July 01, 1992 by

A Do-It-Yourself Skit

Act I: How Far Have We Come?

1. Using a felt-tipped pen make up ten sheets of typewriter paper, as below, with large letters indicating 1430 AD, 1790 AD, etc.
2. Let ten people stand up and turn their poster-pages to their chests.
3. Announce "It took over 1,000 years for Bible-Believing Christians to multiply to the place where they were one out of a hundred of the world's population," and have the first person flip over his or her poster--1430 AD, 1%.
4. Announce "It took over 300 years more for Bible-Believing Christians to multiply to the place where they were two out of a hundred of the world's population," and have the second person flip over his or her poster--1790 AD, 2%
5. Continue until 10% is reached. Point out that today one out of ten people in the world is a Bible-Believing Christian--that means 540 million out of 5.4 billion in 7 million congregations.
6. Who are the other ninety percent? Draw the curtain and proceed to Act II.

Act II: What is the Score Right Now?

1. Use four sheets of paper as below. This time one person will hold the sheet even if there is more than one person in the group represented. I will not expose you to any more of my crude drawings of people!
2. Note that this time more than one person will be standing behind three of the four poster-pages (a total of ten, representing the entire global population). Be sure to put about ten feet between the first three and the last poster--where four people will be standing.
3. Point out that the Bible-Believing Christians at this date in history, as we saw in Act One, are one out of ten, or 10% of the world's population.
4. Explain that:

• One out of ten is a Bible-Believing Christian whom, we think, can be counted on to help finish the task.
• Two out of ten are nominal Christians who may believe something but are not ready to serve the cause of missions.
  (Explain that we are not saying that none of these nominal Christians will make it to heaven, but we separate them off here because they are not likely to make it to the mission field, or to be supporters of missions. We can't count on them!)
• Three out of ten are non-Christians who have opportunity to hear. There are churches among them; the Bible is in their language. They can be reached by normal evangelism and church planting.
• d. Four out of ten are walled off by language and cultural barriers. These are the unreached peoples which seem likely to be reachable by the year 2,000. These have the highest priority in mission strategy.

5. Explain that actually 6 out of 10--the first three groups--live in groups to which the Gospel has already been carried, and within which a church movement already exists. The danger is that the Bible Believing Christians will not get to the fourth group, but will use up all of their mission force on the first three groups, which no longer need pioneer mission techniques.

6. Explain that this distinction (#5) is what the "space" is intended to emphasize.

• It is the distinction between the first three categories (people who live within Christianized societies) and the fourth category (those who have no Christian movement or Bible within their societies).
• It is a difference not between the saved and the lost but between those who have some opportunity and those who have none. The key word is opportunity. Opportunity to the left of the space; no opportunity to the right.
• It is the difference between the need for ordinary evangelism (which does not take linguistics and anthropology) and the need for the special kind of cross-cultural evangelism we call missions.

7. Explain that the Evangelical Free Church of America is now launching a major new mission emphasis precisely on the Unreached Peoples!

8. Now say, "In Act III, we will look more closely at the fourth category, the unexposed non-Christians, the unreached peoples."

9. Draw the curtain--but do not move the ten people already standing.

Act III: What is the Strategy in the Score?

1. Now add to the ten people already standing the additional six poster-people.
2. This helps us understand the particular plight of the Unreached Peoples, and what it is that can and must be done to reach these final, unpenetrated groups.
3. Let no one think that the missionaries who are no longer in pioneer mission fields made a mistake and went to the wrong place. When our missionaries first went out, they went to pioneer fields. Those places now have large and vital church movements--the result of success not failure.
4. Now these healthy, well-established fields may well become sending bases, a prime source of new Third-World missionaries to finish the job. Insofar as our current missionaries (from the USA) who are working in the first three categories, they are promoting and preparing national Christians for true, pioneer missionary outreach, and thus are certainly serving as strategically as any missionary working directly in an unreached people group.
5. But, whether the new missionaries going to unreached peoples are Western or non-Western in background, the task of reaching the remaining unreached peoples is no pushover. Special preparations are necessary. Forget the idea of paying "native missionaries" to do this job. They, too, if they are to penetrate pioneer pockets, will need to learn new languages and master strange customs.
6. Now say, "Let's look more closely at these 12,000 Unreached Peoples. Draw curtain. All who are standing may sit down.

Act IV: What Do We See When We Look More Closely?

1. The six poster pages (see below) held by 12 people.
2. Explain to the audience that it is not so hard to remember 4-3-2, 1-1-1. Even the six categories can be recalled easily if you remember that Jesus said that heaven rejoices over one person converted: that means these groups are the remaining unreached peoples--that is, they are the Most That Heaven Can Boast Over. (Note those enlarged capital letters? They stand for Muslims, Tribals, Hindus, Chinese, Buddhists, and Other!)
3. Also, tell people that these thousands of groups tend to exist in clusters averaging ten groups in a cluster.
4. You may wish to explain that there are really only 11,000 groups, by latest estimate, but that the proportions are preserved by these round numbers here.

1) The Muslims: This is the largest single non-Christian bloc in the world, but also the closest to the Kingdom.

There remain roughly 4,000 unreached Muslim groups in about 400 "clusters" or "families" of nations. We need to understand that the Muslim tradition is historically very close to the Christian tradition. Both stem from Abraham's faith. Islam borrowed many things from ancient Christian tradition, such as praying five times a day, not eating pork, revering the Bible, etc. The word Allah is the word they received from Syrian Christians with whom they had contact. They may even have learned the idea that Jesus escaped the Cross from some confused Christians living in their period of origin.

Mohammed evidently did not have good contact with the Bible. The Quran only quotes from ten books of the Bible. We may need to think of the Muslim tradition as a very needy and defective form of Christianity rather than as a faith that is inherently hostile.

Relatively speaking, much good has come from the spread of the Muslim tradition. We need to believe that Muslims can become followers of Christ without becoming like American (or Korean) Christians in all outward matters.

We can rejoice that in certain parts of the world hundreds of mosques are becoming places where Jesus is recognized as who He really is and where the Bible is replacing the Quran even though the people still consider themselves Muslims. Since muslim means "Surrendered to God," those who work among Muslims could, if they wished, rightly call themselves Muslims.

2) The Tribals: This is the most complex remaining task in the world, but also the most highly studied and most effectively approached today.

There remain unreached about 3,000 tribal groups in about 300 clusters or families of nations. Fortunately God has raised up for this task the world's largest and most sophisticated mission agency, the Wycliffe Bible Translators. In the United States many denominations send missionaries out to tribal peoples by sending them under the Wycliffe Bible translators. This is very reasonable and sensible rather than to try to figure out how to deal with tribal languages without the special experience and computer skills which the Wycliffe people have mastered.

3) The Hindus: Hindus represent the most remote and difficult world- view or mind-set to penetrate. Yet the vast majority of Hindus are helpfully concentrated in a single country, India, where there are already about 30 million Christians. The Christians in India are the most highly organized in missions of any country of Asia, with 60 mission agencies and more than 7,000 missionaries.

The Hindus consist of roughly 2,000 groups within at least 200 "clusters" or families of nations. In some parts of India, like North East India, the majority of the population is Christian. In fact Mizoram is a state which is almost 100% Christian. These fervent tribal Christians are sending over 1,000 missionaries to work in the main part of India.

In the south of India, Christianity is one of the dominant forces. Christians there, too, are sending missionaries to North India. One mission agency alone sends 400 missionaries even though its supporters are some of the poorest people in the world. They have very little. They give very much. Their rule is GO or SEND, and for them "send" means to give 20% of your income!

4) The Chinese: This is a rapidly vanishing mission field. In China there is a larger number of praying Christians than you can find in the entire United States. This massive number of some 50 million Christians in China is the fastest growing sector of the population.

There are roughly 1,000 Chinese groups (Chinese, not tribals in China) in about 100 clusters which do not yet have a church movement among them. Such groups are thus unreached groups, yet all of them neighbor similar groups which do have Christians. (Remember that the many tribal groups in China are not counted here since they belong in the Tribal category, which we have already mentioned.)

5) The Buddhists: There are roughly 1,000 Buddhist groups (other than Chinese Buddhists, which we have already counted) in about 100 clusters which do not yet have a church movement among them, and are thus unreached groups. In Korea it is obvious that Buddhists can come to Christ. There are many fine elements in the Buddhist tradition which do not conflict with Christian beliefs and which must be emphasized and respected by Christian missionaries to the Buddhists. Remember that a major difference exists between two main branches of Buddhism, one of which was profoundly affected by Christianity in the 12th century.

6) Other Groups: There are 1,000 other groups that do not fall under any of the major categories already listed. Probably the largest sphere in this category is the major cluster of many pockets of Japanese society within which there is no accessible church movement. The very fact that the other five categories are more easily identified may indicate that an agency looking for an unreached people group ought first to consult this "Other" category, since these are the ones that may be the most easily overlooked.

Act V: What Can the EFCA Do About This Global Challenge?
Big congregations need to partner with smaller congregations. The 90/10 rule of the vital minority comes into play. It is rare that a whole denomination will take on an emphasis the way the EFCA has. That is, 90% of evangelicals are looking in another direction for their ministry or their interests. Those who are willing to reach out to the Unreached People challenge may need to assume that only 10% of an evangelical denomination will go with them.

Even so, many have asked me "What is our fair share."

The most tangible illustration I can give comes from the fact that a number of leaders in Latin America have reached the conclusion that Latin America ought to seriously accept 3,000 of the 12,000 Unreached Peoples, knowing, of course, that 3,000 groups means 300 "clusters" of smaller groups. If you figure out how many congregations are involved, it is about 100 congregations per group to be reached.

If the EFCA, with over 1,200 churches in North America uses this rule it would mean that the EFCA alone would adopt about 12 unreached people groups, or more than one "cluster" of such groups, and pray and work and REACH these groups by the year 2,000.

Why the year 2,000? Is that when Jesus is coming? Could be. But that is not the point. There is a marvelous, worldwide movement today among eager Christians in every country setting goals for the year 2,000 just because it is the most prominent goal date in human history.

What can be done by then? The Latin American leaders have concluded that they ought to aim for one group for roughly every hundred congregations--and to do this on top of everything else they are already giving to.

That doesn't mean just sending out one missionary for every 100 congregations. There is a lot more to reaching a group than sending one missionary family. However, it is a useful measure. May God guide the EFCA in these crucial days!