January 01, 1996 by Ralph D. Winter

Dear Friends: The following version of Dr. Winter's latest editorial includes many references to charts and graphs that we are unable to transmit electronically. If these charts and graphs would be helpful, please contact us and we will be happy to send you a copy of the printed version.

A spectacular new direction for the USCWM? A spectacular new Greek New Testament—of all things? A spectacular new LIST of the world’s peoples—and pages of graphs? A spectacular COLLISION of numbers between these new goals and the numbers we have been using before? An inspiring run-down of what we are doing in Pasadena?

A new direction for us? Charting a new course--a totally new course-- is wonderfully unlikely for anyone in missions due to a globe full of eager, earnest Christian believers who are already ferreting out every conceivable strategy to glorify God. But we think that we ourselves want to launch a substantially new emphasis in our publications wherever our voice is heard. See Item #4 further on in this editorial.

A Greek New Testament? Can you believe it? Normally we have a narrow focus for our work. We determinedly and single-mindedly concentrate on the unfinished task and the maximizing of the year-2000 goal. This is not our New Direction, but you would never believe how--with a little patient effort--we have been catalysts to help produce history's most advanced Greek New Testament (the four Gospels thus far), nor would you guess our two main reasons. See Item #5.

The whole world in a LIST? Leading us into a new direction is the amazing amount of additional interest which has been generated in mission circles regarding finishing the task. As Peter Wagner says in his superb new trilogy on Acts, Missiologists are suggesting for the first time in history that there appears to be light at the end of the Great Commission tunnel! (Regal Books, 1994-95,p.68, Vol. 1). But now, with the availability of the Southern Baptist LIST (even though it is still in process), a whole new burst of light floods our vision. See Item #2 further on. This has led to a whole new series of charts-- see pages 12-16.

A COLLISION of goal definitions? Yes. People are getting confused by the apparent switch from 10,000 unreached peoples to the Joshua Project list of 1,685. Well, there is really no discrepancy at all. See Item #3 on page six. What are you doing in Pasadena? OK, once a year we ought to give a report. This time the whole magazine is devoted to this (along with the New Direction and the attendant charts and figures.

ITEM #1: What are we doing in Pasadena? What is going on there in your buildings?

We are always talking about the massive global movement to the final frontiers, right? This explains our detailed coverage of the 10,000- line Southern Baptist list of the world's peoples. However, once a year, since our Center here in Pasadena is part of that global movement, we want you to know exactly what is going on here. This issue of our Mission Frontiers bulletin is designed to give you a handbook of all the major activities and departments of the Center here in Pasadena--and perhaps God will lead you to join our workforce!

We wish you could come and take a tour of the place, or even stay for a week or two and relax and enjoy the surroundings. Our room and board prices are way below that of motels.

To that end we are laying out on these pages some of our most significant activities so you can see both the challenge and our dire need of workers. This issue of Mission Frontiers has that purpose. At the same time we cannot omit the larger goals of the Center which have to do with every single group of people in the world. That's here in this issue, too.

ITEM #2: What is this new fantastic LIST?

Last time we published every line of the new Joshua Project list of 1,685 peoples, an intermediate project of immediate significance for the AD2000 Movement.

But I mentioned also the fact that this JP list was taken from a larger list. One of the sources of that larger list was the generous Southern Baptists' list of 10,000 peoples covering the whole world, with many smaller peoples on it.

This issue of Mission Frontiers allows you to look down on the earth from a satellite. Both here and in a larger version of the diagram on this page (see page 14) you'll see ten thousand peoples classified in four categories--according to population size and according to how many Evangelical Christians are within them.

Doing this produces several surprises!

Suppose you were to get into a "stationary" satellite revolving at the same speed as the earth, centering it over, say, western Kansas.

Then you would ask all of the world's nationalities to assemble themselves visibly on the massive Kansas plain below you.

Then, ask all groups smaller than 10,000 to move to the left, leaving the larger groups on the right.

Then split each of these two groups into two more groups according to whether or not they contain at least 100 Evangelical believers. In each case there is a leftover group for which we have no report concerning Evangelical believers--even though many of these non- reporting groups certainly have within them large numbers of Evangelicals.

Now, what's the surprise?

The first surprise: you will immediately be amazed at how numerous the smaller groups ("peoples") are. The groups smaller than 10,000 people are on the left side. More than half are there! Later on we'll find out that the size of the group midway in the entire 10,504 total is 7,300. (See the bottom line on page 15. Note that there are 5,651 of the groups smaller than 10,000!)

Second, the total population (of the larger peoples) in boxes 1 and 2 is 369 times as large as the population of the 5,561 smaller peoples in boxes 3 and 4! (See the fourth line from the bottom on page 15.) Does this mean that we should give up our Year 2,000 goal of "A Church for Every People and (thus) the Gospel for Every Person?" By no means!

Third surprise: these smaller groups--most of them--are scattered subgroups of the larger groups! This gives the Holy Spirit that many extra doorways into the world's peoples!

Surprise four: the people in the smaller groups of box 4 are over 50% Christian!

Does this change our goal numbers? Let's take that up right now.

ITEM #3: Come on, are there 1,685 peoples to reach or 10,000? I can hear some of you saying,

"You used to talk about 10,000 unreached peoples. In the last issue you talked of 1,685 peoples (Joshua Project goal). Now you are presenting a detailed study of a list of ALL the world's peoples that only has 10,504 groups listed. We are confused!" We, along with the AD2000 Movement, have never flinched from seeking "A Church for Every People and (thus) the Gospel For Every Person." The Joshua Project list of 1,685 is a logical intermediate goal and always has been an intermediate goal. Almost all unreached peoples are either in it or represented in it. The list of 10,504 peoples (mentioned last time, analyzed further this time) is intended to include all human beings, but to do so it bundles millions upon millions in huge groups within which there are thousands of smaller groups. For example, the 100 largest groups on this list contain over 70% of the world's population. This fact easily sustains the idea that to reach the AD2000 goal we must in actual fact deal with something like 10,000 unreached groups.

We are not criticizing the Southern Baptist list when we note that this list contains many small groups within the larger groups. Lists are put together for different reasons.

1. The huge missionary radio stations (now banded together in "The World by 2000" suggest that it is possible to reach all people in a language they can understand with less than 300 spoken languages, employing "trade languages" etc.
2. Wycliffe's Ethnologue suggests there are some 6,000 different printed pathways to the world.
3. Gospel Recordings Inc., using the ear-gate for listeners (which is very much more discriminating than the eye-gate for readership), wants to put the Gospel in 12,000 languages.
4. Our own long-standing estimates have taken a still different, "missionary strategy" tack. We have had higher numbers because our concern is how many different church movements are necessary to provide every person in the world the opportunity of a culturally harmonious church home.

In fact, this Southern Baptist list contains different types of information. For the Han Chinese in China (982 million mainland Chinese) only nine subgroups are listed. By comparison, in Mexico for a little over 1/3 of a million Zapotecos the list contains 50 different varieties. Why? In part because Dr. Gerry Gutierrez, a Wycliffe missionary kid, grew up in Mexico, stayed there to become a medical doctor, and has made the Zapotecos her special interest!

So, we simply have more detailed information in one portion of the list than the other, that's all! The list could easily be 25,000 if such detail were pervasive in the list, and of that larger number maybe 10,000 are the unreached peoples we have been talking about.

At the same time the list would be VERY much smaller if the same human population, when it runs across a political border or is scattered in various countries were not listed twice or more or even as many as a hundred times.

Well, take the Han Chinese again. Even if the list has only nine varieties of Han Chinese in China it has over 200 varieties (in groups as small as ten people), outside China, in most cases merely because they live in different countries.

But this does not mean the list is not wonderfully helpful to us in our attempt to understand the peoples of the world. Why? Because once a group on the Joshua Project list is chosen for prayer and study and outreach, you will immediately want to know "Where else can we find these same people--in what other countries?"

This leads us to the very doorstep of the "New Direction" of the Center.

ITEM #4: What, then, is the Center's New Direction?

We wish to be strategically helpful by assisting in a new nationwide and global focus on the unreached peoples of the world as they may be found in places other than in their heartlands, whether that may be in the USA, or in small groups in a hundred other countries. We feel many Christians in many countries easily assume that they need to send missionaries at a great distance to reach the unreached peoples of the world when in fact 90% of the world's population lives within a group that is split up in various ways.

This is not a way to dodge hard work but a way to be more efficient, to be strategic. It is not just easier to go to the smaller sub- groups of the world's peoples. In many cases it may be a better way to go.

Why would it ever be better to go to a smaller sub-group of a larger people elsewhere?

Due to the explosively increasing number of bicultural people in the world, when even small groups are leaking their people to the larger world and many groups turn up in many countries (as the LIST shows), much if not most of the countdown to missiological breakthroughs may very well come without a formal "team" of missionaries being sent to the heartlands of these peoples.

After all--as with the Jerusalem council--if you can find a bicultural Barnabus or a bicultural Paul, you don't need to send someone to learn the language, etc. Paul's work went very quickly among the people who spoke Greek. Start-from-scratch missionaries will be necessary for relatively few of the present peoples of the world. Tracking down the presence of dispersed peoples who may be bicultural "bridges of God" (to quote McGavran) is what we must do now. This concept, this New Course, is pursued further on p. 12.

ITEM #5: Why would you produce an advanced Greek New Testament?

This major project is part of the even more extensive project we call "The World Christian Foundations Curriculum" described on page 31, in the middle column. The reasons we have assisted in this are two:

1. Unlike any other prior New Testament study tool this publication shows every line of every one of the 45 oldest and most reliable NT Greek manuscripts. You can see at a glance (without choices made for you) the slight differences.
2. Our students around the world need to be defended against the snobbery of those few who go off to traditional schools. They need to have and use the very latest and best tools of study! Only that way can they hold their heads up in the presence of Western-trained or highly schooled leaders.