Today our pastor Matt Hawkins (North Ridge Community Church) spoke on lost people groups and characteristics believers need to impact the lost globally. In his sermon, there were several statistics that stressed the importance of what we are doing at Third Lens Ministries.
Most of the data was received at an International Missions Board conference Pastor Matt attended in February. I thought I would share them with you to show just how much work there is to be done in global missions and how much opportunity there is to impact lives for the Kingdom.
What is a people group?
“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” (Source: 1982 Lausanne Committee Chicago meeting.)
In most parts of the world lack of understandability acts as the main barrier and it is appropriate to define people group primarily by language, with the possibility of sub-divisions based on dialect or cultural variations. Such a list may be referred to as an ethno-linguistic list of peoples.
In other parts of the world, most notably in portions of South Asia, acceptance is a greater barrier than understandability. In these regions, caste, religious tradition, location, and common histories and legends may be used to identify the primary boundary of each people group. Language can be a secondary boundary. (Source: www.joshuaproject.net)
The Facts (from the IMB missions conference):
There are 11,000 distinct people groups in the world. Of those groups, 6,400 are unreached, meaning that less than 2% of the people group are believers. Of those unreached groups, 3,500 are also unengaged, meaning there is no known church, missionary or strategy in place to reach them
How engaged are SBC churches?
46,000 churches are a part of the Southern Baptist Convention. Only 118 are actively seeking to impact an unengaged people group
What can you do?
Pray for God to use you and your church to reach these people groups.
Contact your pastor or missions director about going on a mission trip or leading one.
If your church doesn’t have a mission program, help start one.
Engage other believers to get excited about serving in missions.
Paul wrote of his excitement in seeking the unreached people of his time: “It has always been my ambition to preach the gospel where Christ was not known, so that I would not be building on somone else’s foundation” (Romans 15:20 NIV)
Ask yourself this questions: How can I build Christ’s foundation where no one else has?
Third Lens is here to help!
Third Lens exists as a conduit between churches desiring to serve, suffering people groups and ministries in need of facilities. If your church is interested in finding out about future mission trips with Third Lens, please contact me at brian@third-lens.org.
Brian O’Neil
