Why Unreached People Groups?

No group of laborers on the planet has more field experience with the remaining 6,688 unreached people groups than current and former US military members.  

A people group is a significantly large group of individuals who perceive themselves to have a common affinity with one another.  For evangelization 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.  "Unreached people groups" are those groups whose populations contain only a very small percentage of people who follow Christ (2% or less).  Within an unreached group, there is no indigenous community of believing Christians able to evangelize this people group as they have little to no opportunity to hear a clear presentation of the Gospel.  As of August 2016, there are 6,688 unreached people groups in the world according to the Joshua Project.

These 6,688 people groups represent more than three billion people who have little or no access to hearing the Gospel.  These people often lack access to disciples of Christ, Bible-believing churches, missionaries, Bibles in their language, and gospel radio, television, literature and other resources. Where are unreached people groups (and unreached people)? Most unreached people groups are in a region known as the 10/40 Window.  This is an area covering North Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia between 10 and 40 degrees north latitude. This window includes the followers of Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, as well as millions of nonreligious people. Roughly two-thirds of the world’s population, including the world’s poorest of the poor, lives here on about one-third of the earth’s land mass.

Sadly, 90% of all Christian foreign missionaries serve among reached or evangelized people groups while only about 10% serve among the unreached.  Most missionaries are among Christianized people and smaller, significantly disproportionate numbers of missionaries are among the unreached of other major world religions.  To reverse this 90%/10% imbalance, mission sending organizations need to pursue an overlooked pool of laborers (current and former military members) who have significant field experience with these 6,688 remaining unreached people groups.