January 01, 1993 by Frank Kaleb Jansen

1. List of 6,000 Peoples 2. Peoples Info. Network 3. Registry of Peoples 4. Adopt-A-People Consultation II

EDITORIAL COMMENT: This article announces four major moves forward. Jansen, a Norwegian businessman, is Director of the Adopt-A-People Clearinghouse in Colorado Springs. With the help of the AD2000 Movement, a large number of different ministries have been rallied around the cause of unreached peoples. On pages 20 and 21 you will find further comments on this article, "the four decisive moves forward" and the general challenge of the time-honored phrase, "A Church for Every People by the Year 2000."

The 48 mission agencies that founded the Adopt-A-People Clearinghouse in March 1989 commissioned us to:

1. Create a comprehensive list of unreached peoples. 2. Find out who is targeting or working among them. 3. See to it that they are all adopted.

This might look pretty simple on paper, but for those who had followed the battle with the complexities of population reality through the last almost twenty years, even the first point looked like a hurdle too high to conquer.

The fact that we now have a list out for review, although at the moment only as a second draft, is already a missiological breakthrough. "Do we see a miracle taking place here?" a wondering Paul Filides, the researcher from YWAM, asked when he heard about it. "My first impression is that this is a quantum leap in missions!" Carol Childress from SBC (Southern Baptist Convention) excitedly commented. "It gives me chills!" was the exclamation from Bobby Biarly of Women Aglow.

The first printed version will "premier" at the upcoming Adopt-A- People Consultation II in Colorado Springs from April 25-27, 1993

When I see the excitement among the different prayer movements, it is hard to comprehend why it took so long to give them the targets to pray for. Generals of Intercession, March for Jesus and Women Aglow are just a few of the ministries that Peter Wagner coordinates through the AD 2000 United Prayer track, now numbering more than 10 million - TEN MILLION - individuals who have signed up to pray for unreached peoples!

Recently I received a fax from the Evangelical Alliance in the UK which, on behalf of the Lausanne Movement, is making the day of Pentecost a Global Day of Prayer for THE UNREACHED PEOPLES! As we see this move of the Holy Spirit now sweeping over the nations, calling the hidden peoples out of obscurity and darkness and into focus for the whole worldwide Body of Christ, it is time to rejoice! Especially for those faithfuls that never muted their voices on behalf of those who had no voice in the midst of a noisy choir of Church politics and finances. My tribute these days goes to Dr. Ralph Winter, a true apostle for the unreached peoples, and his staff that never quits!

List of 6,000 Peoples

How was it possible to finally make a list, and to reconcile the different names and numbers?

First of all, if it had not been for what the Holy Spirit has been building up among God's people through prayer, thousands of meetings and conferences, books and other media, advocating the cause of the unreached peoples, it would not have been possible.

The turn of the millennium has furthermore given momentum to slogans like "A Church for Every People by the Year 2000." I cannot see it any other way--this is God's timing, therefore it is possible to do the impossible.

Last June the Adopt-A-People Clearinghouse finished the preliminary research on a comprehensive list of unreached and adoptable people groups. This listing of peoples was sent to about 200 researchers and mission agencies. The reports that came back from 182 countries have now been integrated and sent out as a second draft for a final evaluation before we go to print.

The book, whose working title is A CHURCH FOR EVERY PEOPLE BY THE YEAR 2000 will have about 350 pages including maps locating the peoples through a five letter code (see below) according to their languages and ethnicity. It has been possible to fit these names into the "tree structure" of all languages and dialects (see inset on page 17) since everyone speaks a language and has a mother tongue.

Peoples Information Network

Luis Bush, the leader for the AD 2000 Movement, called together an ad hoc working group, called PIN (Peoples Information Network) to help clarify and assess the goals of the movement. The group's first decision was to divide the task into a "fast track" following the progress of the Gospel among the unreached and adoptable peoples, and in the long run the "discipling" of the peoples of the world whether they are reached or not.

We agreed that to catch every "group of individuals" we needed to create several comprehensive lists in various "tree" structures, such as: an ethnolinguistic tree, a tree of kinship, a geopolitical tree, and a cultural/ideological/religious tree.

Registry of Peoples and Languages

The very first "tree" can now be constructed due mostly to the quality work done by the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL) over the years. This work, spearheaded by Ron Rowland at SIL, is called the Registry of Peoples and Languages (ROPAL. )This registry provides the "code" mentioned above and the column headed ROPAL in the tree diagram across the page. It identifies a total of about 12,000 people groups on earth--reached or unreached--in ethnolinguistic trees for every country and with a geographical location for all these groups inside a country or a region. The registry can also bring an end to the disputes over different numbers and names since the different names used on one people group are reconciled with the five letter ROPAL code.

"Unreached" or "Least Evangelized"

When the Clearinghouse embarked on the task of listing peoples the choice between "unreached" and "least evangelized" was fairly simple. First and foremost our mandate was to list "unreached peoples." Secondly "unreached" was the globally used and established term and it had an agreed-upon definition. Thirdly, there is no agreed upon definition for "least evangelized."

The two terms "unreached" and "least evangelized" are quite different and thus basically "apples and oranges" or "Apples and IBMs," to use a more modern metaphor.

Unreached/Reached (Ed. Note: see page 21 for the background of this key phrase) refers to the presence or absence of a viable, indigenous church movement within a group--the ideal basis upon which to claim that every person in that group has a chance. The evangelized/unevangelized terminology has not yet gained broad acceptance, but is sometimes based on a whole list of factors not widely known.

Background and definition for the listing of 6,000 UNREACHED AND ADOPTABLE PEOPLES:

The Adopt-A-People Clearinghouse fully endorses the definitions that came out of the meeting among 22 mission agencies and researchers called together by the Lausanne Committee on World Evangelization in Chicago, March 1982. These definitions were made not to satisfy ethnographers, anthropologists et al, but to serve the mission movement in its practical endeavor to seek the lost by seeing the world through a Biblical grid--nations or people groups.

The definition of people group attached "sociological" to the term "ethnic" to expand the biblical use and understanding of "ethnos" for peoples and nations in any situation where "church planting" would be appropriate. In America, or almost any urban cultural setting that has become a melting pot of ethnic and cultural diversity, this only makes sense. Many valuable ministries came into being and are doing a tremendous work in the Kingdom based upon the philosophy behind the sociological dimension of the definition.

However, a major difficulty arose. It became much more difficult to come up with an agreed upon number of unreached people groups. If the church planting goal is forgotten, the number of sociological groupings becomes nearly unlimited--yet highly strategic for evangelistic points of entry. Some felt the church planting goal was not essential to the definition. Thus some lists included "Race track dwellers," "Pro hockey players in the NHL," etc. lumped together with the "Tuva" or the "Zuang," large, complete communities which had never heard the name Jesus even mentioned. This led both lay and learned in the Church to wonder how to deal with this important issue. It was a concept and a "good idea" but did not seem to present target- able goals for a movement in the Body of Christ.

To fulfill the mandate given to the Adopt-A-People Clearinghouse and to be able to produce a useful list for churches and mission agencies, we had to narrow our focus.

The list of people groups is therefore strictly limited to the New Testament use of the term "ethnos" describing peoples and nations according to their "ethnicity" and/or language. Ethnos was the most common term used for heathens, pagans and Gentiles, as opposed to Jews and later also Christians.

Another important observation is that even if all these people groups are unreached and adoptable, we make no claim that this is a final or comprehensive listing of unreached peoples as such. Every properly identified unreached people group is of course also adoptable.

Who Uses "Least Evangelized?"

Dr. David Barrett has in recent years worked as a consultant for the Foreign Mission Board of the Southern Baptists. He introduced the term "least evangelized" in his magnificent World Christian Encyclopedia, which went to press just before the famous 1982 Lausanne-sponsored meeting mentioned above. His research for years had been based on his definition of the degree of evangelization of a country, rather than on the (new) 1982 definition of the particular kind and size of group for which missionary, cross-cultural efforts were still needed in order to "reach" such an "unreached group."

These two terms stem from two different ways of looking upon our task, as related to The Great Commission. Overly simplified and therefore not absolutely correct, "evangelized" measures exposure to the Gospel while "unreached" focuses on response.

David Barrett's approach to research we believe will have great value when it is finished, especially now that he is bending his vast data resources to the degree of the evangelization of peoples not just countries. The process will ultimately, through scaling different evangelistic activities, give an "E-factor" = "Percent evangelized" for the people groups which he has chosen to prioritize. Those scoring less than 55% will be called "Least Evangelized."

This will give the Church valuable information, but it still does not make it readily possible to merge the two databases, since the crucial phrases for the unreached peoples definition are "a viable church" and "the necessary resources to evangelize their own people group." This definition has no simple connection to how much or how little exposure such groups have had.

On the other hand, "least evangelized," when applied to peoples not countries, is built from a new list of factors not yet published, some of which apparently do relate to the number of Christians in a group.

I personally think we all should be grateful to the Foreign Mission Board of the Southern Baptists for funding this research project as well as towards Dr. Barrett for his contribution. As Christians we must recognize the value in diversity, even in methods of research.

Adopt-A-People Consultation II

The Second Adopt-A-People Consultation will be held in Colorado Springs April 25-27. At that time, The Summer Institute of Linguistics will present "The Registry of Peoples and Languages," placing every people group (reached or unreached) according to their ethnicity and language in a "tree" structure for every country.

We who have worked with this project cannot help but be excited as we see years of frustrations due to lack of clarity and unity coming to an end. We almost feel like Habakkuk (2:2): "Write down the revelation and make it plain on tablets so that a herald may run with it."

This book will be the yardstick that AD 2000 will use for measuring the progress of the Gospel according to the goal of a Church for Every People by the year 2000.

Even though it is exciting to finally see a list of unreached and adoptable peoples, an even greater job lies ahead of the Clearinghouse. We have promised to provide brief, descriptive "People Profiles" on all the 6000+ groups we have listed so that every one of these "orphan" groups can be embraced with prayer and compassion, and find their home in the global Family of God.

This, of course, is an impossible task for one single agency to complete. I therefore appeal to YOU for help! We have now completed 600 People Group Profiles but we have nearly ten times as many to go. I therefore am praying for 3000 mobilizers that can do at least two profiles each, working with guidelines and suggestions which we will provide. The current list has now made it possible to coordinate this immense task that otherwise would have been impossible to complete.