This past week, DOXA.Life released a global prayer and mobilization initiative focused on seeing every unengaged people group reached with the gospel by 2033.* The site invites churches, networks, and individuals to pray, give, and help prepare the way for gospel workers among peoples with no known active missionary engagement. Users can select an unengaged people group and receive daily prayer points, including Scripture-centered themes, field-based prayer needs, photos, stories, testimonies, and background insights. DOXA.Life says its goal is 24-hour prayer coverage for each of the more than 2,000 unengaged people groups it tracks. Visit https://doxa.life/ to explore the prayer resources. Look for it on your favorite app store too! Choose a people group to pray for today! (Click “read more” to learn more about the fact that this concept of “the unengaged” is contested.)
*Note that the concept of the unengaged is highly contested. Many of the 500-or-so agencies who participated in the Finishing the Task initiative would argue that practically all people groups have now been engaged by some Gospel initiative. In fact, they (Finishing the Task) would have written records of ministries having made these engagement efforts. See for example, https://www.globalfrontiermissions.org/missions-101/the-unreached-peoples-and-their-role-in-the-great-commission, where GFM reports, “According to Finishing the Task, there are 189 unengaged, unreached people groups, numbering over 5.7 million souls, that are still beyond the reach of the Gospel. These 189 ethnic groups are perhaps the neediest of the needy as they are unengaged, which means that no one – no church, no missionary, no mission agency – has yet taken responsibility to tell them about Jesus Christ.” However, Joshua Project, for its part, has been influenced by the thinking of others who discount some (many?) of these engagements. As a result, Joshua Project talks about the unengaged at https://joshuaproject.net/unengaged, reporting that there are 2,197 unengaged people groups. Is it a contradiction? Maybe. But maybe not. Finishing the Task would likely consider a group as having been engaged if it has (at one time or another) been engaged – even if no one responded. Joshua Project, for its part, would describe unengaged as ” there are no reported efforts focused on establishing self-sustaining churches consistent with evangelical faith and practice,” regardless of whether or not these efforts have taken place at some point in the past. So Finishing the Task considers past initiatives as “having engaged” the group. Joshua Project is measuring “Current sustained engagement.” What does this mean? It means that a group might have been engaged at some point in the past and then, for whatever reason, go back on the list of the unengaged simply because the past effort was unsuccessful – and then folded. Here at Brigada, this feels to us like this measure might result in some “moving targets.” It might also result in one ministry reporting that, “There are no more unengaged groups,” while another ministry says otherwise. We deeply regret this difference and wish it could be resolved. It all boils down to your definition: Does “unengaged” include past tense engagements? What’s *your* opinion? Click comment below and share your feelings.
I have been reflecting on these issues for some time now. In my view the bottom line is as follows: Has that particular ethnic group been engaged at some point in history? If it has we cannot consider that particular group to be unengaged just because there is no current effort to get a self sustaining indigenous church into existence. On the basis of this I would dare to say that the lower statistic (approximately 190 ethnic groups) would probably be more accurate.
(I am a cross cultural worker and taught Cultural Anthropology at a Bible College in Italy for some 20 years – from 1998 to 2020).