January 01, 1992 by Ralph D. Winter

"A Church for Every People and the Gospel for Every Person by the Year 2000"

These are beautiful, inspiring words. Let us look closely at them to be sure we know what we are saying when people ask us specific questions about the goals of the AD2000 Movement.

"A Church for every people" is the essential means to the end of getting "the Gospel to every person bv the year 2000." The goal is every person. The means to that end requires that we reach every people.

Only if "every person" has an opportunity within his or her own people to accept Christ in the fellowship of other believers can we be sure that we have done our job. In the final day referred to in Revelation 21 we know that there will be some from "every tribe and tongue and people and nation" (Rev 5:7). This is embodied in the famous March 1982 definition of an Unreached People.*

At the same time we realize that at any given date in history "every person on earth" necessarily includes

1. Babies just born and who cannot understand the Gospel
2. Dying people who are still alive but unable lo hear, see, or understand.
3. Insane people who may have never had the ability to listen carefully to the Gospel.

God has always been able in His wisdom to deal with such people. We cannot expect that there will be no such people in the End Times. Their existence all down through history at any given point is something He is fully in charge of already. Our goal is not to win every person. That is our desire. Our goal is to give every one a chance, to hear as much as they can take in.

Next, what do we mean by "A Church?" In John Richard's carefully worded "Explanation of the Purpose Statement" in the Appendix of the AD2000 Movement Handbook (p. 58), he indicates that the word "Church" does not refer to a single congregation within a people but no less than "a mission-minded church-planting movement"÷a condition only approximated if we ask for "less than 1%, 2% or X% Christians."

1. A list of groups "less than 2% Christian" will inevitably INCLUDE some groups which already have "a mission-minded, church-planting movement" within them. For example, 13.6 million Minnan Chinese in Taiwan are found in one list of "Peoples less than 2% Christian." We hear there are 400,000 Christians (not less than 2%) in 2,000 congregations. But even if Christians are less than 2%,

there clearly exists a "mission-minded, church-planting movement," and the Minnan are thus not an Unreached People for the lack of an adequate Gospel beachhead.

2. Such a list will also EXCLUDE groups which have less than 2% real believers, but more than 2% Christians of a grossly Gospelless variety, such as you Find in the case of the "Christo-pagan" Indians of the Americas. Not even Roman Catholics consider them Christians! But, such people are indeed Christians in the eyes of the Encyclopedia Britannica and the United Nations and thus their existence keeps all their groups off the "less than 2% Christian" kind of a list. In this case dozens of Unreached Peoples and millions of individuals will be excluded from any such list.

Similarly, what do we mean by "every people?" Since the goal is every person, a "people" must not have pockets within it which cannot understand or which are alienated from the main body of that people. This, too, is embodied in the rationale of the March 1982 definition of Unreached People*

This observation is also relevant to the listing of "Peoples less than 2% Christian." We may consider such a list to be a useful approximation of many peoples within which tliere are no barriers to the Gospel÷e.g. "Unreached Peoples" by the March 1982 definition quoted above. Thus:

1. Some of the larger groups will probably include crucial ethnolinguistic barriers within them, and thus need to counted as more than one group.
2. Some "multiple" groups divided by purely country boundaries do not need to be counted as a separate group for each country. E.g. Jewish groups are found in more than 100 countries. Does that make 100 Unreached Peoples? No, because it is possible that a church-planting movement in one of them could spread to at least some of the others without requiring a separate breakthrough. That is, a people group does not have to be located all in one place.

*ln March of 1982 a meeting sponsored by the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization brought together a large representation of mission specialists to decide on closure terminology. After two days this group felt confident enough to propose that an Unreached People ought to consist of, I ) in terms of the kind of group, "the largest group within which the Gospel can spread as a church-planting movement without encountering barriers of understanding or acceptance." That is, it should be sufficiently homogeneous or uniform so every person can be reached with a single mission breakthrough, and 2) in regard to the nature of a minimum essential Gospel presence, a group would be considered Unreached if there were "no indigenous community of believing Christians able to evangelize this group."