November 01, 1991 by

The following excerpts represent the fears and thoughts of many who have struggled with the new frontiers as the immense shifting of gears is taking place today. These men do us a valuable service. We do not want to state things in ways which can be misunderstood! --RDW

[I hope it will not seem discourteous for me to insert comments (in fine print) here and there throughout the following arresting excerpts from recent materials (sources at end) from mission leaders. This unusual method is intended to reduce the tedium a reader might have trying to trace later comments back to the precise statement. Ralph D. Winter]

[These excerpts are from a paper given by Gary at the Sept '91 meeting of the International Society for Frontier Missiology. --RDW]

1. Gary Corwin - SIM International (IFMA)

Over the last decade and a half an astounding shift has taken place. The concept of unreached peoples (verses unreached people) is on the lips of virtually everyone concerned with the mission of Christ's Church. The recent encyclical, "Redemptoris Missio", issued by John Paul II is elegant testimony to just how far the concept has come. This has been a remarkable boon to world evangelization. Reflected in the strategic outreach and planning of agencies and churches, and in the mobilization of new resources to see the task completed, it has not been without it's down side, however.

[Note that Gary perceptively distinguishes between the concept of Unreached Peoples and unreached people. The one involves the special skills of missionaries trained in linguistics and anthropology. The other may simply refer to the task of all of us in our own neighborhoods among our own people. All Unreached Peoples encompass unreached people, but all unreached people are not locked away within Unreached Peoples. --RDW]

The down side of the unreached peoples concept is the imprecise and confusing communication which surrounds it. The all-important term "unreached peoples" itself, for example, implies a division of the world into two parts--reached peoples and unreached peoples. This is fair enough, as far as it goes. What has occurred, however, is the loss of theological and missiological clarity in the use of this term, as well as other terms dependent on it.

The question is then posed, "If reaching unreached peoples is the essence of mission, and if all but the stragglers among the unreached peoples are to be found within this 'window', then what in the world are mission agencies doing in the rest of the world? And aren't they almost criminal in not deploying their resources more effectively?"

While the argument may not always be stated so bluntly, the message seems to permeate almost everything published on the subject.

[Gary is quite right that this is a very unfortunate and unfair insinuation. My own recent paper at the Kansas City meeting of the Evangelical Missiological Society (see pages 34 and 35) addresses this point directly. In my opinion all the world's missionaries-- right where they are now--may well be in the best possible place to promote frontier vision within the world's marvelous mission field believers. --RDW]

Gospel proclamation (evangelism) is never the whole story as far as the Bible is concernedƒ "baptizing... " and "teaching them to observe everything I have commanded."

[Career missionary activity is not the whole of God's work, either. --RDW]

The missiological beauty in this latter kind of disciple-making is that it includes teaching obedience to the Great Commission itself, thus multiplying the task force available to complete the global task.

...the problem is that many fine mission organizations today feel they have been all but written out of the "frontier" missions script, and that their efforts are viewed as second-class at best. This is reflected, I believe, in the typically poor attendance of mission agencies at this Society's meetings. I'm happy to see some major improvement this year. That's good. At the same time, the ill effects of congregational confusion are only beginning to be felt in the form of reduced giving and recruitment for strategic ministries that do not fit the narrow profile of frontier (read: "that which is really important") missions, which has been communicated. And I think that can have devastating effects in the years ahead as churches just say well, we'll just support our own people and we won't be thinking about strategy and that would be a shame.

[Let us be honest, there certainly are some "devastating" changes sweeping local congregations in the U.S.A. This is not all the fault of the shift to frontiers. Overemphasis on any aspect of mission will cause confusion and heartache. Tentmaking (when more countries were closed) has been promoted as the "only" way to go. Sending money to national evangelists has been promoted as the "only" way to go. For large congregations to send their own missionaries directly (without a mission agency involved) has been promoted (with limited success). On the other hand, a redress of emphasis on frontiers has given new interest in all kinds of missions for many congregations. --RDW]

[We must] Define more precisely and realistically what we are trusting God to accomplish through His people in world missions by AD 2000. Given the larger task before us, which we discussed above, my own feeling is that our goal ought to be to see every unreached people group effectively engaged by that year. Such a goal is achievable and it acknowledges anew that it is God alone who "gives the increase." We only plant and water.

[This is an exciting statement that engaging every unreached people by the year 2000 is feasible! The next more bold a goal would be that the minimal essential internal church movement might be established-- if a great global Spiritual revival takes place in time. Still more bold is the goal of the AD2000 movement, not only for every people but every person to hear the Gospel by the year 2000 (see editorial remarks on page four). --RDW]

[Note: Ted gave his talk immediately after Gary Corwin at the Sept meeting of the International Society for Frontier Missiology. --RDW]

2. Trent Rowland - Caleb Resources

While all non-Christians or unbelievers are equally dammed, they are not equally distant from hearing the Good News of Jesus' victory on the Cross. In the church's efforts to reach every lost person, it's helpful to distinguish between those who have a good chance of hearing and those who have practically no chanceƒBy default we will prioritize. Definitions help us make these priority decisionsƒ

Often, after a mission speaker gives a powerful message, the pastor gets up and says, "Isn't that great? You can go home and be a missionary to your non-Christian roommate or to your neighbor." Doesn't that upset you? He's taking all of the power out of the definition of missions by saying that every Christian is a missionary. If everyone is a missionary, then no one isƒThe same thing is true of frontier missions--if everything is frontier missions then nothing is frontier missions. We need to be careful to say, "this is frontiers and this is notƒ"

Evangelize refers to the task--what missionaries do. We are attempting to measure how we're doing the task, but our goal isn't to do evangelism. Our goal isn't even disciple making. Our goal is to see peoples reached.

We use the classic definition of unreached referring to a group where "there is no indigenous community of believers with adequate numbers and resources to evangelize (or reach) the rest of its members without outside assistanceƒ"

[This definition was achieved in March of 1982 at a two-day Lausanne/EFMA sponsored meeting of a large number of mission leaders. It was then accepted by the IFMA Frontier Peoples Committee, and later the Lausanne Statistics Task Force. --RDW]

In our zeal for the frontiers, we must be certain to affirm and work in partnership with others assigned by God to different Kingdom work. Non-frontier workers must rejoice in their calling and not seek to broaden the definition of frontiers to include themselvesƒthey must not feel less important...

Everyone doesn't need to do frontier missions, but someone does. Frontier missions is not the only thing to do in missions, but it is something very important and until recently, largely overlooked...

[Fred Smith, C&MA Regional Director for Latin America North, was present at the ISFM meeting to hear Corwin's and Elder's presentations. His paper, sent to Mission Frontiers, reinforces some of the same points.]

3. Fred Smith - Christian & Missionary Alliance

If the evangelical world were to uncritically heed the latest siren call of certain missiologists, we would have to consider all of the Western Hemisphere, Europe (both East and West), Russia, Australia, most of the Pacific Island world and the lower two-thirds of Africa as "Christian". The spokesmen for this school of thought advocate a major refocus in regards to evangelizing. They would have missions turn away from these areas (as if they were already in the Kingdom of God) and toward the geographical "10/40 Window".

...who is "more lost"? The Arab of the Yemen deserts or the rich industrialist of Mexico City? It is true that the Yemen Arab has had far less chance to hear the Gospel, but are we to forsake the Mexican millionaire just because he has not entered the Kingdom of God over the last fifty years because of ignorance of "the Way" to do so?

[God will not forsake the searching millionaire with a Bible already in his language. But it is not necessarily true that agencies founded for pioneer mission work ought to give up frontier work for such people. The standard mission agencies possess the unique experience of penetrating unreached peoples. God has called many others into normal evangelism of those who have far better access to the Gospel. --RDW]

...who is a member of God's Kingdom and worthy of the title, "Christian"? It seems that the term "Christian" is becoming an inclusive term that refers to anyone who can lay claim to having been exposed, for a certain period of time, to any teachings that have their origin in the Bible. Some missiologists include as Christian anyone who has the Bible as their basic ethical textbook--whether it is adhered to or not. Thus, the world is divided into "Christians" and non-Christians. [Christian], according to some, runs the gamut from hyper-fundamentalist to liberal Mormons. [Non-Christian] would include Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, and pagansƒ

[That is right. Evangelism looks at individuals and asks if they are saved. Classical missions looks at groups of individuals and asks if they have a viable church within their own culture. "Non-Christians" to the one are the unsaved--even if they are "Christians" who have had every opportunity but are not born again. "Non-Christians," to missionaries are those who do not even call themselves Christians, because they have not heard even enough for that.--RDW]

An example of the inclusive usage of the term can be found in an editorial that does not even bother to define the term "Christian" and, as a result, has 95% of missionaries working uselessly among peoples already "heavily Christian."...If one were to follow the logic of that editorial to its conclusion, it would be derived that those missionaries are wasting their time and disobeying God.

The inclusive use of the term "Christian" is also directly linked to an effort to minimize the task of bringing the world into the Kingdom of God. If more people are "Christians", then there is less work to do to evangelize the world! ...This school of thought seems to fear a task too big to be completed by the year 2000. Their thesis is that everyone should hear the gospel by the year 2000. ...And that is a laudable goal, but probably reachable only if the definition of Christian is broadened to include many who fail to meet the biblical definition.

[If one were to ignore completely whether or not Christians are born- again, that still would not speed us to the goal! The goal of missions is not to get a certain number of individuals to say they are Christians, but to get an opportunity for everyone to say "Yes" to Jesus Christ. That involves breaking through into every sealed off pocket of humanity--e.g. unreached people--whether any particular number respond or not.--RDW]

Those who seek to see all mankind evangelized by AD 2000 have divided the world into three categories: World A (the unevangelized individuals; World B (all non-Christians who have, nevertheless, been evangelized); and World C (all who individually are Christians). It seems that, in general, the people of World C have already been evangelized and discipled: forget them! The people of World B have had their chance: forget them! It is only the people of World A who need the attention of cross-cultural missionaries.

[God will not forget them. He will probably send them workers who have not specialized in pioneer missionary work! --RDW]

It is sad that parts of the evangelical world are uncritically accepting this simplistic explanation of a complex world. Much of what the proponents of this ideology have to say is good and valid, but its credibility is affected by an over simplification of the task, loose definitions, and overlapping numbers.

The only thing World C countries have in common is a long history of non-Muslim, non-Hindu, or non-Buddhist dominance and an equally long history of availability to the Bible--thus they are "Christian"!

["Long history of availability of the Bible," yes, that is what missionaries consider a goal. And, thus, for all such situations cross-cultural pioneer missionaries are not needed so much as sensitive evangelists who are native to those privileged cultures. --RDW]

We need to balance our efforts between the "ripened harvest" and the "hidden and unreached fields" while, at the same time, evangelizing, discipling, and nurturing all of mankind.

[This is exactly what the church is to do; it is not exactly what mission agencies should be doing. --RDW]

The International Journal of Frontier Missions serves a very useful purpose in focusing attention on the frontier fields (World A). Unfortunately, it does so at the expense of the honor of missionaries God has called to work in Worlds B and C. It seemingly divides missionaries into two camps: ...1) those who are honored for having targeted an unreached people group, and 2) those who seemingly have missed God's call and are ministering in a World B or C context.

[The next paragraph answers this one. If missionaries working among long-standing Christian movements in mission lands are willing to assist those believers to share the global challenge of the "unfinished task" of reaching all peoples, then certainly no one can claim that they are not doing their part. Trent Rowland makes it very clear that all kinds of workers are needed even though all kinds of workers are not mission workers in the classical sense.--RDW]

One end result of the long-term missionary presence in some World C countries is that, mainly from them, are now coming the Third World missionaries. And who is to take credit for this? The Holy Spirit and the missionaries who have faithfully discipled those churches over the years. In the case of Latin America, it is becoming increasingly evident that God has given the Latin (of World B and C) a heart for the Moslem (of World A). David Garrison calls attention to this phenomenon. I witnessed the same interest as one of my Peruvian disciples developed into a missionary who today is reaching out to the Moslems in England. Another student of mine, an Ecuadorian, served in Jordan, and a third is looking forward to serving in North Africa once God opens that door to him.

Let us not return to 1910 when the "Christian World" wrote-off Latin America as an evangelized continent and not worthy of further missionary activity. The evangelical world ignored that classification and continued its efforts to reconcile Latin men and women to God... Let us not neglect any unreached people or person wherever he or she may be...

[A. B. Simpson, founder of the C&MA, along with Hudson Taylor of the China Inland Mission, and the founders of the Sudan Interior Mission are the explanation, in part, for the emphasis on the "unoccupied territories" of the world where no work at all had ever been done. It was not assumed that all Roman Catholics were believers but that there were other "territories" around the world which had no Bible in their language, which had no wonderful evangelists in their tradition--as had Spain and Latin America. Relatively speaking, yes, Latin America was avoided. It was considered an evangelistic task not a mission task. But the biggest error had to do with the sheer geographical definition employed in those days of "unoccupied territories," which allowed them to overlook the 25 million Indians of the Americas. Those evangelicals who insisted Latin America was indeed a "mission field" and began to stream South found it so much easier to work with Catholics that the Indians were rarely touched. --RDW]

Even though I do have some reservations in regards to definitions, usage of terms, and very generalized statistical data, I am very concerned that we do all possible to reach the unreached in whatever "World" they may be located...

It should also be noted that 331 (26.7%) of our missionaries work among UPGs...

I would like to reiterate that the C&MA has always been, and remains, a mission-oriented denomination, committed to reaching out to those unreached people groups within our sphere of influence...

With this explanatory apologetic, we remain your co-laborers in extending the Kingdom of God into realms of darkness.

[The C&MA, in its early emphasis on the Unfinished Task, and the Whole Gospel, did not intend to "devastate" the slow moving denominations and their overseas fields--where large Christian communities had already resulted. But many in those days would have described things in those terms. -- RDW]

[Ron, Assistant General Director of (TEAM), recently wrote to the Adopt-A-People Clearinghouse touching one of the same issues. Here are some excerpts from his letter. The reply by Stan Yoder of the AAPC will follow.]

4. RON BRETT - The Evangelical Alliance Mission (TEAM)--IFMA

I would like to discuss with you a problem that we are having as we try to continue our historic focus on the unreached...

We very much like the concept of helping churches to adopt an unreached people groupƒIt is important that we do everything we can to sharpen the focus of the local church and help them become directly involved in reaching a group of lost people...

One reason for writing this letter is that we do not want to deceive you and give misleading signals. We feel that we must continue to evangelize the unreached towns and cities in addition to the 12,000 unreached people groups. We want to offer churches the opportunity to reach the unreached in tribes, villages, towns, and cities. At the same time we want to be honest with you and not use your kindness and hard work to advance a somewhat different strategy. We need to present the full scope of our ministry to churches and this means that we will need to develop some of our own literature.

I would be very interested to have your comments and suggestions as to how we may proceed. Thanks for all your good work. We do appreciate it.

[Note that the phrase "the unreached" as used above can mean 1) reaching lost individuals living within a culture with ready access to the Bible as it can mean 2)"reaching a group of people within whose midst there is not yet a viable church movement." The 1st task is relatively simple and is honorable and urgent. The 2nd is likely to be a far more complex task, and is easy to leave for someone else. --RDW]

[Stan is on loan to the AAPC from World Partners of the Missionary Church. He is the Administrative Director. Frank Kaleb Jansen is the director of this new, completely independent service organization, which now has eight full-time staff.]

5. Stan Yoder - Adopt-A-People Clearinghouse

Regarding your questions about unreached towns and cities, I have no easy answer. My own mission, World Partners of the Missionary Church, has missionaries in France and Spain, and the people there are as lost as people in unreached groups. Our mission even includes them in their literature as unreached even though they technically do not qualify according to the current definition. The bottom line for declaring a group unreached is the absence of a church planting movement within a people group capable of reaching the rest of the people without outside, cross-cultural, assistanceƒ

Is it possible to explain in our literature the difference between those groups which have not had a "missiological breakthrough" and those which have--without putting one above the other? This appears to be your task.

We do not know how far we must evangelize in every people group to complete the Great Commission. We only know that all people groups must be at least penetrated before the task is complete. And this is the focus of Adopt-A-People. (Underlining is Yoder's)

Some of the missionaries working in "reached" groups are in more strategic positions than if they go to an unreached group because they can now train and mobilize nationals...If I could train 10 Spaniards to go to the North African Muslims, it would be...(more) strategic for churches to support me in Spain than in North Africaƒ

World Evangelization will not take place until every unreached group is penetrated, but this does not mean the task is complete. Adopt-A- People focuses on what we know must be done... on the most neglected part of the task...

[Yoder freely admits that even his own mission works among "reached" peoples--where the Bible has already been translated, and there already is a viable church movement even if small. God wants such work done, no doubt. But if a mission agency is to undertake such work, you would think that--as Yoder implies--the mission agency would hold high on its agenda even in the midst of such work the call of the still untouched fields and the potential of this work for sending laborers to that more difficult kind of pioneer work--as long as any pioneer work is left to do. If you look closely at the 1992 revised chart on page 33 you will note the statement that probably two thirds of the 11,000 remaining unreached peoples either already have work begun among them or soon will have. --RDW]