March 01, 1993 by Ralph D. Winter

George Verwer just called me a few minutes ago from London. He is in the midst of writing an article about the AD2000 challenge of the Unreached Peoples. He said something like, "Ralph, you should have heard me last night talking about reaching all of the Unreached Peoples by the year 2000, the 10/40 Window, the concept of 'closure,' and all that. You would have been proud of me!"

Well, I have for many years been "proud" of George Verwer--for his dogged faithfulness to the toughest commands of the Living Lord. He and his marvelous movement, Operation Mobilization, have not been calling young people into a life of luxury--but to the ends of the earth, to achievement, to glory, not to personal goals and the soft life.

But he surely didn't get all this inspiration from me--although he said he is reading Mission Frontiers. The 10/40 Window concept is Luis Bush's creation. The entire "AD2000 Movement" owes greatly to Luis's faithful executive management, working along with Thomas Wang, whose faith brought this movement into being.

Who are Bush and Wang?

This issue highlights the AD2000 Movement, as well as being our annual catalog issue. I truly believe these two men are the spearhead of the largest, most pervasive global evangelical network ever to exist. The AD2000 Movement is a network larger than the World Evangelical Fellowship, as superb as that is, larger than the Lausanne Committee, as marvelous as that is, and larger than the World Council of Churches as extensive as that is. What more can I say? No movement has ever enlisted the collaboration of more evangelical leaders in more countries and more key places in the history of the world! Yet the AD2000 Movement has no big central office, has practically no full-time workers, but is essentially a network. (To see what "network" means go to pages 5 and 6 where John Robb of World Vision MARC gives a magnificent description.)

But, why did George call?
He is concerned to know for sure how many groups we need to go after by the year 2000. So are you. So are we. It is pretty simple:

The number of remaining groups to reach depends on how inclusive are the groups you name. For example, how about a list of three categories? What?--you say.

Yes, you can include every person in the world by "listing" just three categories: white, brown, black. All of the groups in the world are in there somewhere.

Or, suppose you are Wycliffe Bible Translators: you want to list how many teams of Bible translators are needed to reach everyone in the world with the Word of God in print. Wycliffe people are very professional at going into an area (like southern Sudan) and estimating the need for "50 translation projects."

However, suppose you are Gospel Recordings, and you want to reach every person in southern Sudan with the Gospel on audio cassettes. In that case, truly professional workers have come up with the need for 120 recording projects.

Who's right? Wycliffe or Gospel Recordings?

Don't worry. They are both right. It just so happens that the use of audio media brings out key dialect differences which are helpfully disguised when a language is reduced to writing. Wycliffe can reach more people with one of their breakthroughs. Gospel Recordings specializes in a simpler medium of communication (people don't need to learn to read) but one that requires more detailed attention to different dialects. Both approaches are highly strategic.

One more example--this is where I am most of the time. Suppose you want to talk about the most important single goal of a mission agency: the planting of a church movement within a pioneer or frontier people. In that case, the measuring device is even more subtle. Just as Wycliffe has to wait until the New Testament is in print and in use to make sure just how many dialects it can span, so church planters have a similar but more subtle task--to see whether the breakthrough to one group will penetrate nearby, slightly different groups. Wycliffe can come very close, but cannot be absolutely sure. So it is with the number of church-planting breakthroughs necessary to "reach" all peoples by the year 2000. We must be content with (pretty accurate) estimates until the work is done!

"Make up your mind. Is it 5,500 or 11,000?"
(That is what some are asking --the Adopt A People Clearinghouse now has a valuable book out with about 5,500 peoples listed.)

Answer: No, you make up your mind. For example:

1. Do you want to know how many translation projects using print media are still necessary? Barbara Grimes (Wycliffe's expert) will give you a reliable estimate--3,775.
2. Do you want to know how many translation projects are needed using audio media? Ross Lange (a Gospel Recordings expert) will give a reliable estimate, about 7,500.
3. Do you want to know how many pioneer mission breakthroughs are necessary? This is the business of the church-planting missions. However, while both Wycliffe and Gospel Recordings are aiming at the whole world with their particular tool of communication, any one mission agency is probably too busy planting churches in certain specific places to have time to be counting how many groups there still are in other places.)

But, in fact, this third question is the ultimate question. Only if you plant a church movement in a group can you enable every person to become part of a fellowship of believers within his own society.

Take your pick: less larger groups or more smaller groups

So what is the number that goes with the third question? Well, sorry, no research office I know is prepared as yet to make a solid estimate. Why? Because the other questions have been around longer. Researchers can tell you about the written-language question--that produces larger (but therefore fewer) groups. Or they can tell you about the oral-language question--that produces smaller (but more numerous) groups. But this third question--the "ultimate" question-- was first highlighted in a large meeting of specialists only in 1982. It zeros in on a newly emphasized factor: what is the "reach" of a church movement? This would seem to be even more subtle and sensitive a question than written or oral language use. But it is crucial.

My personal estimate of 11,000 groups is an adjustment down from 12,000--a number accepted by the Lausanne Statistics Task Force in 1989. This change is to take into account progress.

The good news is that the various lists probably encompass almost all the same peoples. A recent Adopt-A-People disk underlying the estimate of 5,500 includes several groups larger than 50 million. Some of these large groups clearly contain over 100 groups that need separate mission penetration. If very many of the groups listed in a list of 5,500 represent clusters, it is then not hard to imagine a total of 11,000. Just remember: even 11,000 is still a small number in comparison to the vast global spiritual work force that is growing like the wind--the wind of the Spirit!

The most important question is not whether or not we can effectively reach all these groups by the year 2000 but whether we are willing to try. It is better to try and fail than to fail to try! And that leads to the question:

What happened at the April 25-27 Colorado Springs "Consultation II" of the Adopt A People Clearinghouse (AAPC) which you highlighted in the last issue?
This was a great step forward for the concept of local congregations adopting specific people groups which do not yet have a vital church movement among them. The day of the conference, the AAPC published a book, A Church for Every People, listing about 5,500 peoples, big and small. Just about every remaining Unreached People in the world is probably there somewhere, even if part of a larger group listed. We will give the details in our next issue.

We can tell you in advance that a truly excellent affirmation came out of this exciting group of about 230 people who gathered at the Colorado Springs Sheraton Hotel. Called "An Appeal to Disciples Everywhere," it is patterned after a similar statement 100 years ago, drafted by a committee including Dwight L. Moody, A. T. Pierson, and J. E. K. Studd (older brother of C. T. Studd). We will print the Colorado Springs statement in full next time. (We do not yet have the text in its final form.) The committee producing this statement consisted of

Clark Scanlon, Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board

Ron Rowland, Wycliffe Bible Translators

Bruce Camp, Church relations secretary for the Evangelical Free Church of America

Luis Bush, Director of the AD2000 Movement

--as well as myself, although I was more of a consultant than a writer of the document.

What happened to the announcement last time that the Perspectives Course now has a new version of a seminary education that can be studied anywhere in the world without a classroom?
We now have more than 1,000 letters offering mentoring assistance or asking for information for potential students. We now have applications from students in New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Nebraska, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Texas, Colorado, New Mexico, California, Hawaii, India, Japan, Korea, Mexico, England, South Africa, and Singapore. The 1,000+ letters of inquiry, of course, come from far more places.

As of today, May 11, we have completed 36 three-hour study packages comprising about half of the first of the four semesters. These packages (five per week) include a 15-minute cassette introducing the subject for the day, two hours of reading involving writing answers to several "Reflection Questions," and a final 15-minute cassette giving a review and definitive reply to the questions posed. A Saturday meeting with a mentor and a Sunday presentation of highlights of the week's material rounds out the average "study week." One week out of every four is "vacation."

Twenty-three carefully chosen textbooks constitute a basic library for the first semester, ten of which will be used (along with additional texts) in the subsequent semesters.

Four semesters make their way from ancient times in four giant steps to the present, interweaving the vital elements of a seminary education, a liberal arts college degree, plus state-of-the art math, science, and mission perspective. The four half-time semesters add up to a 32-semester-unit M.A. degree.

A number of highly qualified professors are dealing with the wide range of interwoven topics. We are audio and video taping every morning at 5:30 AM, getting up often at 3:15 for advance preparations. For further information, write Steve Burg, 1605 E. Elizabeth Street, Pasadena CA 91104, or fax him at 818-398-2111. You can start the first Monday of any month!

What about the resumption of the "Million Person Plan" announced last time?
(Did you miss it? See page 32 of the Jan-Feb issue.) Nothing much has happened. We are still trying to resolve the computer requirements of this anticipated "Ripple Effect" plan.

In that issue we said, "We have an absolutely tremendous plan: we want to do this entirely by word-of-mouth, which worked so well for us before. But the new wrinkle is that the "ripple plan" consists of providing people who pass on the vision the reward of knowing month by month how many others are touched by their initiative. Wouldn't you keep passing things on if you had any idea of the ripples of distant influence your efforts produced?"

This kind of a computer program can make a marvelous contribution to almost any pass-on-able vision. If anyone would like to help design this, write, phone, or fax me at: 533 Hermosa St. So. Pasadena CA 91030, 818-799-8339, 213-682-2047, respectively.

But there is still another reason for focusing on key individuals out in the grass roots. No organization I know does a really good job of harvesting the talent and part time of people at a distance. Note the next two questions:

Why should we give special emphasis to the enlistment of people at the grass roots?
1. They can give their part time: they don't need a salary or "raise support" as a full-time missionary would have to do.

2. They already have loads of local contacts, including local church ties.

3. They are psychologically nearer to the people on our mailing list. This means people contacted by them will take more notice. It is easier to reach out to people who are local than to total strangers across the country (as our staff in Pasadena would have to do).

4. They are located specifically in all the places where we wish to mobilize!

5. There is no limitation to their number. Such people are a virtually inexhaustible resource in time, energy and creativity.

What are the basic essentials in any strategy to harvest part time workers at a distance?

1. Most of them will need someone to "pace" and appreciate their efforts--a vital contact not less than weekly.
2. They need to be able to see the results of their efforts in fairly short term. The more effective this is, the less important #1 is.
3. They will benefit and flourish best if they have some sense of fellowship with others elsewhere who are trying to do the same thing (or things).
4. They are not consumers but salespeople. What they sell they must believe in, but it is not how much they buy into but how much they can sell to others that counts. They ought to be able to see a reproduction of their efforts in those whose lives they touch.
5. They would seem greatly to profit from knowledge of the "ripple effect" of what they do, in case any of their efforts affect people out of range of their immediately environment. In this sense there can be two kinds of workers: those whose labors are focused on people locally, and those whose labors are focused on creating a chain reaction affecting people they know at a distance, the latter becoming sources of ripples of influence further on.

What has happened so far with your new approach to funding and extending the circulation of this Mission Frontiers bulletin?
Our detailed study of this question (presented last time, page 5) has not brought a lot of response! We basically said that it is a waste of the Lord's money for lots of little gifts to be handled. (It would run into hundreds of thousands of dollars just to process that many letters). The most economical and practical way for this bulletin to be funded is for one gift of $136.50 to come once a year from every locality in which there are 70 who get this bulletin. Rick Wood, managing editor, said his church's mission committee chairman sat down and wrote a $136.50 check and sent it in. As the circulation expands, this kind of gift will remain the same for each new group of 70 recipients. We have presented other alternatives. We have not received a whole lot of other suggestions. A perceptive reader might ask, "Why are you willing to put up with (small) $15 gifts but not subscription-size checks? In looking for $136.50 payments for 70 people for a year (for Mission Frontiers) we are dealing with old friends that really believe in what we are doing. We are asking their help. In looking for $15 gifts from completely new, unsure people, we are willing to do anything to help them step over the line and begin to drink in the vision. We cannot ask new people to take big steps. We think we can ask old people to do so.

This bulletin is not very fancy, or very expensive, but the vision and news it contains has over the years transformed the lives of many believers--for whom the global work of God had been either non- existent or, according to reports, a small and failing force.

It seems to us very important for each local group of 70 people who receive this bulletin to reach out to each other in some way for mutual blessing and mobilizing activity--we must work the works of Him that sent us, while it is day. The night comes when no man can work.

In closing, friends, please let me ask you to pray for our workers in Pasadena and regional offices.