UNREACHED PEOPLE GROUPS

Throughout this booklet, we have considered massive physical needs in the world. Yet if we are not careful, we run the risk of ignoring people’s most pressing need —the gospel.

Jesus knew that as great as people’s earthly needs were, their eternal need was far greater. When a paralytic was brought to him on a mat, Jesus said to him, “Son, your sins are forgiven” (Mark 2:5). He used this opportunity to teach a paralyzed man and the people around him that the ultimate priority of his coming was not to relieve suffering, as important as that is. Instead, his ultimate priority was to sever the root of suffering: sin itself.

Because the gospel is the most pressing need in people’s lives, the gospel informs the fundamental purpose of our lives. We who know the gospel have been given the greatest gift in all the world. We have good news of a glorious God who has come to deliver men, women, and children from all sin and all suffering for all time. Therefore, we cannot —we must not —stay silent with this gospel. Gospel possession requires gospel proclamation.

The central mission of the church in the world, then, is proclaiming the gospel to the world, and there is much work to be done, not only in our culture but among people around the world. More than six thousand people groups are currently classified as “unreached” —a population of at least two billion people.

When will the concept of unreached peoples become intolerable to the church? What will it take to wake us up to the dearth of the gospel among the peoples of the world? What will it take to stir our hearts and lives for men and women whose souls are plunging into damnation without ever even hearing of salvation? This cannot be conceivable for people who confess the gospel. For if this gospel is true, then we must spend our lives and mobilize our churches for the spread of Christ’s love to unreached people groups all around the world. Jesus has not given us a commission to consider; he has given us a command to obey.

PRAY

Ask God to:

• Grant you boldness in proclaiming the gospel to people around you and around the world who don’t know Christ.
• Send out workers to other cultures and to open the door for many more unreached people groups to be reached with the gospel.
• Give many churches and Christians a burden to become involved in praying, giving, and going for the purpose of taking the gospel to the unreached.

PARTICIPATE

Prayerfully consider taking these steps:

• Give sacrificially through your local church so that missionaries and gospel efforts to the unreached might be supported.
• Plan to go on a short-term mission trip and ask God to clarify what your role should be in obeying the great commission.
• Support a missions agency, a translation team, or some other effort to get the gospel to unreached peoples.

PROCLAIM

Consider the following truths from Scripture:

• Matthew 6:9-10: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”
• Matthew 9:37-38: “[Jesus] said to his disciples, ‘The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.’”
• Luke 24:45-47: “[Jesus] opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, and said to them, ‘Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.’”

For more (and more specific) suggestions, visit CounterCultureBook.com/Unreached.