Sharing the Gospel of Jesus

Societal Need

            There is still part of the world’s population that has never yet received the salvation and has never heard of the ever existence of Jesus Christ as the savior of the world. Jesus had commanded His disciples to go all over the world to preach and convert people to Christian, baptize them in the name of Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit and teach them to obey everything Jesus had commanded the disciples and He promised to be with them everywhere up until the end (Matthew28:18-20)but yet up to now, not everyone who has received the Good news. The largest group without even a Scripture in their Primary Language is the Jin Chinese of China and North America, and the Caribbean have the most Evangelicals. (Johnstone, 2010)

Current means of communicating the Gospel                   

            Some various means of communication are being used to reach to the unreached people and the unengaged people about the Gospel of salvation and accepting Jesus as their savior. With advancement in technology, as of 2017, about 50% of the world’s population had internet access. With this availability of the internet, various mission groups have taken the advantage to spread the word of God through YouTube, social media channels like Facebook, Google Plus, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram, Snap chat among other new channels that have come with the availability of the internet in most places of the world. By June 2017, Facebook had over 2 billion monthly active users. This is an effective means that has been used to get to the various people who are bleb to access the internet and are active users of the site.

            With most people becoming literate, Print media like Christian magazines, books, brochures and Christian articles in the newspapers among many others, are also being used in assisting to spread the Gospel to as far as they can. Also, Radios and Televisions are being used whereby the televangelist who get to reach to the people who might not be in a position to attend to a church service or rather if the church isn’t near them. This has helped a great deal in spreading the Gospel to many people in various parts of the World. People are also able to get saved by just repeating words in these in channels of communicating the word of God to accept Jesus as their savior, and are being instructed to go and confess to other Christians in a nearby church.

People Groups

            Every political country in the world has received the word as Jesus had instructed his Disciples but not every Ethnic group in every country has heard the word of God. Jesus had commanded the Disciples to make followers from each ethnic people group in the world. People group can mean huge groupings of individuals who see themselves as having a common affinity for one another due to their shared language, religion, place of residence, ethnicity, occupation, class or even situations or even the combinations of these all. However, for the purpose of Gospel spread, it is the largest group of people within which the Good news can spread as a church without having any barriers of understanding or acceptance (D, K, & Winter, 2002). The currently available data suggest that there are 16600 people groups in every country. Of these people, some have not been reached by the Gospel while some have heard it while they have not yet embraced it. The United States, China, Brazil, and Nigeria have the greatest number of evangelicals. Kenya has the highest evangelicals at 48.9% (Agency, 2017). Southeast Asia has 544 languages, and 16200000 people have no scripture, Gospel recordings, or God’s story video.

Unreached people

            This is a group of people within which there is no indigenous community of believing Christians able to evangelize this people groups. In the 1990’s mission strategists quantified this definition. They at long last agreed that less than  2% of true Christians and less than 5% Christian adherent were the only those who could be classified as unreached. The total population of UPGs was 3.11 billion people. The total world percentage of  UPGs makes up 42.25 of the world population. (the traveling team)These groups of people should not be underestimated, and if they received the word of God, some things would change.

Of the 16600 people groups, 6700 people groups are said to be unreached. This translates to 40% of the world’s people groups has no any indigenous community of believing Christians who can evangelize to the rest of the other people groups. Individuals in these groups have very limited if any access to the Good News and None has an indigenous church of taking the Gospel to the entire group. However, of this unreached group, there are individuals who have heard the gospel of salvation, but they have not embraced it.

Nearly one-third of the earth’s population reside in only 250 least Reached people Groups. There are six least reached people groups and each over 50000000 in population. The four largest least unreached people groups are the Shaikh of Bangladesh, Japanese of Japan, the Shaikh of India and the Yadav of India. The largest Least-Reached people group in Central Asia without Scripture, Jesus Film, or audio recordings is the Zaza-Dimli of Turkey with 1667000 people.

Unengaged people groups

There are approximately 3000 ethnic people groups that are not only unreached but are also completely unengaged. Meaning there is no known existence of a church amidst them to help in spreading the word of salvation to them. That means that there are no missionaries at all to reach this group of people who are unengaged. 

Primary Difficulties in reaching out to the Unreached people groups.

            There are some difficulties that are being faced by the missioners as they try to reach the unreached groups and unengaged groups of people. Some of these groups of people there exist No Bible in their Mother tongue, and for one to convert somebody to be a believer,  there is need to have the Scriptures available in their Mother Tongue. Wycliffe Bible Translators reports that an approximate 1700 to 1800 languages, there are no scriptures that exist at all. That means that they have limited access to the Bible which they can understand and this hinders the spread of Gospel.

            With also the availability of all these channels of communications, an estimated 1 billion people in the world are considered illiterate. Many of whom are concentrated in only eight countries. These are Bangladesh, China, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Nigeria, and Pakistan. These countries have a huge number of the unreached people groups. Extremely low literacy rates are concentrated in three regions, the Arab states, South and West Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa, again highly unreached regions. For these people, newspapers, magazines, books, printed materials, internet access, or even a physical Bible will have minimal impact to them since they cannot understand hence hindering on the spread of the Good News.

            More resources to are being used in tending the already formed Christians other than spreading the Gospel to those who are unreached and also unengaged.

 Ministries involved in addressing Unreached and unengaged people.

International Mission Board

            This is an international mission sending agency, and it operates in almost all countries in the world apart from, Canada and the United States. Its vision is to partner with the church to empower limitless missionary teams who are evangelizing, disciplining, planting, and multiplying healthy churches and training leaders among the unreached people and places for the glory of God. (imb)

Team/ International Christian Missions

Its mission is to help (team) churches send missionaries to establish reproducing churches among the nations to the glory of God. They seek to that wherever the most people have the greatest need in collaborations with churches all over the world. This helps in spreading the word to the unreached and the unengaged.

Union Gospel Mission

            This is an NGO that is determined to offer restorations to those in need. They restore the God-given dignity of people by sharing and demonstrating the love of Jesus Christ and providing without discrimination.

References

(2017). In C. I. Agency, World Factbook 2017. Washington, DC.

D, R., K, B., & Winter. (2002). Finishing The Task: The Unreached Peoples Challenge. Advancing Strategies Of Closure.

imb. (n.d.). Retrieved Jan 2018, from imb.org: https://www.imb.org/vision-and-mission/

Johnstone, P. (2010). Operation World. In Christian literature.

Matthew28:18-20. (n.d.). Good News Bible.

Team. (n.d.). Retrieved Jan 2018, from team.org: http://team.org

the traveling team. (n.d.). Retrieved Jan 2018, from the traveling team: http://www.thetravellingteam.org