I was recently at a missions conference and had the privilege to spend a few days with fellow unreached people group researchers. One was with the International Missions Board and the other was from the U.S. Center for World Mission.

After talking for a few hours about collaboration, I suggested that we all put a date by our scales. This is needed in order to communicate to other mission movements. It does not require that other research efforts accept my scale. It does not require that I be allowed access to sensitive data. It is a simple year date hand entered next to the reached status or scale.

• Aimaq, Jamshidi; Reached status: Unreached [2008] – This year date next to a reached status scale is the last time someone closest to the people group confirmed that the group was unreached.
• Aimaq, Jamshidi; Reached status: Some Progress [2011] – This year date next to a reached status scale is date that this scale was changed.

Here are some suggested guidelines.

1. The year date should be changed by hand and not a formula.
2. This information comes from someone closest to the people group.
3. If we do not know the date is should be [xxxx].
4. Dates can and should be changed even when the scale remains the same if that scale is confirmed in that year. This shows the mission movement the most recent data as well as where we need to do more research.
5. Do not change your old dates, they are good for the research and mission movement.
6. The tendency is to complicate something simple or to automate it. This should not be made more complicated or automated.

I began doing field research in Mexico in 1999. I began putting the dates on the scales the year that visited the people group. I also put dates on the scales the year the information was gathered from other research efforts. We still have dates on people groups from [1992]. You can do a search on this page for 1992 to see what our research priority would be in Mexico. http://es.etnopedia.org/wiki/index.php/México

If a church or agency wanted to adopt a people group that was unreached, they would be more likely to choose an unreached group that had a recent data, say [2008] or [2011].

To this day, the date helps us prioritize field research. In 2010 and 2011 we began to visit tribes that had old dates on their scales. We visited three Zoque tribes in Chiapas as their dates were from [1992]. Now they are [2011].

When a field missionary or a reliable source has been in a group and confirms or changes the reached status, we put the current year. E.g. [2012]. Our rule is that we database administrators, must have first hand information in order to change a date or a reached status. A field researcher who knows his or her network well, may be able to make changes with solid second hand information. Personally, when we are updating “unreached peoples” we only use first hand information.

An example of first hand information would be a database administrator updating that information while talking directly to a field missionary or a reliable Christian source that has personally been in the people group. The database administrator, or field researcher is simply doing the work of updating. The information comes from the field.

We have tried for years to get people to update the information on their people group(s) and have had little luck. Database administrators and field researchers are still needed. The field missionaries do not see the need to communicate to the rest of the world the state of their people groups. Where there are no missionaries, that is where the field researcher has to go to the people group to find out. This data is not perfect but it is the best data we have to offer the mission movement.

I remember the first time I printed the people group list for a missionary conference. All the people groups were in a photo copied book with populations, scales and the date. I will never forget the reaction of a few people. They said, “Look at these dates, they are embarrassing!” I being the person in charge of research, should have been the one embarrassed, but I commented that I need to see those dates in order to know how good my information is.

I have recently thought that we need to put the most accurate dates on all our people group lists. This data may not be possible to get. So you were to put at least [2010], in just a few short years you will begin to see the age of your scales. Currently Etnopedia has [2008] on most of its scales. This is the year that we moved all our profiles from a Spanish only system to a Multilingual. It was the last year that we checked a reliable Christian source.

Sourcing your dates and scales is also recommended but we don’t want to ask too much of a research effort. You have enough work to do.

We cite the sources where we get our scales (and the date [2012]) on the discussion page of each people group on the English Etnopedia. Click the discussion tab.

At this point we have updated our scales (changing the date to the current year) when we check a major research effort. I am not sure this works, but it is the best data we have available to us and it tells us the last time we checked a major source. I have spent many hours thinking about if this is the thing to do, and so far it is the best I feel we can.

Here is another example of how dates can help on Etnopedia: An IMB field missionary updates their reached scale in the CPPI/GSEC to 2012. Someone from the Etnopedia team updates the date on that people profile on the English portal. Then the German portal team updates their people profile. The Spanish portal team, the Russian portal team, the Indonesian portal team all update their profiles. Different missionary movements are now able to see this new data.

The Proposal

This is a proposal to all major and minor unreached people research efforts to hand place a year data next to your reached status scale.

If you will add this simple field, other research efforts and mobilization efforts will be able to update their information with more accuracy. It won’t be easy to see all those old dates or blank dates on your data, it could even be a bit embarrassing but it will push us all to get up-to-date information. It will also force us to build a stronger network where we have none. It will help prioritize field research and most of all, it will help missionary senders make better decisions.

We have been trying for years to mobilize people toward unreached people groups. I have worked for over ten years in the Adopt-A-People campaign and thought many times that something is missing. I may have finally found what it is. It has to do with a personal encounter with the idea. We truly need to consider going ourselves to an unreached people. It doesn’t mean that we have to go, just that we seriously consider it. In the new Adopt A People movement in Latin America we call it the filter.

Everyone, mobilizers, old folks, pastors, youth leaders, soccer moms, kids, everyone needs to get into the filter.

Last year my wife and I were invited to a Wycliffe event in Orlando Florida. They paid all our expenses to go to a wonderful meeting to see what God is doing in the Bible translation effort. Several New Testaments were presented, live bands played and for three days they motivated and encouraged the assistants to concentrate all our energies on finishing the Bible translation by 2025. All the former presidents of Wycliffe Global Alliance were there. The oldest spoke for about 15 minutes and what he said impacted me. He and his wife began praying over 20 years ago for one of the Bibleless peoples. It is now called the Last Language Initiative. Back then, people just chose a language from the list and commited to do something. Less complicated. The former president of Wycliffe knew that they may not go personally as translators, but they chose a language group and began to pray. He announced during this meeting that after many years, the Bible was in finally in the process of translation. This is what EVERYONE must do,, something. This is a pretty common concept in many things but we can’t seem to do it as a Christian movement in respect to unreached peoples.

Everyone must get into the filter and choose a group.

Your group is yours and you will not cease until a missionary effort is there. It does not mean that you yourself will go, but I think that during the process of your filter, you need to at least consider that you might have to be the answer to your prayers. But you will pray, support, maybe take a short term trip, or give money toward the reaching of that people group.

So what is the filter?

1. Choose your religion.

This may take a while, you are going to research, pray, and get in your mind the religion. Then based on that you are going to

2. Choose your country. 

You will pray, research and wrestle in your heart and mind about the country that you are going to do something about.

3. Then choose your people group. 

Now you will choose the people group that will be your people group. You don’t ever need to tell anyone if you don’t want. This is the people group that you are going to fight for until they have the Gospel among them. Again it doesn’t necessarily mean that you will go but that you will do something. You will be eating, sleeping and dreaming about this people group. You will become the expert on that group and will tell everyone you know about them. You will make entire powerpoint presentations about them. Most importantly you will not stop until Christ is made known among them, in their heart language and a church is established.

The process of going through the filter may take 3 months, it may take six months it may take a year. It doesn’t matter. You are in the filter is all that matters. Being in the filter is where God can speak to you. You may just be the key that opens the door to this unreahced people.

Choose the smallest population that you can find of a people group. This will insure that you are the only one or very few praying. Population means nothing. The people group will not ever hear or know about Jesus without your help. If the country that is on your heart has thousands of unreached people groups, don’t let yourself get confused just pick one.

Once you have your people group chosen you can look for other individuals, churches or organizations that are out there doing something about that group. Maybe you can help a missionary or the missionary candidate get trained. Maybe you can find a church in another country that is preparing missionaries and send finances. It doesn’t matter, you are doing something. The problem with the missionary movement is that we think that the missionary is the only one that is going to do something. EVERYONE needs to be doing something to help fulfill the great commission. If there is no one else doing anything, you have just become strategic. God has placed you in that niche where there is no one else.

The Amdo people in Tibet (China)

Tonight at the dinner table my wife and I were talking about the requirements for someone in the Adopt a People campaign. (a.) They need to be someone who eats sleeps and breathes unreached people groups. (b.) They need to have passed through the filter and (c.) they need to get others into the filter. Then she (being very quick to think as she always is) “So what is your people group?” I said without hesitation “The Amdo in Tibet”. For years they have been on my heart. They are my people group. If someone said today that I have to do to a people group and I cannot do anything else, all the training and expenses are taken care of, where would I go? Well I have an answer because I have passed through the filter. I would say the Amdo. The Amdo people are actually a grouping of many ethnic groups and still several unclassified languages. No one knows how many people groups or languages exist among them. So I would have to say that more specifically my people group is the Amdo, Rongmahbrogpa. [1] [2] [3] [4]

Get into the filter and choose your group. Then you need to promote the filter and ask others, “Have you chosen your people group yet?” Don’t complicate it, just jump in.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxm2obArsBs

Kalash / Bashgali 15,000 people

This past week we had the pleasure of having Duane F. of the Joshua Project in our office. Duane is concerned and confirms what I have been hearing more and more;  Individual unreached people groups are too small and numerous to focus on. I have also heard things such as “small people groups need to be merged back into the languages they speak” and ”unknown groups should to be removed from the databases when we don’t have enough information on them.” Consider this. Half of all the worlds known people groups are under 25,000 in population and one quarter of all the worlds people groups are below 2,000 in population. Many of these groups are small and we have little information on them. So what do we do about it?

Many are focusing on people clusters and are not in any way moving away from the individual unreached peoples. However the purpose of this article is to help bring a balance to those who might be losing their enthusiasm or focus on individual peoples. I also want to take the opportunity again to highlight small unknown people groups. Remember that our enemy only wants to divert us one inch so that five years from now we are completely derailed. So if you find yourself less and less concerned with individual people groups this article is for you.

Because of the size and lack of information on small unknown people group, I am seeing a trend to move toward focusing only on people clusters. Not everyone, just a few. But these few happen to be very influential people and this is what concerns me. I believe in people clusters and affinity blocs but let’s not go to the extreme. There are good reasons that we need to focus on them but we cannot go as far as marginalizing or removing small individual peoples groups from our data. People clusters are simply a group of many ethnic peoples that share something in common, culture, language, geography. Some examples would be the Kurds or the Berbers or Rajputs. Those people clusters have hundreds of individual people groups within them. So we have some options. We can focus our efforts on clusters, or on large individual people groups or on small individual groups or all of the above. We shouldn’t go to one extreme or the other. Why focus on individual unreached people groups when there are so many?

First of all, There are more small people groups than there are large people groups.

These photos are of an unknown people group called the Kalash or Bashgali. There is confusion about how many people groups there are and what languages they speak etc. See:  [1] [2] [3] [4 video] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] Research is still needed in order for missionaries to reach all the different groups. We need to remember that we have not yet identified all the people groups and languages. The Joshua Project will soon be exceeding 10,000 people groups. The number of people groups is slowly increasing because we are finding more and more. The addition of peoples and languages is discouraging to us missionaries. It is especially discouraging when we are trying to count down to the last unreached people group, or when we have an inner desire to see the Great Commission finished in our lifetime. The latter is not a bad thing as long as we don’t try to hide the real numbers of unreached peoples or Bible translation needs in order to achieve our goals.

Do we need to have every people group in our database? Yes. Some would say it is impossible to have every people group in our database. That is true. However we need to have as many people groups as we can in order to highlight them, profile them, promote them and send missionaries to them. I would suggest that the large peoples, especially those over 100,000 already have something going on, we just don’t know it. It’s because we have highlighted them the most. As a result many missionaries are going to people groups where something is already going on. A people group where I live has two entities translating the Bible for them (two translation efforts).

If you want to go to a people group and be almost for certain that no one else is there, choose a small people group. What is small? Well, half of all the worlds people groups are under 25,000 in population so I don’t know if we can consider those groups small. One quarter of all the worlds people groups are below 2,000 in population. Are they small? I don’t consider them small when they are one quarter of all the known peoples. But for now, we will consider under 25,000 people small. Missionary sending efforts will be continue to be duplicated if we keep sending to the larger people groups, those over 100,000 in population. In the meanwhile those who have never had the chance to hear will be waiting and perishing. We cannot keep duplication from happening but we can lower it by doing two things, keeping the small people groups in our databases and by highlighting them. We need an app called “Small Unknown Unreached People of the Day”.

It is more likely that someone will provide data on small groups if we keep them on the radar. 

It is important that we keep adding all the people groups that we can now. New groups are going to be small. The large groups are already identified. In fact many of the large people groups are not people groups, they are clusters of many people groups. Furthermore, we need to keep small groups on the radar because in many cases, they are not as small as reported. Occasionally it is to the advantage of the government to hide numbers of people groups during a census.

We cannot expect the next generation to go to the small people groups if they are not on the radar. The next generation must be taught to take into consideration people groups of all sizes. We cannot get into the habit of removing seemingly insignificant people groups no matter how little information we have about them. It would do all researchers some good to get out and walk among five or six small unknown unreached people groups. A population of 5,000 people doesn’t seem like a lot when you are looking at a spreadsheet. It is a little different when you get out an walk through their villages. I live three hours from a large cluster of unreached peoples all with small populations. Come down and I will personally take you to them. It doesn’t matter how small or unconfirmed they are. We need to hold on to them. If we do, it is more likely that someone will provide more data on them. 

It is hard to believe that these tiny groups are really all ethnic peoples with specific missionary sending needs until you live and work around them. It took me ten years to believe it. I had travel among them hearing all the missionaries and linguists talk about the realities. A few months ago, Jim C. from the Global Research Department of the IMB came to our office. One of the reasons he came was to verify from researchers, missionaries and linguists that all these small people groups and their languages really exist. It is hard to believe that there are over 170 languages and an unknown number of people groups in our area. He couldn’t believe it just like I couldn’t believe it 10 years ago. It is very common to think that way. There are only five other areas in the world as complex linguistically and ethnically.  We tend to doubt it until we hear it from experts and experience it for ourselves. We also have an enemy and that enemy does not want us to believe that there are so many people groups. Jim was impacted to know from the experts that all these languages and peoples are real.

Some say, we just can’t deal with all the people groups, there are just too many!

This is not correct thinking.  It means that we need to get to work. It is very common to hear about the immense task of reaching the unreached peoples. I wonder how God sees it. God probably cares not about how many groups there are. The task is not quite so immense when you take into consideration the number of up and coming missionary candidates. We may need to stop talking about is as though it is almost impossible.

Let’s look at the numbers. There are an average of 10,000 people groups between all your major people group lists.

POPULATION  —  NO. OF PEOPLE GROUPS
< 1,000,000,000 — 9,200 Which means that there are only 700 people groups over one million in population. The majority of our effort has been focused on only 700 people groups.
< 500,000 — 8,500
< 100,000 — 7,350
< 50,000 — 6,650
< 40,000 — 6,400 This population range is what the Finishing The Task movement is focusing on now. Possibly came to find out that the people groups over 40,000 in population already had something going on. This would make sense as we have highlighted those groups more than the smaller groups.
< 25,000 — 5,800 This is significant. Half of the worlds’ 10,000 people groups contain less than 25,000 in population.
< 10,000 — 4,600
< 5,000 — 3,600
< 3,500 — 3,200 This is the cut off for a people group to get a Bible Translation from Wycliffe. Almost one third of all the worlds known peoples will not get a translator unless smaller translation agencies or individuals go. They are called salvage projects. We pray that they will lower their number.
< 2,000 — 2,600
< 1,000 — 1,900
< 500 — 1,300
< 100 — 450

There are approximately 5,000 unreached people of the known 10,000 groups of the world. I was not going to add the population of these small people groups. This is the general tendency. One might say well, the groups under 25,000 only total up to 31,321,000 of the worlds population. Many will stop reading right here but this is not God’s way nor is it the Great Commission. I am going to tell you the total population of all the people groups under 2,000 as well. But remember that Jesus taught that we go after the one lost sheep. Luke 15:4 “Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Doesn’t he leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? (New International Version) The total population of the 2,600 people groups under 2,000 is 1,694,000.

They unreached because we have been ignoring them for the masses, trying to play catch up to the explosion of Islam. They are simply unknown to the Christian church. We don’t pray for them, we don’t research them, we don’t write elaborate people profiles about them. we don’t take photos of them because they are insignificant “in our minds”.

We tend to look at a people list or people group book and are drawn to the groups with higher populations. Now many influential people are calling us to leave this part of the people list behind and only focus on large clusters of peoples. Small people groups are just to numerous?  We have too little data on them? These don’t sound like very good reasons to me. I guess it is time to put on our walking shoes then or do something about it. The numbers of these groups are not going to shrink. And the longer we wait to highlight the unknown people groups, the more of them will parish for lack of a chance to respond to the Gospel.

I took a look at Patrick J’s new book, The Future of the Global Church. One view is that the population of the world will level off over the next few hundred years. This would be great news to the Christian Church. We could possibly catch up to the birth/growth rate of Islam. Another view is that the population will double and then double again over the next few hundred years. If this is true, we will have done better to abandon clusters and focus on unreached people groups.

The Church is in a crisis today because we are unwilling to send missionaries at a pace that can compete with the population growth and the growth of false religions. It only means that billions will parish. I was in a meeting a few months ago with nothing to do so I spent a few hours running some numbers. This is a rough estimate but, if we continue to focus missionary sending to the masses and clusters etc, 16 Billion people will parish every century until the end comes. The last enemy of God is not the Devil it is death. Death seals the fate of those without Christ.

1 Corinthians 15:20 But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. 21 For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. 22 For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. 23 But each in turn: Christ, the firstfruits; then, when he comes, those who belong to him. 24 Then the end will come, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power. 25 For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. 26 The last enemy to be destroyed is death. 27 For he “has put everything under his feet.”[c] Now when it says that “everything” has been put under him, it is clear that this does not include God himself, who put everything under Christ. 28 When he has done this, then the Son himself will be made subject to him who put everything under him, so that God may be all in all.

Don’t we want to see the end? The end of death? The end of suffering? People say that us unreached people promoters don’t care about the social gospel. We care more than most because we care about bringing the end. Bringing the end will save more lives from hell than by trying to play catch up to the Muslims.

There are not that many unreached peoples if we consider all missionary movements. 

The missionary movements in the global south, are producing thousands of potential missionary candidates and we say 5,000 unreached people groups and say they are just to numerous? I realize that there are more than that. But even if there were double that number it would not be such a huge task if we would just focus. I remember many times when Duane F. and I went line by line through thousands of records in the people group database. We used to say, it’s only 10,000 records. We only need 60,000 missionaries. This 60,000 would take care of all the unknown people groups, clan tribes and castes as well as the missionary fallout.

In the Latin mission movement where I live and minister, there are at least two million Evangelical Christians who know what unreached peoples are. The statistics are that 2% of Christianity know about the Great Commission but only 2% of that 2% will take action. In the Latin missionary movement that calculates up to 40,000 missionaries candidates, 8 missionaries for every unreahced people group. Add in the missionary movements in Africa and Asia and 60,000 missionaries is a drop in the bucket.

So the task is not so immense when you take into consideration the emerging missionary movements. Clusters are a strategic point to land in, but one will have to focus on the people groups in that cluster eventually. So if we still say, “The individual people group is far too small and too numerous” pray about it. We must stay the course and not give up on highlighting and researching the individual unreached peoples. They are depending on us.

Related Article: How Etnopedia Deals With People Clusters

What are apprenticeships?

Apprenticeship is a system of training a new generation of practitioners of a structured competency based set of skills. Apprenticeships ranged from craft occupations or trades to those seeking a professional license to practice in a regulated profession. Apprentices (or in early modern usage “prentices”) or protégés build their careers from apprenticeships. Most of their training is done while working for an employer who helps the apprentices learn their trade or profession, in exchange for their continuing labor for an agreed period after they have achieved measurable competencies. For more advance apprenticeships, theoretical education was also involved, formally via the workplace and also by attending a local technical college vocational schools or university while still being paid by the employer often over a period of 4-6 years.

A few months ago, our country wide mobilization organization (not Etnopedia) was assigned someone to analyze us. Recently at our annual meeting they reported the results. We are dying! For years we have known that we should be allowing the younger people to serve in our network. But we just have not listened. Just after the report was given we voted in a new board member making all three members over 50 years old. Next, we moved into voting on various issues and I noticed all the young people were at the back of the room uninterested.

Why do we need new blood?

No matter how we feel about it, young people will be here when we are gone. They do things differently now, and they will do things differently when they are finally in charge. They think differently, talk differently and most of all, they lead differently. So we can ether get used to their style and include them with us in the work of the Lord, or choose not to pass down values we think are important. They will probably not get passed on if we don’t do it. They won’t be leaders like we are but then again they will be leading their generation. The important thing is that they have core values, (for example, the unreached peoples concept). We don’t need to pass down all our old school ways, just the values and a few tips. They will find new ways of doing things and they need to. The world is a different place.

We need new blood, along side us, growing in the vision, learning the core values so that those values get passed down.  Last year I was invited to be a guest speaker at a weeklong youth conference. There were about 700 young people there between the ages of 12 and 17 years old. They packed themselves into a youth camp and slept in tents outside the meeting hall. It rained the entire week and they loved it. I was cold, tired, hungry and felt like everything I said fell to the ground like lead before it got to them. They had compassion on this old man and comforted me in my inability to say anything really relevant to them.

I hope I was able to communicate one core value to them, the rest was probably wasted breath. I realized more than ever before that I need a young apprentice to take with me to preach to these young people. This year I was invited back and took with me an 18 year old that works in our office for three years and a 20 year old who has worked in our office for 7 years. I didn’t ask them to be like me. Just that they preach to the youth about the one core value we all hold, unreached peoples. They both preached about five sessions each and did great!! They also showed passion and seriousness and most of all they communicated to the youth way beyond what I could. The youth camp is coming to our home town this December (2012) and they were invited back!

We can eat, sleep, breath and dream unreached peoples and it will all die with us if we don’t disciple it into the younger generation. We also need to make ways to allow them to disciple their own generation along the way.

So what should we do?

Look for the youngest disciples you can find and allow them to serve at your side. We began to allow young people to serve in the research and technical operations in Etnopedia main office years ago. Our youngest candidate was 13 years old when he first started working with us. He is 19 now and is an expert in the systems that run Etnopedia. He can install and connect a new language portal into the complicated wiki family database. He is studying computer programming in College in order to help Etnopedia when he is done. Another young man started with us when he was 15 and now is 18. He programs algorithms that keep Etnopedia profiles cleaned up. He also is one of our cartographers and is learning ArcGIS, an elaborate mapping software used by governments etc. Our newest member of the team is 15 years old. We have had over 30 young people to working with us over the years. Many are still in ministry, but one thing we feel confident of, they still maintain the core values.

Recruit, recruit, recruit.

We are always recruiting young people. Gathering as many young people as we can gather around us will help to insure that the vision and the work will carry on. Recently I have heard of people passing away leaving large ministries in crisis. What a shame that they were not recruiting and training people to take their place and their vision. We don’t worry about if we have enough space in our office, we just keep recruiting and God works it out.

Almost everyone that comes through our doors is recruited. Everyone is given a good dose of unreached peoples. I also look for very young recruits. I consider young under 25 but I recruit as young as 13 to 15. I propose that you do not recruit anyone over 35 years old. There are some exceptions but remember, we are in crisis and the lack of leadership is out of balance.

You will need to select younger leaders (under 25) if you have not been training those 10 to 15 years younger than yourself.  It takes a 20 year old two years to begin to comprehend a 50 year old, then they finally get it and can understand the core values. It’s not that they don’t understand the words we are saying. What we are saying is simply not relevant to them in their context. The generational gap is so wide that we are not relevant to them. It takes time to bridge the gap between yourself and your young disciple so that you can share passion, vision and values. That does not happen over night. And don’t think that getting up on a stage and screaming and waving your arms is communicating to young people. It’s not. You just look ridiculous and are dubbed, “El Gringo Loco”.

If you are 35 years old, look for disciples that are 15 to 20 years old and figure on a year to be passing vision and values. If you are 45 look for disciples that are 15 to 20 and figure on two years to be passing on vision and values. If you are 55 look for disciples that are 15 to 20 and figure on three years. If you are 65 and have not made younger disciples, you can still try; don’t give up but good luck. Wearing young peoples cloths and learning how to send text messages isn’t going to help you much. Today’s young people developed in a very different world than we did. So it’s probably futile to try to learn their ways. Bridge the generational gap by spending time, and gaining trust. Eventually you will build a bridge of communication. They will still have to learn your language, but atleast then you will be passing down the important things.

Matthew 28:19-22 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”  New International Version (NIV)

The words of Jesus apply to more than making disciples unto salvation; they apply making disciples for the work of the Kingdom. If we don’t make Kingdom workers, soon there won’t be anyone to work the Kingdom.
The world is changing at an accelerating rate. Right now, our 18 year old is training our 15 year old on advanced systems for Etnopedia. I won’t meddle much. They will get it.

It is Hard Work

There is no doubt that it’s easier to be the big boss that everyone depends on. If you are the only one who knows how to do what you do, it creates job security. However this is not the way Christ intended it for us to be. Even being God, Jesus  quickly got several young men around him. I would really love to know their ages. The evidence suggests that the disciples were about 20 years old when they began following Jesus.

It’s going to take time to make disciples and it isn’t going to be easy. You give up privacy, space, time and must invest money into their lives. Last night I had to allow one of our young men to stay in our guest room because  we got in late from the field. Our wives also sacrifice time and privacy, and this is not easy.

Discipleship is hard work. Every time we have a new young person begin with us, I think “What if they don’t last? What if we spend 6 months training them in and they leave?” All the thoughts come pouring in. Just do it. You only need a handful disciples that stay to carry on the vision. Jesus changed the world with a handful of men.

Suggestions:

• Set limits and days when the young people can work with you.
• Occasionally take take them to something non-ministry related, it can be as simple as getting a hamburger and a coke.
• Include your young people in the decision making process and in important meetings.
• Let them do the work. If you are at a computer, their hands better be on the keyboards and mice, not yours.
• Send your young people to conferences to expand their vision of the global Body. I remember once that we invested 1,200 dollars for one of our young people to go to a mission’s conference in Spain. Many other times we have taken them with us to events.
• Be yourself, you don’t need to be like them to disciple them.
• Go easy on them BUT watch over them, very few people received a hard-line discipleship like we did.
• Impart Jesus, you have to get Jesus to give Jesus and this is what matters in the end.

There is a lot of talk these days about people clusters. I need to say from the beginning that I do believe that they are strategic. However I do not believe that we should move away from focusing on the individual unreached people groups. I don’t think that history will show us that focusing on clusters will trickle down into people groups much. If a people cluster has 25 languages and fifty unreached people groups, eventually you will need to get missionary boots (nationals or foreigners)  down into “the  largest group within which the Gospel can spread as a church planting movement without encountering barriers of understanding or acceptance.” I understand this is the purpose behind cluster thinking, read on please.

So is focusing on people clusters enough? First of all I don’t think it is Biblical or God’s heart for all ethnos. Furthermore, since there are only about 5,000 known unreached peoples left to reach, it is not unreasonable to think that Latin America, Nigeria, Indonesia and other emerging missionary movements will have the personnel to send to every specific unreached people group and their tribes and clans if need be.

A friend recently commented on his blog: Patrick Johnstone pioneered the idea of Affinity Blocks and Clusters when looking at UPGs, and several organizations are finding this a very useful concept. The individual people group is far too small and too numerous. Clusters seem to be the most strategic. We at MUP have completely organized our structure around Clusters. IMB has done the same. Has your agency? What are your thoughts on it?

Again, I totally agree that clusters are strategic. I do not agree with the statement that the individual people group is far too small and numerous. Numerous possibly but small no. Is this how God feels about the unreached tribes in the Amazon jungle.  Ask the Brazilian missionary movement how small is too small to consider reaching a people group.

We convene 4,000 people in a missions conference in South Africa and call it “the largest gathering of mission leaders in the history of Christianity.” We see a 4,000 population people group in the registry of an unreached people group database and somehow they become too small and numerous?

The individual people group IS far too numerous if you only consider North American missionary sending as the answer. If the global missionary sending effort (North American and the rest) cannot envision sending out 5000 teams over the next 20 years, then we all probably need to change our focus.

Here is another thought. Just because we cannot track missionary sending to UPG’s does not mean that they are not going from the emerging movements. We must keep our focus on the Biblical mandate, which is to every tongue, tribe clan and nation. If we do not we will never finish.

All of us North Americans also need to be careful not to suggest that the emerging missionary movements do the same as we do. We might be wrong. It has happened before.

All of us, especially the emerging missionary movements need to know as much as possible about specific unreached people groups like the Pamiri. (read below).

The Ethnic Tree View

With a tree view we can show clusters (strategic groupings) to the missionary movement. By using searchable red links, we can also show possible needs without adding more pages or registries to the database. If you have a field verified need, create a page (blue links). Red links are hyperlinks that do not lead to a page yet. It leads you to the creation of that page. In the case of Etnopedia, a page is a registry in the database. These red links and the whole Etnopedia system for that matter invite participation on bettering the unreached people information.

Example of  a people grouping (cluster) on Etnopedia:
See it live here: http://en.etnopedia.org/wiki/index.php/Pamiri

Pamiri 

• Darwazi
• Wakhi
• Shughni Roshani

Sanglechi

• Ishkashimi
• Munji (Munji-Yidgha)
• Yidgha Distinct people and language
• Vanji

See the Pamiri at the country level, below is a people list for researchers to see all the clusters, groups, languages, tribes and clans. http://en.etnopedia.org/wiki/index.php/Category:Afghanistan%27s_Complete_Ethnic_People_List

If you want to know more or input into the developing idea on People Groupings visit:

http://en.etnopedia.org/wiki/index.php/Research:People_Groupings

First, why does Etnopedia not automatically update key information?

As an example, if you changed the population figure on a people profile in the English portal, a program could then update the same profile within the German and Korean portals, etc., automatically.

And actually, programs and extensions do exist that allow this. So why aren’t we using them?

1. First, you take away the ownership and oversight responsibility of that translation team. For example, the German portal team owns, oversees and manages their project. There is no one person or committee over them telling them what to do. Of course there are standards we need to follow when doing unreached people research, but even those are not limiting the translation / portal teams. The German portal team members make their own decisions about their project. They are the holders of their work even though we all adhere to a basic standard. We communicate through the back channels and all know each other by our anonymous usernames. (We will write another article soon on what is the basic standard on Etnopedia.)

2. Had we built the system to automatically update between the language portals, we would have lost several new insights and improvements that came from the different portal teams. They each have new ideas, and because the Etnopedia project is all done by hand, they have the freedom to implement them. By allowing the various language portal teams to develop their information in other ways, best practices are discovered and shared among the entire Etnopedia community. We are all learning from and teaching each other.  If we allowed a program with one central data source to drive the project, we would lose the dynamic of growing a more knowledgeable community.

3. If a language portal were to automatically update the other portals, it would not allow any room for discussion. Many hundreds of emails have been sent discussing the complicated issues surrounding ethnic people information: population discrepancies, reachedness scale discrepancies, language assignments to ethnic peoples, Bible translation status, mapping and location information etc, etc. Had the system automatically updated those points, there would have been no discussion, no consensus. This interaction also adds accountability as more people are looking at your edits. This interaction is a critical aspect missing from most unreached people research efforts.

4. If Etnopedia were automated, it would not produce new researchers. It takes about six months for a portal team to understand the confusion surrounding unreached people information. Several important concepts must be learned in order to handle the information correctly, and so that assumptions are not made from the desk. The people naming issue alone is mindboggling. New researchers need to be very careful not to remove people groups based on armchair analysis. Such concepts take time to learn. So by automating we eliminate the ability to train and produce new researchers.

5. Automatic updates diminish any sense of community, and community is what the unreached people research movement desperately needs. If you just translate a people profile and have no say as to the sources and form of the profiles, you are merely a translator and not part of the overall research effort. In order to automate the updating process, a central source of the key information remains controlled by just a few people, not by the community.

6. If the system automatically updated key information, more coding would be required behind the people profile, complicating the translation process. This code also does not update with the core system software updates. If we paid a programmer to update the code every time we updated the core software, then the project would now depend on finances to pay that programmer. Also, imagine updating code across five or more language portals’ people profiles. This would create even more work for the portal teams and the translation effort. What was intended to help speed up the process of updating would effectively complicate and slow the entire project, burdening the portal teams with more work, and creating a need for more funding.

7. Finally, automating Etnopedia would diminish much of the energy sustaining the portal teams who are actively engaged in the profile updating process.

How does Etnopedia Update People Profiles?

The procedure is simple. All updates are done by hand by individuals in each language portal, with English used as the common, or ‘hub’ language for further updates. If for example, a member of the Indonesian portal updates a people profile in the Indonesian language, the same person may then update the same profile within the English language portal. As soon as the German language team sees this update within the English language portal, they subsequently update the same profile within the German language portal. If however, the Germans have doubts about the new change, discussion amongst the portal teams ensues. Rather than one person making an ‘educated’ assumption about a people group from their desk, such interaction amongst various researchers will ultimately reveal the most accurate information available. Detailed instructions on how to update people profiles can be found within the Etnopedia site at: http://en.etnopedia.org/wiki/index.php/Help:Complete_Guide_on_Updating_Profiles

If you really think about it though, does it matter too much that one portal differs from another? We are all translating the same unreached people group profiles. If the reachedness scale changes this is very important and has to be given a source. That is the one key piece of information we need to agree on. All the other data is not as important.

I just looked up the Kibet people of Chad. On the German portal their population is 44,000 and was updated in 2010. The Spanish profile for the same people group shows a population of 37,609 and was updated in 2009. We date the populations, scales and Bible translation status so everyone knows the last year that the people group data was checked to a reliable source. Many would think negatively about the populations or other information not being perfectly in alignment. But I’m not too worried about it. Someone will eventually come along and update it.

The Bethany Prayer Profiles were printed on paper and distributed throughout thousands of churches and no one ever thought about how they would be updated after five years. You cannot update paper books, CD’s and the like. You can easily build a website driven by a database these days, but if your database is being maintained by a select few, it is not sustainable over the long-term. It really takes a community to update a collection of 5000+ unreached people profiles.

The People Profile: The Most Efficient Data Gathering Point on Unreached People Information.

The people profile is actually the most efficient data-gathering tool. We arrived at this conclusion after years of working in research. Why is this? First, because it is a single record of information accompanied by a history of changes made to it, and made visible to everyone. Second, it is the most responsible data-gathering tool. Too few pairs of eyes are looking at all the changes made to our traditional Microsoft Access databases. Finally, a people profile helps tremendously in clarifying the research. Over the years our team has made thousands of corrections to the world people group list because we read the profiles.

Contained within a single people profile are a representative photo of the people group, a list of countries in which they live, their population, religion, a Christian progress scale, alternate names, languages spoken, Bible translation status, location information, identity information, history, customs, prayer points, needs, a map of their location, references, sources, and links. The discussion page (the back page of the profile) contains the sources and dates of all the major world and field research efforts pertaining to that people group. All of this is worth updating by hand by the community, fostering interaction while at the same time training new researchers.

The people profile is located on ‘the cloud’, the most efficient data gathering point for all things pertaining to an unreached people group. Even if the profile is a little out of date, it is immediately available to the mission movement in their heart language. It’s all done on the cloud!

Why Does Etnopedia Not Use Automatic Translation Programs?

I know that there are still a few of you who would say “Why have a translation effort at all, especially with the availability programs like of Google Translate?”

For example, why not provide the ability for someone visiting Etnopedia to translate a people profile from English into their own language at the press of a button in their browser? 

1. First of all, automatic translators do not translate all ethnic people information with sufficient accuracy. We know this from experience and through extensive research. In the end we paid a high price for professional translation software for our office, which ended up serving only to aid a bilingual person speed up the translation process. No doubt Google Translate is improving, but how long will we wait for all of the translations to become reliable enough? English speakers really only view websites translated into English, which is one of the best supported and developed languages within Google Translate.

2. Removing human translators would stifle development of the research community, and portals would not be updated, etc. etc. You would also have to depend on a database driven site run by just a few people. Even a large community of English-only speakers updating the English portal would significantly limit the reach and knowledge of those one-language speakers.

I just took a portion of the Kibet people profile from German and translated it into English using Google Translate. Keep in mind English and German are probably two of the most highly developed languages in the Google Translate database. I am referring to them being translated from one to another (GERMAN-ENGLISH or ENGLISH-GERMAN) which produced the following results:

KIBET GOOGLE TRANSLATION GERMAN TO ENGLISH – “Of the six strains listed only the Tama and the Kimr have ever formed independent governments. The Tama are now citizens of the independent states of Chad and Sudan. They all inhabit sandy, hilly regions with similar climates, grow the same crops, addressed their apartment in the same way and have similar habits.”

“The historic capital of Tama-kidney was in Chad. The ruins of this city are still tour and sultans are still used there on the throne. During the 19th Century were dominated by Turko-Egyptian Sudan Tama. The Turkish rule was by French and British influence in the late 19 and early 20 Century detached.”

ORIGINAL ENGLISH – “Of the six tribes listed above, only the Tama and the Kimr have ever formed independent governments. Today, the Tama are citizens of the independent nations of Chad and Sudan. They all inhabit sandy, hilly regions with similar climates, grow the same crops, make their homes in the same manner, and have similar lifestyles.”

“The ancient Tama capital, Niere, was located in Chad. The ruins of this city can still be seen, and sultans are still being enthroned there. During the 1800′s, the Tama were dominated by Turko-Egyptian Sudan. The Turkish authority was replaced by French and British power in the late 1800′s and early 1900′s.”  [try it on http://translate.google.com/]

As you can see, even if we built a complex auto-updating and auto-translating unreached people group project, you would still have a lot of work to do. But if you did not know German, how would you make sure the German translation was done well? What are we saying to the German speakers of the world when we permit automated, yet inaccurate profile translations?

We still require a German translator. So why not build a community? You could enter the English profile into Google Translate and pop out a German profile, but it may be confusing, or worse, misleading. If the German translation program lacks so much, imagine Korean or Indonesian!

The effort needs translators that are part of a long-term community. While you could pay a group of German translators to do it once, you would have no way to add information, correct mistakes within the information, and more importantly, add new profiles for the unidentified people groups yet to be added. Now, imagine adding five additional languages into the process. We must let others join in the task, thereby distributing the workload. Simply create a German portal and allow the Germans to take ownership and responsibility of their research team. 

The Etnopedia team has also deliberated extensively about using technology to make the overall process quicker and easier. But the more do this, the more that we realize the need for long-term, bilingual human translators trained to understand unreached people research.

By automating the translation process, you also take away the motivation for that portal team to use the information to mobilize their own country’s churches.

When Etnopedia was created in 2008, its first language portal team was Vietnamese. In three to four months they translated about 40 profiles into Vietnamese. It was a slow process.  Then suddenly the portal died, or so we thought, when no more Vietnamese profiles were translated. I thought it was dead anyway upon finding out that the leader of the team left Vietnam. I decided to email him about a month ago this year (2011) to see if he would be willing to look for more translators. He told me that the Vietnamese church still uses the 40 original profiles, placing them in their church bulletins, praying over them, etc. Though they have not been updated since 2008, they are still being used. Note that the Vietnamese portal team only translated people groups found within Vietnam. This is significant when considering how to help local Christians grasp the vision to reach their own people local groups.

Had we merely automated the translation process and not allowed the translations to be done with care by first-language speakers, the Vietnamese church may have never used these profiles in mobilzation.

So we must ask ourselves, should we build systems to automatically update and translate unreached people information?

These same questions could be asked of the Wikipedia project, and possibly for very similar reasons they have found the answer: No.

So what about a hybrid?

Nor is a hybrid system the answer, i.e., half data-driven and half real translator-driven. This still excludes the translators from everything we have mentioned here. If you just have people doing translations and nothing else, you will take them out of picture.

We need to begin today to involve more people in this process. We need to move toward developing a global, multi-ethnic research community. Yes it is going to be a slow process. We were recently contacted from someone in India wanting to translate people profiles into Telugu (77 million speakers). In light of our points mentioned above, they can get involved, if we do not automate the process.

Join the Etnopedia Community today.
http://en.etnopedia.org/wiki/index.php/Etnopedia:Community_Portal

So what are the most important pieces of information in a people group database?

1. The people group.
If we don’t know that a people group exists, we will not send missionaries. If peoples are left out of our data for whatever reason, they are not as likely to be reached any time soon.

2. Scale of reachedness. (Does the people group have Christians or Missionaries?)
If we think a people group is reached and it is not, we will not send missionaries. Some call this scale the Christian or Church Planting Progress Indicators.

3. The date that scale was gathered.
If you don’t know how old the progress scale is, you won’t know how reliable the data is and most importantly you wont know when to go back out and gather that data again. We use the last year the scale was updated. Example: Unreached [2008]. This year our field research team will be visiting four people groups where the dates are very old. We will be near them for a missions conference so afterward we’ll head out to get some new information. When we come back, we will put [2011] on the people group’s scale. The scales may also change. If we do not date the scale, we will not know how reliable that scale is.

All people group database should have a date on their scales. They also need another field, which is the source of that date.

A date by the scale gives a little more reliability to the data for missionary sending. If you have a source recorded, and that source was in that people group recently, their name or handle should be there. That will give even more credibility to the scale.

4. The Bible translation status. This is also very important and it tells you a lot about how much attention is being placed on the people group. It also means that you will have some evangelistic materials on the way such as the Jesus film and Gospel recordings.

5. The last thing you need for a people group database is their location or approximate location. This can be as little as a Latitude Longitude coordinate or the name of a town.

If you now know that peoples exist and you know that they are unreached, you need to get to them somehow.

Some would say, what about the population of the people group? They are mostly estimates. And what does it matter if the unreached people group still have no Christians, no missionary and no Scriptures? Does it really matter if they are 5,000 or 500,000? They still have no access to Christ. We will never finish the Great commission focusing on the larger people groups. We are in the 21st century and the theory that reaching big groups will trickle down has not proved true. Recently 5,000 Christian leaders gathered together and we called it the largest missionary conference in History. Put 5,000 people in a room and we say it’s a big deal. But when you look at a 10,000+ record database, a 5,000-population people group looks insignificant. Unfortunately it is the smaller groups (those under 50,000) that will be the last to hear about Christ. In the world people databases, 7,000 of the 10,000 records are people groups under 50,000 in population.

Do you need to know their religion? All peoples have a religion or beliefs of some sort. If they don’t believe in Christ they need to. The more data we add, the more complicated the database. So a lot of the other data we add to our databases just creates more distance between global and local research efforts. Locals are the ones that need to be involved in church planting among their own people groups locally.

In summary, we only need a few pieces of information on our people group database; the people group, the scale, the date that scale was gathered, the Bible translation status, and the location. All the other data is icing on the cake. If we have it great! But we need to be careful not to over do it or we will be inadvertently excluding the participation of others in the use of our databases and possibly research altogether.

Less is more. If you have fewer fields in your database, you will be more likely to gather and update information at the country level and much more so at the world level. We will never see a global research effort develop if we complicate the database. Complicating the issue also teaches the local field research effort that they need special technology and training to be involved. If we are ever going to see more field research efforts emerge, we need to keep it simple. Of course there is a certain amount on knowledge one needs. But how much really?

What is field research among unreached peoples anyway? Basically one needs to go and spy out the land. Or you need to talk to someone who was recently in the land. If you cannot find anyone who was recently in that people group, someone needs to walk through all the villages or the people group and see if there are any Christians or missionaries working there. It’s not rocket science. I am over simplifying a bit to make a point. But imaging if we just had this data at the world level, we would be light-years ahead of where we are today. Too many Christian progress scales are old or they are created by formulas based on availability of the Gospel in that country.

We need simple country level people lists that show a date of the last time someone physically checked on the people group’s condition.

We also need to gather this data on the Cloud. See: Working on the Cloud with Unreached People Information.

There is a lot of buzz these days about Cloud computing. It is unusual to me that with so much technology available to us, the Mission movement has not yet caught on to using the Cloud to work on unreached people group information.

What is Cloud computing? The simplest way of explaining it is this – If you need software, it’s not Cloud computing. Cloud computing also means that everyone is working on the same document, up on the cloud (a web server), and not a local computer.

Example: If you have an Excel spreadsheet of the people groups of Nepal, and you pass it out to other people, once you change your spreadsheet, the other people’s files are outdated. If the other people also make changes to the spreadsheet then you not only have outdated information on Nepal, you also have a mess. (Example working on a local computer).

So the most logical thing to do is create a Cloud based unreached people information project. With a Cloud, all the changes to Nepal are live and the information is updated by the community.

In 2006 we created a Cloud based Unreached people group information project called Etnopedia. In 2007 we added the capability of translating the information into other languages. Today we have five language portal teams that have translated over 5,000 unreached people profiles into other languages. These teams are also updating and adding new information to the cloud. The cloud allows you to work together from all over the world.

So how do you communicate changes made between language clouds? Well, everyone working on their project is bilingual and the changes they make are also made to the English portal. Example: If I am working on the Spanish portal and I find that a Bible has been translated for a people group, I change my portal and also the English portal with the tags BIBLE TRANSLATION STATUS CHANGE in the summary. By doing this I have communicated to all the others that they need to change their portals.  The German team, the Indonesian team, etc. now know to change the Bible translation status on that people group’s profile.

You are probably already thinking, why not have all the databases interlinked so that the changes made are populated throughout all the language portals automatically? The answer to this is threefold. Most importantly, you do not want to take away the ownership or responsibility of the portal teams to update their projects. Secondly you would eliminate the ability to easily translate the information by adding complicated semantic code into the mix. Thirdly, you would slow down the end user interface. There are still many parts of the world that cannot even open our fancy database driven websites.

The Etnopedia cloud is still a database with some pretty advanced features. We chose to use the Wikipedia software, as it is one of the fastest, most reliable browser compatible database websites in the world.

Ok, you cannot get global statistics out of a cloud based UPG project, such as how many Muslims live in India, or how many Bible translation needs there are in Nigeria. I guess you could click through every people profile for Nigeria and count the translation needs individually, but that would take you a few hours. But as for mobilizing new missionaries, you basically need a solid people list in that missionary candidate’s first language.

So if we are ever going to have a truly global research and mobilization community all working together on unreached people information, it needs to be in the Cloud.

Join the UPG Cloud today. www.etnopedia.org

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_computing

Diaspora information has primarily been tracked on only about 300 people groups, mostly mega peoples over 1 million in population. Out of the approximately 11,000 known peoples in the world, only about 900 live in three countries or more. Many people groups live on borders of two countries. About 8,300 of the 11,000 known people groups are recorded living in only one country.
 
On Etnopedia you will now see diaspora information on the people profiles. For example you will see all four countries that the Berber Rif are recorded living in. We started adding the diaspora information last year. Now on many profiles, you will see a list of 4 or 5 countries and their populations in those countries. The Berber Rif profile shows the known population and four populations in those countries they live in:

Berber, Rif
Population: 2,901,000 [2010]
Morocco 1,932,000
Algeria 691,000
France 125,000
Netherlands 153,000
See: http://en.etnopedia.org/wiki/index.php/Berber,_Rif

But now that we know that there are about 125,000 of the 2.9 million Berber Rif in France, what can we do about it? Where are they in France? What cities are they in? Which areas of the city are they living in? We need to know where they are in order to reach out to them in France.

Some people groups who migrate in mass and settle in another country in some senses become another people group. There are probably very few of these groups that we have data on. Allan L. calls this “Trans-Nationalization”. If this were the case for the Berber Rif in France, they would really need to be considered a different people group (for evangelization purposes) and be given another profile under a different name. (e.g. French Berber Rif). We would separate them into two profiles on Etnopedia. That is, IF we had more information from field researchers telling us that the barrier of understanding or acceptance between the group in France and the group in Morocco was significant enough to warrant a separate missionary effort. We do not know this, so the Berber Rif retains one people profile with four countries listed.

Another good reason we should show diaspora information is because you will be able to get into France as a missionary and minister to them more easily than in Morocco. I have heard testimonies that the people groups are also more open when they are away from their home countries. This concept is not about making cross-cultural missions easier on the missionary though. In the case of the Berber Rif living in France, they are probably still closely related to those in Morocco and do not need to be considered two different people groups. You might reach them in France and then be able to say we have reached the Berber Rif as a people. There are some pretty complex exceptions to this norm, but they are very few in comparison to the number of known peoples and even fewer that we have data for.

Until the missionary effort can provide specific data to us about the Berber Rif in France, they can’t be tracked on the Etnopedia diaspora mapping portal. The people profile shows France 125,000, and that’s all we have. But we need to make the tool available so that specific diaspora tracking can happen. It could be that we don’t have much diaspora data because a tool hasn’t been available. You could send diaspora data to a global people group research effort. But they may be understaffed or just don’t have a system in place to deal with 125,000 Berber Rif in France, (Paris 28,000), (Bordeaux 14,000) and (Marseille  38,000). They are all doing a heroic job but unfortunately there are very few unreached people group researchers. More people need to get involved. If each Christian who knew about a people group would update the profile and map, we would be much further down the road.

There is a lot of talk about diaspora and that we need to reach the nations as the thought is that “they are coming to us”. At least the ones that we know of are “coming to us”. We need to realize that the remaining unreached people groups that still have no access to the Gospel are not mega peoples and we do not have diaspora information for them. They may never be found in our home countries for that matter. Those of us who attempt to look for them might just not know what to look for.

Furthermore, the smaller more isolated unreached people groups (below 100,000 in population) may not be migrating. This is what the data tells us. They may not want to integrate with modern society. Or they may not have the finances or enough education or training to migrate to a city and then find work. We will still have to go to most of the unreached peoples. “Incarnational ministry” is still the priority to finish the Great Commission. The late Dr. Ralph Winter once said “Missions means a change of location”.

There are some concerns about displaying exactly where a people group lives in a city. (you can see an example if you zoom all the way into Paris on the diaspora portal). This it is a work in process and we are starting simple. Let us know your thoughts.

Let’s say that you want to find out where the Berber Rif are in Paris. A manual for finding your people group is on the way. Allan L. has many years of experience tracking people group migration and has offered to create a manual on how to locate your people group in your city or country. It will also have information on how to locate evangelistic resources so you can minister to these groups in a culturally acceptable way. Look for the manual to appear on the diaspora portal this year.

We thank the Lord for using Allan. Now a tool is available to specifically show where people groups live outside their home country. See the Etnopedia diaspora portal here: http://diaspora.etnopedia.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page .  Join the effort and begin tracking your unreached people groups migration!

How many unreached people groups are there? Well, we don’t know. Because of advancing technology we think we should be much further ahead in unreached people research. Unfortunately technology won’t help us much. We still need field researchers among unreached people groups. More importantly we need socio-linguistic field researchers, those looking for new (unclassified) languages.

Last month I was at a researchers meeting in Colorado Springs where I talked with the Wycliffe/SIL coordinator for socio-linguistic research of South East Asia. He says that there are about 100 languages that are still not classified in China, and another 300 in Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam.

A few years ago I visited with two young ladies who were doing socio-linguistic research (looking for new languages) in Papua New Guinea. The said that each language they re-researched (with a larger word list) became two and sometimes three languages.

I attended the Lausanne World Researchers meeting in 2008 where I met two of the principle people group researchers for India. One of them says that there are 4,000 people groups in India and another says 5,000. Our current global list only has about 2,500. Needless to say, there is some apprehension and conflicting opinion about adding another 2,000+ unreached peoples to the task..

What we need to do is identify all the barriers to the flow of the Gospel, either by understanding (language) or acceptance (cultural/political/geographical) and then mobilize thousands of cross-cultural missionaries. We can continue to mobilize them without sending them specifically into unreached Bible-less peoples like we are now. But this will only prolonging Christ’s return and we will be further behind as population explosion and other major world religions gain ahead of Christianity.

There is Hope. Unreached people group researchers are trying harder to work together and make this information available and even in other languages. It isn’t an easy process but progress is being made. See: http://www.joshuaproject.net and http://wwwpeoplegroups.org and http://www.etnopedia.org

There are also some exciting new cutting edge Bible translation methods coming on the scene. One is called “Translator’s Reference Translations” (Matthew E. Carlton S.I.L.) His methods cut the translation time down to about half after one learns the language. Learning the language still takes as much time as it ever did and ever will. 

The oral movements such as Story Runners and Gospel Recordings Network are also doing many great things. However even with these new advances, cross-cultural missionaries will still have to be sent and they will still have to spend years on the field learning the language of the unreached people. There is no quick fix. We still must physically go to into the people group and learn their language. Globilization will not solve this problem for us. Most of the smaller Bible-less people groups are under 100,000 in population and will never migrate to larger cities, and even if they did, you wouldn’t be able to find them much less identify their language. There are no scriptures in their language thus no Jesus film.

Unreached peoples represent the poorest, most isolated, rejected, scripture-less peoples in the world. UPG’s are not just a catch phrase, they are nearly 2 billion people who have no access to the message of Christ. They are God’s top priority and in New Testament terminology they are called “the ends of the earth”.

To the ends of the earth, every tongue, tribe, people, every corner of the globe, to all creation, making disciples of all nations,, call this what you will. The Lausanne Movement is all about World Evangelization!

ESTIMATED PEOPLE GROUP NUMBERS
I see that there are many visits to this conversation, and I would imagine that people want to know some estimates. So I will give some numbers of the peoples groups in the varying databases. Note: These numbers are the people groups in the databases not divided by each country they live in. For example if you divide the people groups by each country they live in, the Joshua Project database will show about 16,000 peoples. These numbers are about a year old but not much has changed. Remember these numbers are the people groups we know to exist, excluding India which has not really been dealt with on anyone’s data.

World Christian Database = 8,699 people groups.
Southern Baptist Convention (CPPI/GSEC) = 8,313 people groups.
Harvest Information System = 10,609 people groups.
Joshua Project  = 9,763  people groups.
Mission Info Bank = 10,600+ people groups.
Etnopedia = 10,280 people groups.
SIL Languages = aprox. 8,200 languages

By David M.