USA (MNN) — We talk a lot about the Great Commission here on Mission Network News. While we love equipping you to help meet the remaining global needs, it’s good to celebrate along the way, too.
For example, “Great progress has been made, and many people groups do have a functioning national and indigenous Church,” says head of Missio Nexus, Ted Esler.
“It was ‘[From] the West to the rest’ [and] now it’s ‘From everywhere to everywhere.’”
Yet Esler says the final task that Jesus gave us is far from complete. “We still have some enormously large people groups ranging in the millions of people that have no Christian witness,” he notes.
On the other hand, global connectivity and information access are at a historic high. Gospel resources are now available in most of the world’s majority languages. Mass migration is bringing non-Christians into believers’ backyards.
Is it fair to say that, given current trends, there’s really no such thing as a truly unreached people group? “I don’t think you can argue that there are no unreached people groups because there are about 1,300 [UPGs] that have over 100,000 people in them [with] no known church,” Esler says.
“There’s close to 1.9 billion people living inside of what we would call ‘frontier’ unreached people groups – those that are not only unreached but as far as we know, nobody is actively present inside those cultures trying to reach them.”
Now that you know, ask the Lord what He wants you to do. If you have further questions, consider connecting with Missio Nexus.
“Just like our culture in the West is in massive change, global mission is in massive change,” Esler says. “Helping people understand and think through the ramifications [of] that for their global ministry is a large part of what we offer.”
Header image is a representative stock photo courtesy of Artem Beliaikin via Unsplash.
