilas, in the early 5th Century, was one of those unique people. He had an effective ministry among the barbarian Goths in the area of today’s Romania, with thousands of pagans becoming followers of Jesus. Another outstanding evangelist was Patrick, the later 5th Century missionary to Ireland. He spearheaded a movement by which His successors, Celtic missionary monks, spread out all over central Europe, Britain, and Scotland. These men were impelled by God to use new methods of appealing to listeners and set up new structures through which they carried out missions’ outreach.

Some historians consider Boniface, the Englishman who became the apostle to Germany in the 8th Century, to have had a deep influence on the Christianization of all of Europe. He was a very aggressive witness, utilizing the strategy of power encounters to promote the true God over false gods. On one occasion, he audaciously cut down the sacred oak of Thor at Greismar in Germany. This tree was the chief object of worship of the pagans who lived in that area. The oak was felled, nothing happened, and instead of killing Boniface, the watchers became convinced that the God of Boniface was stronger than the gods of their fathers.

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Jumping Forward to the 12th CenturyJumping ahead toward the end of the Dark Ages, various orders of the Catholic Church became involved in foreign missions. Raymond Lull has been identified as the first missionary to Muslims, although he was actually preceded by Francis of Assisi. They ministered in the 1200s. They practiced a quite radical approach in their evangelism of Muslims. They proposed that Christians should reach out to Muslims with love instead of the heavy-handed methods associated with the earlier Crusades.

Other innovating and enterprising missionaries included those from the Dominican order of the Roman Catholic Church, who traveled to the New World in the early 1500s, Francis Xavier who traveled to India in the mid-1500s, and Matthew Ricci who traveled to China in the late 1500s. These were men who rejected the common arrogant attitudes of Europeans, adapted to the cultures of their target groups, and had empathetic attitudes toward non-believers.

The Danish-Halle mission, established in 1706, was the first organized missionary undertaking in the history of the Protestant Church. The initial outreach of this organization was to India.

The individual who did the most to advance the cause of Protestant missions during the 18th Century was Count Nicolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf. He was more influential in the cause of world-wide missions than John Wesley and George Whitefield. Count von Zinzendorf founded the Moravian Church, the Church which launched a world-wide movement that set the stage for William Carey and the “Great Century” of missions’ outreach that followed. The Moravian Church organization recruited and trained potential worker and raised funds to get workers to their fields of service. The organization set the pattern for the activities of local church missions’ committees today.

I don’t have time to list more of the influential leaders of past centuries. I have given this quick overview of the history of Christian missions for a purpose — to call your attention to the fact that there were numerous innovative individuals who, through their activities and insights and unique ways of interacting with their target cultures, pushed forward the methods and practices of outreach evangelism, and brought enlightenment and greater understanding to believers in subsequent generations about how to think about and address the spiritual needs of the world.

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They raised the bar for outreach initiatives. God enabled them to be pioneers and “game-changers.” Their pioneering mentalities and innovative approaches defined and sharpened the focus of missionaries who followed in their footsteps. Incidentally, this is one of the reasons why it is important for aspiring missionaries to have a sense of history, a sense of the tradition and flow of missionary work.

Shifting Focus of Missions’ ActivitiesFrom the Reader you learned about the dramatic shifts in the methods of missions’ outreach in the 18th Century, how the focus of missions shifted from coastlands to inland areas, and from political nations to people groups, from passive attitudes about individual responsibilities to active participation in God’s purposes. The theological understanding of believers in regard to their individual missions’ responsibilities and techniques has gone through significant adjustments through the centuries. Believers today benefit from the more clearly defined and nuanced understanding about the needs and approaches of the missions’ enterprise, and can, therefore, be more effective than ever in accomplishing the goal of evangelizing the people groups of the world.

Other Important Considerations — Advances in TechnologyI will add one more extremely important consideration: The innovative approaches of missionaries has been aided immeasurably by advances in technology during the most recent 200 years. Missionaries have been quick to utilize new technological advances.

Think about the possibilities provided by printing presses, from Gutenburg to the sophisticated computer-aided equipment used today. Think about the impact that printed materials, Bibles, hymnals, commentaries, and other religious literature, have had in the hands of believers. After Cameron Townsend realized the potential impact that Bibles in the hands of the believers of every ethno-linguistic group could have, the very broad and important fields of linguistics and Bible translation have been applied to literally thousands of people groups.

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Think about the benefits made possible by computers to the work of linguists and to the cultural adjustments of ordinary missionaries. In my first couple of years on the field, I used up reams of paper in handwritten notes. Computers with culture and language acquisition software has made this learning process easier and quicker and more effective.

Think about the ease and quickness of international travel made possible by airplanes which replaced sea travel in getting to and from fields of service. Missionary aviation became a specialized and essential ministry in certain areas of the world, opening up difficult-to-access interior regions within such countries as Ecuador, Brazil, and Papua New Guinea.

Think about the impact that radio has had on the unreached and inaccessible people of our world. Short-wave broadcasts have been utilized by missionaries since 1930 to evangelize, teach, encourage, and sustain the faith of millions of people in the Middle East, the former Soviet Union, and into many countries where live missionaries were unable or unwilling to go. Even today, satellite TV, radio, and internet technology are the main sources of spiritual help for believers in countries like Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Non-Technical ConsiderationsThink about other areas of specialization that have enhanced missionary work: the opportunities that physicians have had in establishing a Kingdom presence in difficult-to-penetrate Muslim, Hindu, and Buddhist areas. And school teachers, and communication network engineers, and veterinarians, and many other professions.

Significant Changes in MethodologyThere is one more significant refinement in the work of outreach that I want to mention: the actual methods utilized in missionary outreach. Three hundred years ago it was the typical practice of missionaries to isolate new believers from their cultural surroundings. This was thought necessary in order to protect new believers from pressures inflicted by families and society, and to aid in their spiritual growth. As a result, missions’ activity was primarily centered on “mission” compounds,” sometimes referred to as “mission stations.” The methodology was one of “extraction evangelism.”

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The results of this approach were limited. God graciously brought individuals to Himself through that particular strategy, but there was very little indigenous led outreach, and no sweeping mass movements whereby entire people groups turned to Christ.

You read in the Reader about Donald McGavran. He was the key innovator to question the methodology of “extraction evangelism.” He declared that this traditional approach was ineffective for reaching and discipling masses of people. His research and statistical conclusions led to sweeping changes on the mission field.

The Church Growth methodology espoused by McGavran worked quite well compared to previous field methods. Missionary workers began to move away from the compounds in order to spend more time among non-believers. They researched their target communities to better understand felt needs and identify more appropriate connection points. New converts were encouraged to remain in their cultural networks, where they would be positioned to influence their families and friends and neighbors with the Gospel. The result was an accelerated expansion of the Kingdom of God.

Then in the 1990s, there was another significant improvement in outreach methodology. Disciple-Making Movements (DMM) sought the rapid multiplication of disciples who would make disciples leading to the establishment of indigenous churches which would establish more churches. This methodology has proven to be very successful, especially among resistant people groups in Muslim, Hindu, and African tribal regions.

There will undoubtedly be more future innovations in outreach strategies in the decades ahead. Innovation in missions’ outreach techniques evolved slowly during the Dark Age years, but after believers in the West became serious about the Great Commission in the 18th Century, the pace and effectiveness of outreach efforts rapidly increased. We can be thankful for the accomplishments of previous generations, and we can be thankful that modern methods and modern technologies have made possible the completion the task of worldwide evangelization.

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This completes my review of the past. We have completed the run up the hill, and are now shifting gears to address the main topic of this session — looking at the current situation. Between now and break time I want to present a snapshot of remaining needs. It will be your responsibility, and the responsibility of the generations after you, to complete the task of world evangelization. Old timers like myself are now physically limited. I once lived on the mission field, and traveled extensively to teach and train, but my present responsibility is to encourage new workers like yourselves to pick up the torch and move the process along.

Snapshot of the Current SituationThe ultimate goal of the followers of Jesus is explained quite specifically in Matthew 24:14 — to proclaim the gospel of the kingdom in all the world to all the people groups which have not yet been engaged. Only then will we come to the end of this age.

I want to introduce this new section by giving you the conclusion to which we will come: there is a long way to go before the gospel of the kingdom is preached in all the world to all ethne groups.

Some Basic StatisticsThere is no end to basic statistics which back up that statement. For example, in 1900, historians estimated that the Christian population of the world (Christians of all kinds) was about 33 per cent. In the year 2000, it was still about 33 per cent. In 2020 slightly under 33 per cent. Projections indicate that in 2050, unless conditions change dramatically, the world will still be in the 33 per cent range.

Looking at the number of people who have no access to the Gospel and who will probably never have a chance to hear the Gospel and respond to it in their lifetime, the estimate in 1900 was 54 per cent of the world’s population. Today that figure is roughly 30 per cent. This is, of course, good news since the percentage of people groups in the world with no access to the gospel has dropped significantly.

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However, there is a bad news side: in 1900 the total population of unevangelized people was 880 million. Today, due to population growth, that number has risen to more than 2 billion. In other words, while the percentage of unevangelized people groups has been cut nearly in half, the total number of people with no access to the Gospel has more than doubled. In this sense, the task has increased. The question is: Are we closer to the end of the age or not?

Measuring the Remaining TaskThere are several ways to measure the task of “making disciples in all the world,” and, according to some missiologists, all of the measurements, whether from the standpoint of church planting efforts among unreached people groups or other missions outreach activities, indicate that the followers of Jesus have been losing momentum. At a minimum, doesn’t it seem reasonable to assume that the number of new believers must exceed the annual growth rate of the population before we can say that there is progress? Everyone agrees that there is a desperate need for cross-cultural missionaries to initiate disciple-making movements whereby local disciples will then in turn seek the multiplication of disciples and churches will multiply churches and movements will multiply movements.

Is the Glass Half Full or Half Empty?I will acknowledge here that missiologists are divided in their opinions about the amount of progress which is being made. Ralph Winter and Bruce Koch, authors in the Reader, see the glass half full. I am inclined to see the glass half empty, at least as far as the Western Developed World is concerned. Let me explain why.

The article in the Reader is now 11 years old, and in these 11 years, there have been many changes in world circumstances. For example, the center of Christianity has shifted away from the USA and Europe. The number of new workers from the West is decreasing. The concerns of local churches for evangelical outreach is waning. The question some of us are asking is whether the missions’ momentum of the 80s and 90s can be ramped up again.

As members of the Church of Jesus, desiring to fulfill the conditions of Matthew 24:14, we must change how we are “running the race” if we want to reach the finish line any time soon.

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A Few More Current StatisticsHere are some more current statistics: According to figures used in the reader, there are an estimated 24,000 people groups on the planet. (Other research groups come up with different numbers based on other criteria.) In 2008, an estimated 8000 of the groups were still unreached. In 2020, the estimate is 6000, most of them not even yet engaged. In 1974, about 60 per cent of the world’s population was beyond the reach of the Gospel. In 2008, the figure was 40 per cent.

So What’s the Problem?These statistics represent amazing progress, but there is a downside: the work is not moving forward more rapidly because there are not nearly enough missionaries working with the unreached. The biggest problem is not the overall number of missionaries, but because 80 per cent of the world’s missionary force is concentrated in groups who are predominately Christian! There is an incredible imbalance in the distribution of the worldwide missionary force. Less than 10 per cent of the world’s missionaries are tackling outreach to Unreached People Groups. Think about this: only 3 per cent of the missionary force are engaged with Muslims, less than 1.5 per cent with Buddhists. These two religious blocs represent more than one-third the world’s population. I’ll speak more about this imbalance later.

Clarify Some TermsBefore I go on with my charts and statistics, I think I should clarify some terms which are used by missiologists. The Reader, pages 536 and 538, defines the most important terms. I will begin with the two most general and basic definitions and then go on to definitions which are more complicated.

People Groups —People Groups are “significantly large groupings of individuals who have a close affinity for one another based on their shared language, religion, ethnicity, residence, occupation, class or caste, situation, or combination of these.” These are commonly identified as “ethnolinguistic” groups. When the Bible speaks of “nations” it is primarily referring to people groups.

A specialized definition of a people group is given on page 97 of the Study Guide: “For evangelistic purposes, 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.”

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Unreached People Groups — are people groups “within which there is no indigenous community of believing Christians with adequate numbers and resources to evangelize within themselves without outside (cross-cultural) assistance.” Without a viable, indigenous body of believers able to evangelize from within, then E-3 level of evangelism is necessary.

People groups are unreached for several reasons. 1. Some are unreached because they are resistant to the Christian faith. The Muslim, Hindu, and Buddhist blocs represent the most difficult to evangelize.2. Some people groups are unreached because they have been neglected. For various reasons: geographical, political, and cultural, missionaries have been slow to address these groups. Primitive tribes in the Amazon and in the Sepik region of Papua New Guinea are examples.3. Mostly, however, people groups remain unreached because there have been too few Christians willing to invest their energies and time to make the effort to penetrate the barriers to get through to them.

The fact is that all the easy places have already been engaged by missionaries. From the standpoint of cross-cultural engagement, the task remaining is more difficult than ever. However, we must not think that the remaining task to reach the unreached is not impossible. In point of fact, there are more resources and technologies and sophisticated approaches available now than ever before. The problem is to get new missionaries to expend their efforts on groups in the unreached category.

The followers of Jesus Christ must think in terms of finishing the task, regardless of the difficulties. This is, of course, the Biblical way of thinking because future efforts will hasten the end of the age, and we know that all people groups will have representatives gathered around the throne of heaven before the end of the age. We have been assured of that truth according to Revelation 5:9 and 7:9.

Reached People Groups — These are groups which have an adequate number of indigenous believers and available resources to be able to evangelize within themselves without outside (cross-cultural) assistance. E-1 level of evangelism is happening. [Info about the E-Scale is on page 79 of the Study Guide and page 532 of the reader.]

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The authors in the Perspectives reader use another term to bring the task of evangelism into sharp focus: they refer to Unimax People. A Unimax people is “the maximum sized group which is sufficiently unified and cohesive to be the focus of a single people movement to Christ.” In other words, this definition takes into account the boundaries/limits to which a totally successful evangelistic movement is able to flow. “Unified means that there are no significant barriers of either understanding or acceptance to hinder the spread of the gospel to the outer limits of a people group.”

When you hear the figure, 24,000 people groups in the world, this is a Unimax number. There are many more Unimax people groups than ethnolinguistic groups. Let me use India as an example. There are more than 1600 major languages and hundreds more dialects spoken in India. The people of India are further divided by religion, caste, and other sociocultural and economic attributes, so much so that the number of Unimax people in India is actually in the neighborhood of 4600. Each one of these Unimax groups potentially requires a cross-cultural evangelist.

There are several other helpful definitions to remember, for example the contrast between Regular and Frontier Missions. Almost every outreach effort can be classified under one or the other of these two categories:

Frontier Missions — takes place among unreached people groups which have no known indigenous movements toward Jesus Christ. All work is pioneer and cross-cultural because of the lack of indigenous believers. For demographic simplicity, missiologists describe this category of people as comprising less than 0.1 per cent Christian (less than 1 out of a 1000 members). Frontier people groups are a subset of Unreached People Groups.

Approximately half of Frontier People Groups are designated “Unengaged” because no known mission organization has yet implemented a church planting strategy among them. Future missions’ efforts need to focus on this category. Frontier missions is the strategic priority in completing the overall task of world evangelization.

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Regular Missions — is cross-cultural work that helps spread the gospel within people groups where churches have already been established. The purpose is to bring believers to a high level of spiritual discipline. Typical examples of regular mission work are Bible translation, literacy training, leadership development, and community development.

The services of the missionary in this category are not of the pioneering or parenting type, but rather, are of the partnering and participant type. (If these terms have not previously been explained, please refer to page 74 of the Study Guide.]

Evaluating the Spiritual Needs of the WorldIn the next few minutes I will build a graphic which will help us to visualize the needs of the world. We must have some basic data before we can adequately evaluate the needs for missionary involvement.

Answers to the following questions will help us get the big picture:

1. Where are non-believers located?

2. Where can existing believers be found?

3. Can non-believers be reached by committed believers within their own culture?

4. Which groups of non-believers require outside missionary help?

5. What is the distribution of the existing missionary force?

6. Where are missionaries needed in order to complete the task?

The following series of graphs will illustrate the answers to these questions:

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The outer circle represents the overall population of the world. The gold color represents the number of evangelicals. Recent reports indicate that between 8 to 10 per cent of the world’s population is authentically evangelical.

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The yellow color represents individuals who identify as Christians, as opposed to some other religious bloc. Within this category are grouped Catholic, nominal, and cultural Christians. Together the gold and yellow represent nearly 33 per cent of the world’s population.

This graphic illustrates the geographical areas in which Christians live, and how much of the population of those areas is Christian. You will notice that several regions have Christian majorities. I will call to your attention that the number of evangelicals in Non-Muslim Africa is increasing rapidly at the present time, and the number of evangelicals in North America is decreasing. You will notice the limited number of evangelicals in Europe, an indication of the impact of the post-Christian era. That’s the direction America is headed.

I also want you to notice the number of evangelicals in India, China, and in Muslim Majority Countries. Evangelicals are a small minority in those areas.

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The pale green color illustrates the number of individuals who live in close proximity to other Christians. These are individuals who have connections to Christian neighbors, working associates, church fellowships, as well as access to religious television programs, religious printed materials, and other resources by which they could conceivably learn about Jesus and come to faith.

Missiologists acknowledge that there can be believers in Unreached People Groups. An Unreached People Group can have up to 2 per cent evangelicals (2 believers for every 100 people) and up to 5 percent people who identify themselves as Christians. These numbers are considered to be insufficient for believers to make an evangelistic impact on the people around them, hence the “unreached” designation.

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Statisticians inform us that a minority group must represent between 6 and 8 percent of the population before it begins to have enough strength to sustain itself in the face of adversity and opposition. Anything less than that means, for the purpose of missions’ accountability, the group is unreached and in need of outside cross-cultural help.

The surprise about this group is China. The distribution of believers throughout China is wide-spread, through both official and underground fellowships, so much so that most Chinese know where to turn if they want information about the Christian religion.

The next graph displays the areas of greatest missionary need:

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The blue color depicts individuals who are so far removed from Christian influence that at the present time they have no possibility of learning about Jesus. The blue color represents the Unreached People Groups (including Frontier / Unengaged) of the world. Approximately 40 per cent of the world’s population belongs to Unreached People Groups.

The majority of people within Unreached Groups are actually Frontier and Unengaged, which is to say that they will probably never be able to connect with a believer who will tell them about Jesus. Unreached Peoples require outside, cross-cultural help; that is, missionaries who will go to them, learn their language, evangelize and train, translate the Scriptures, etc.

The Predicament of the Present Situation And here we come to the predicament of the present situation. At the present time, only one missionary goes to an Unreached People Group for every 30 missionaries who are going to People groups considered “Reached.”

I want to state this contrast in several ways, in order to emphasize the severity of the situation, and I’m displaying this information in red to express alarm.

Number of missionaries per non-Christians

Among non-Frontier People Groups there is one worker for every 8,500 non-Christians. Among Frontier People Groups there is 1 worker for every 7 million non-Christians.

Another way of understanding this: 99 per cent of cross-cultural missionaries serve in non-Frontier areas. Less that 1 per cent serve in areas where Frontier People Groups live (where less than 0.1 per cent identify with Jesus). These figures are from late 2018.

Here is another way of understanding the situation:

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The estimated number of non-Christians per missionary in the major religious blocs:

1 missionary per 15,000 Tribals and Animists

80,000 individuals professing no religion

170,000 Buddhists

175,000 Hindus

300,000 Muslims

And yet another way of understanding the need:

Looking at the way American churches utilize financial resources:

85 per cent is used for internal purposes; 15 per cent for outreach

Most of the 2 per cent designated for overseas missions is for ministry among already Christianized people groups.

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The Number of Cross-Cultural Missionaries in the Global Workforce

Year 2000 420,000

Year 2018 440,000

Conclusion: Worldwide, the number of new missionaries has essentially plateaued. The number of new missionaries from the USA has slightly diminished.

There is a short video explaining the charts used in this presentation at https://joshuaproject.net/frontier. You will find a wealth of up-to-date missions’ information at the Joshua Project.

To summarize all this information with which I have bombarded you, the task of the followers of Jesus Christ is to make disciples within every people group on the planet. Our task is to establish a viable, indigenous church planting movement that has the potential of renewing networks of individuals and transforming entire cultures. There is a long way to go before the task will be completed.

As you go on break, I leave you with this thought: The Kingdom of God grows where it is sown. God wants both sowers and harvesters to work in His fields.

Break

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Now I going to flash several graphics which depict the locations of greatest needs. Information is from the 2018 Update Global Research Data of the Southern Baptist International Missions Board.

This first graphic depicts areas which are no longer considered unreached.

The next graphic depicts the Unreached People Group areas. According to the IMB definitions there are more than 7,000 groups with a combined population of 4.3 billion.

Notice that there are both red and orange dots in the graphic. The red dots represent groups which are not yet engaged; that is, there is neither an indigenous community of evangelical Christians nor outside church or mission organization which has implemented a church planting strategy.

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The next graph narrows the focus to just Frontier People Groups. It shows all the areas where there are no Gospel movements reported and the number of Christian adherents is less than 0.1 per cent.

The colors represent religious groups: red = Islam; blue = Hinduism; green = ethnic /tribal religions; orange = Buddhism. The total population represented by these dots is roughly 2 billion.

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By the way, the last graphic was published by the Joshua Project in mid 2019.

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