Only 400 People Groups to Go?

I have been thinking about the contents of this post for several months. With all of the needs in the world, where should we begin our disciplemaking activities? Asking and responding to this question is a matter of Spirit-guided, Kingdom stewardship. Over the years, evangelicals have considered this question and developed lists to assist our strategic endeavors.Two of the most important lists are: 1) unreached people groups; and 2) unengaged-unreached people groups. One unreached people group listing contains approximately 6800 groups. The unengaged-unreached list is estimated to be at 3000 groups with an evangelical presence of less than 2% and having no evangelical church planting strategy underway. Of course, the world is a big place. And with 7 billion people, these excellent, yet fallible, lists provide a starting point as we fast and pray for the Spirit's guidance for how to allocate Kingdom resources.Regardless of one's eschatological perspective, what is agreed upon is that all of the peoples of this world will be represented in heaven. John made this clear when he wrote:

After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, "Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb" (Rev 7:9-10, ESV)!

It is out of this future reality that we presently labor for the day when the unengaged-unreached (and unreached) will come to faith in Jesus. Today, we know who and where those 3,000 are found. However, I am not convinced that the number is that large. I think it is much, much smaller. And I think we need to ask another question about lostness.Follow my thoughts here. We live in the moment and rarely consider history when it comes to the mission of God and contemporary missionary strategy. We read of the unreached and unengaged-unreached and assume that believers have never existed among those who presently do not have any known believers.We look at the present and do not question the past. We limit the Spirit's work to the moment--our moment.For example, there are 17 people groups making up the country of Yemen. All of them are considered unreached people groups. And 15 of those 17 are considered unengaged-unreached. But we forget that there was a time in history when Yemen was considered a "Christian" kingdom.We read of peoples from across the world with no known believers.We read Revelation 7:9-10.We conclude that someone from among those peoples is coming out of the kingdom of darkness; so we begin our labors with them. However, while we are correct that those peoples will be represented in heaven, we do not know that the harvest came in 300 years ago.Last fall, I ran my thoughts past a missiologist-friend who knows these global and historical realities much better than I do. His immediate estimate was only about 400 of the unengaged-unreached peoples in the world have never had a single known believer among them. Thorough research needs to be conducted. This would be a challenging task. We have the means to get a much better understanding of the historical realities of today's unreached peoples. Such research would have numerous limitations, but the difference between 3000 and 400 is a major gap. And closing this gap would be a major step in making disciples of all nations and practicing wise Kingdom stewardship.The gospel is to be taken to everyone, including reached people groups. However, biblical missiology involves a stewardship of Spirit-guided strategy. We labor as wise Kingdom citizens knowing that all peoples will be represented around the throne. And if we can know that certain peoples (as best we can tell) have never had a known believer among them, then they should be on the Church's highest priority list.We need to start asking, "Among the peoples of the world, who has never had a known believer?"Wise Kingdom citizens know the Word, know the times, and know God's work across history.