UNREACHED
In Revelation 7, John shares his vision of heaven with members from every tribe, tongue, people and language standing in the throne room before the Lamb.
Yet today there are still over 7,000 unreached people groups around the world.
For the last six years, my family and friends have been on a journey to find, vet and fund the task remaining.
Come journey with us to the ends of the earth as we share the supernatural stories of God at work through the men and women he has called to reach the UNREACHED.
UNREACHED
Every Tribe, Tongue, and Nation: The Story Behind Joshua Project with CEO Chris Clayman
Chris Clayman, CEO of Joshua Project, shares the surprising journey from the organization's humble beginnings to becoming the definitive resource for tracking unreached people groups worldwide. Though it has informed global missions strategy for 30 years, Joshua Project has operated with minimal staff and resources while maintaining the world's most trusted database of unreached peoples.
• Chris's personal journey began in a mud hut in Mali before medical emergencies led to an unexpected path
• Meeting the first Wassoulou convert in New York who came to faith through a dramatic vision of Jesus
• Joshua Project has operated with just 2-4 staff members for most of its 30-year history
• The biblical basis for people group focus traces from Genesis to Revelation
• Current estimates show approximately 10,000 distinct people groups with 4,000 still unreached
• Modern challenges include tracking diaspora communities and leveraging technology for global access
• Joshua Project is expanding from 5 to 30 staff across 15-20 countries with plans for internationalization
• Technological upgrades are needed to make data accessible in multiple languages
• Anyone can contribute updates by emailing info@joshuaproject.net or using the website submission forms
"Research is information that creates awareness, and awareness creates a sense of responsibility."
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In Revelation 7, john shares his vision of heaven with members from every tribe, tongue, people and language standing in the throne room before the Lamb. Yet today there are still over 7,000 unreached people groups around the world. For the last six years, my family and friends have been on a journey to find, vet and fund the task remaining. Come journey with us to the ends of the earth as we share the supernatural stories of God at work for the men and women he has called to reach the unreached. Hello friends, welcome back to the Unreached Podcast.
Speaker 1:Dustin Elliott here as your host today, and we've been talking about the rising tide that lifts all boats. We have had the most incredible summer series featuring Ethnos 360 and Pioneers and GSI. We've had new methods lately, like Apologeticsai and the Seed Bible with AO Labs, and today the work that this group does informs the work we all do in pursuit of the unreached. I have uttered the words Joshua Project more times than I can count over the last 10 years of my life and today we have CEO of Joshua Project, mr Chris Klayman, with us. Chris, so happy to have you here. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 2:Thank you, so great to be with you guys.
Speaker 1:Take us through your story a little bit right. So you're from Georgetown, texas, which is outside of Austin, and kind of get us up to speed. How'd you meet the Lord? How'd you get involved in this work? Oh my goodness.
Speaker 2:Well, I'll try to make it short.
Speaker 2:You know, grew up in a Christian family, but probably second grade or so just felt convicted of my sin and knew that I needed Jesus in my life and that began really a steady growth like no minister's kid but no crazy rebellion and everything like that. Remember started studying the Bible every day like seventh grade and that's continued. But then you go to college and you're like you know, I feel like the main question I'm answering with my life is what do Christians around me expect me to do to be a good Christian? And that's a great place to start, except for when God wants you to do something that Christians around you don't understand or might even resist. And I remember shifting the question to what does God want me to do? Even if the Christians around me think I'm crazy and you think about I was just looking at the life of Jesus and he was obedient to the Father. The religious people around him thought he was crazy, actually wanted to kill him as a result of his passion and his relationship with the Father. And that started me on a journey.
Speaker 2:I lived in a very kind of homogeneous environment you know, same Baptist church in Austin area and the same sort of Baptist church in the Dallas area with my grandparents, and that was my experience of the body of Christ and I just ended up exploring all sorts of a wide array of the body of Christ, becoming a summer missionary after my freshman year in a very international city and ended up studying at Cambridge University in England. My junior year of college which of course a lot of international people there had Japanese friends, both of which had never met a Christian where they're from, and I said, wow, you know, I don't. I don't know much about being a missionary, but I'm pretty sure I could be the one Christian someone knows, like I can do that Church planning, evangelism, multiplication, like that's all way above me, but I can go be the one Christian someone knows. So that started me on a journey understanding about missions, things that rocked my world, like I just assumed. We've got churches in all the countries of the world. That makes sense that we're going and making disciples of all countries, of all nations, not realizing there's all this stuff in Scripture about all the peoples, all the languages, all the tribes, all the families of the earth being blessed in Christ, and that's a whole different picture than just the countries.
Speaker 2:So that ended up somehow with me going to Mali, west Africa, right after college, ended up living in a mud hut, no electricity, no running water, what we'd call a previously unengaged, unreached people group. There were just no Christians, few Christians known about in that area. Long story short, I was medically evacuated twice in a year. Came close to dying, that is how.
Speaker 2:I met my future wife and it was a way that we were at least open to other opportunities Met the first Muslim background Christian of that same ethnic group called the Wassaloo, not in Mali but in New York City, in Harlem.
Speaker 2:And one day of seeing if God would lead us there, had this crazy story of, like 20 years old dream vision healing in the name of Jesus. Jesus came to him in a vision. There was a valley of dry bones, like Ezekiel 37. He's never seen the scripture before, never seen a Bible. Jesus appears in the Valley of Dry Bones. He had been going through this guy named Musa, a great illness and the doctor thought he had one week left to live. He sees his actual dead bones among the Valley of Dry Bones.
Speaker 2:Jesus says if you believe in me, not only will you live in this life, but you will live for eternity. And then he gave the typical Muslim answer but I follow Muhammad, I don't follow you. And Jesus just repeated the words. He wakes up out of the coma. He believes in Jesus for healing. He's completely healed in a matter of weeks. Then God reminds him about that salvation part and he says well, I don't know any Christians, I don't know the Bible. He says. God says I will take care of that and takes him to a city, meets a Christian, pointed to John 3.16. His friend was reading in the Bible and almost exact words that he heard in his dream and he says I want to follow this Jesus. The guy gave him a Bible. He reads it cover to cover. In like a month or two, old and New Testament Becomes a baptized follower of Christ. They try killing him for 20-something years.
Speaker 1:Then he fled to New York, tells us this story and says it's a miracle you walked into my life today.
Speaker 2:I have always felt called to be an evangelist among my people, but I've never known how, because it's just been me. I said I know it's a miracle as well. I've been praying the last few years to see the first church as started among your people, not knowing how I can be a part of that work because I'm half dead and I can't visit your country. It says tonight there is a meeting of the Wassaloo in the Bronx. They only meet every year and I've lived in New York City for maybe 20 years. I've maybe met 20 Wassaloo people. That was our first full day in New York to see if God would lead us here, and it's kind of been a journey ever since of researching unreached people, groups in New York City and North America, working with West African Muslims, seeing this gateway from cities back to the least reached peoples of the world. In Moose's own village through his relational network, we went back, shared the gospel with over a hundred people that first time back and now there's probably 50 or so people who have been baptized in his village.
Speaker 2:And it's just amazing the gateways God has provided through migration technology and so forth as new gateways for spreading the gospel to the least reached peoples.
Speaker 1:Yeah, amen. Well, you know, one part of that story that shouldn't go unnoticed is that you were available. You were available right. So when you met him, you had been praying about these people. You had been praying about your role in their future. You had been praying about how God was going to use you, and you met him. He had been praying as well. You had been praying about how God was going to use you, and you met him. He had been praying as well. You had different skill sets and different abilities and different backgrounds, and when you put them together right because you were open and you were ready, you were able to really go out and make some significant differences for those people. So beautiful story. Thank you for catching this up. Tell me how you got started then with Joshua Project.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so my first few years in New York. We moved there in 2006. I'd never raised funds to be a missionary, things like that and so I was like, well, I'll go work at Starbucks. I just thought that's what people do in New York. I didn't even drink coffee at the time. I just thought, well, I guess that's what you do. And I was asked to lead research on the people groups of New York City, and, being not from New York City, I was naive enough to go sure yeah, I'll do that.
Speaker 2:Sounds better than Starbucks while I work with West African Muslims at least half of my time. So it started off as more of a job that sounds better than Starbucks and really became a calling because I realized, you know, there's depends how you count it 23 million people or so in the metropolitan New York area, around 8 million or so in New York City proper. I mean, there's like 2 million Jewish people, and not just your Ashkenazi fiddler on the roof variety. You know it's Sephardic Jewish that come from Morocco or Spain originally, or there's tons of Syrian Jewish people. There's Yemeni Jewish synagogues, there are Indian Jews, there's an Afghan Jewish synagogue in Queens, right. So it's just this incredible diversity.
Speaker 2:Maybe 50,000 Bukharan Jewish people from Uzbekistan and maybe only it was Babylonians, and then Medes and Persians, and then Ezra and Nehemiah era. A lot of Jewish people came back to Israel. Well, not all Jewish people came back and ended up speaking some sort of Persian-type language and separated from other Jewish communities for what? 2,500 years or so. So through migration, these other Jewish communities are now connecting in places like New York and the Bukharan Jews have established their own language, their own culture, their own kind of way of being, their own practice of Judaism. That's been separate from the other Jewish community and only connected through migration. You know, there's a million or so Muslims, arabs, west Africans, south Asians, you name it. There's about a half million Hindus. There's 80,000 Sikhs.
Speaker 2:You know, that was just all metropolitan New York and I ended up doing a book called Ethnicity, the Nations, tongues and Faiths of Metropolitan New York, had over 100 people help me research. We took original photographs. It's like an all-color photographic prayer book, you know, for the peoples of New York. I got done with that and said, fantastic, I can be done with research and just go hang out with West African Muslims full time, but really felt convicted that there was information that we had and I always felt like research is information that creates awareness and that awareness creates a sense of responsibility.
Speaker 2:And now that this information was out there, I was responsible for the information I had and I could count at that time, on one hand, the amount of people strategically focused on evangelism and church planting among the least reached peoples of New York, except for the Jewish communities, which had focused work. And then there were some people that were from a Muslim background or Hindu background that were focused on reaching their people, but as far as like strategic church planning? There wasn't. And how much publicity did Arabs get in New York post 9-11? There wasn't anyone focused on church planning among Arab Muslims, for instance.
Speaker 2:And so we set about seeking to create systems and training to raise up missionaries in the context, local churches that would reach out. So ended up starting a mission organization called Global Gates which focuses on reaching, through global gateways, the least reached peoples of the world and so kind of spreading to the ends of the earth through global gateway cities, and so had a co-founder with that. It was also a New York-experienced missionary and so that kind of grew and ended up still working with West Africans but getting sucked back into the research world, because as we expanded into different cities we needed to really define what are the most strategic gateways to the least reached peoples and places of the world through global gateway cities in North America, because US receives tons more immigrants than any other country in the world. So I have a mentor friend that has been a senior writer for Christianity. Today he's got a religious website called nycreligioninfo and I did an interview with him and he wanted to really propose that NYC is the missionary capital of the world, not just for Christians but for Buddhists and Hindus. Everyone has a presence here. I have been in Taliban-supporting mosques in New York City and meeting even people from Somalia that were here as missionaries quote unquote to convert Hispanics to their brand of Islam. And there are tons of Hispanics who have become Muslim in places like New York, and so you've just got this breeding ground of religious conversion that take place in cities and a lot of focus for missionaries.
Speaker 2:But we needed to see what cities were actually very strategic for spreading the gospel around the world. So I ended up doing a website called upgnorthamericacom which highlighted the most significant unreached people group communities in North America. You can actually do virtual prayer walks through these communities using Google Earth and step foot in the mosques, step foot in that Taliban-supporting mosque and pray for them in faces and places. And as I kind of got sucked back into the research, we started updating information on Joshua Project because we actually had better information on what was happening, because diaspora is such a slippery thing and we were studying all these diaspora groups and I had met Dan Scribner, the founding director of Joshua Project, back to 30 years ago in 1995 when Joshua Project. Back to 30 years ago, 1995, when Joshua Project started I was actually teaching a perspectives class in Connecticut where he's from, dan's brother happened to be there. He said, hey, would you like to meet the director of Joshua Project? I said, of course he goes, it's my brother, he's here in town. So we ended up meeting probably a decade ago, and that started a relationship that led to us updating some information and a few years ago it just felt like I needed to create more space by passing off things I was responsible for raising up leaders and just allow God to direct me, however that would lead. And that led to just a unique season in Joshua Project where I know you've said you've relied on Joshua Project info and quoted it a lot.
Speaker 2:I think a lot of us assume that Joshua Project has just had this massive staff and massive budget for most of its last 30 years. It's had two to four staff members. Some years it's operated on less than $10,000. Numbers. Some years it's operated on less than $10,000. It has just been something God has used, with the faithful service of a few that just work hard, very humble, network widely and rely on the body of Christ to kind of keep it going with information coming in and all of that.
Speaker 2:So I felt like it was a unique time with Joshua Project where now the average age was 66 when I came in two years ago.
Speaker 2:They are internally talking about maybe even shutting down Joshua Project in the next few years. No one knew this just because they were aging out and I have started organizations before. Joshua Project had never been its own organization and really needed to be in order to build its capacity and really leverage its goodwill around the world and just how it's this trusted, neutral party that people link to. So also there's a complexity with people groups now in cities and that's been my world the last 20 years in New York is the fusion of peoples and complexities and layers and nuance of people groups in urban context. And also it started a mission organization with church planners and evangelists focused on people groups in cities and so still very much believe that people groups need to be what drive us and missions and starting breakthrough churches among these least-reached peoples, but needing to understand the complexity. So I just felt like I'd had some unique experiences that led to this time with Joshua Project where hopefully could help advance the work that God has entrusted to us.
Speaker 1:If you could put a meme into a podcast, this is what Clint and I you would have. You remember the cartoon dog where the jaw drops to the floor and then they've got to bring like a rolling pin and roll the jaw back up. Yeah, that's Clint and I, for the listeners right now. Yeah, that's Clint and I for the listeners right now. Did you hear what he just said? Did you hear this story? Oh, my goodness gracious.
Speaker 2:Chris. Wow, so get this. The database director for Joshua Project has never been married, comes from a Kansas farm, he's volunteered and worked with groups or had jobs with like crew and navigators before, but really the last 25 years he's donated his time, full time, to Joshua Project, like sold a Kansas farm or something and just lives by himself, faithfully, servesfully, serves, wakes up. He is now 86 years old, still still working goodness, full-time for joshua project what's his name? Probably knows more about people groups what's?
Speaker 1:at least, give us at least his first name bill. All right, guys, let's pray for bill, let's thank bill's awesome goodness, wow, wow.
Speaker 1:I don't even know how many different rabbits I want to chase off that story. I know my mind's going everywhere. The first thing I want to highlight is you made a comment early on, like I may not be able to plant churches and I may not be able to reach these whole peoples, but early on you were like I can be the one Christian they know. Let's just sit on that for a moment, let's just let that sink in for a moment, because that was your posture and that posture, that simple, humble posture, allowed God to make you into a special utensil for special use. And then you went and you were, and then you had to come back because he had a lot bigger plans for you. He wanted you to meet somebody and he wanted you to get into today's modern Rome, modern Roman road in New York, and he wanted you to be a part of a work that would inform all of the other works. Maybe let's go back to Genesis. All right, let me just take the listeners through biblical history. Go with us again real quick.
Speaker 1:So you get creation, the four major events and kind of the preamble of the Bible right. You get the creation. You get the fall in the Garden of Eden. You get the flood with Noah, and then the tower, the Tower of Babel, the scattering of the nations, right. So everyone kind of spoke one language. Everyone comes together. You know, we've got this great new technology and we've got fire and bricks and we're going to build this tower and we're going to go up as high as the heavens so we can be like the gods, right. And of course God said no, high as the heavens, so we can be like the gods, right. And of course God said no, not on my watch, I'm going to make you all speak these different languages so you can't communicate, you can't do this project and scatter.
Speaker 1:So we had 12 tribes. We have all these different languages and dialects and different things starting to happen and people scattering around the world. Tell me your interpretation of the tower. What happened since? How many languages are there? Are there anybody creating new languages? Still? I mean, what's the newest, oldest language? You know like help me kind of process in your mind and in the mind of Joshua Project, when God in Revelation, when John shows us this member of every tribe, tongue, people and language in the throne room before the Lamb, how many languages and people and tribes and nations. Is that Like how do we know, how do we process this, chris?
Speaker 2:Wow, okay, yeah, big topic. So I guess back to Tower of the Babel. I think we always look at that as just incredible negative thing. Right, there's this disobedience that happened. They didn't multiply and spread and fill the earth, they stayed in one place, wanted to make a name for themselves, and that's all very much a legitimate interpretation, but obviously a major theme through Scripture is what man intended for evil, god uses for good. You know, back to what Joseph said to his brothers after he was put in prison, tempted to be killed, and how that resulted in the salvation of many, many lives.
Speaker 2:Same thing with Tower of Babel, where God flips that narrative and so, yeah, they were supposed to multiply and spread throughout the whole earth and this confusion of languages took place as a result of their pride and so forth. But then the redemption of all of that is now. God takes that beauty of different culture and language and instead of a narrative of we all want to get back to where we're just speaking one language you know, or whatever it's that he redeems it and his worship is fulfilled. It is completed when all nations, all peoples, all languages are represented before his throne. It actually says that that is what will take place in the end times, that we're going to come in with our culture, we're going to come in with our language and in some shape or form, that is a completion of God's worship and glory throughout the earth, is a representation of all of these in heaven, on this earth and in heaven.
Speaker 2:And so you go back to even not too long in Genesis, after the Tower of Babel story. You have this blessing towards Abraham, and there's a couple of different places this takes place. I believe it's in Genesis 12, he talks about you know, make you a great nation, I will bless you, I will make your name great, so that. So there's a purpose behind that, so that you will be a blessing. And it says and you all, the mishpachah that's the Hebrew term for families. I think the best interpretation in English would be something like clans, larger family units all the mishpachah of the earth will be blessed.
Speaker 1:Genesis 12, 1 through 3, what we call the Abrahamic covenant.
Speaker 2:In Genesis 22,. This blessing is kind of repeated with a different word. It says I will bless you. I will multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven, as the sand on the seashore. Your offspring shall possess the gate of his enemies, and in your offspring so you can think of a messianic reference here Christ, who comes, who redeems, who brings all of this into being, this blessing is fulfilled. All the nations, all the goyim or the goy, the non-Jewish peoples, all the non-Jewish peoples of the earth will be blessed because you have obeyed my voice. And so you start seeing that scattered throughout scripture of Psalm 67. May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face to shine upon us. So there's like that remnant of the Abrahamic blessing. But then you get the next piece of that as way so that your way may be known on earth, your saving power among all goyim, among all nations. And that just thread goes all throughout that those of us who enter into faith in Christ enter also into that same faith and covenant with Abraham, just as he was blessed, in order to be a blessing that all nations, peoples, languages, mishpachah, families of the earth will be blessed.
Speaker 2:In the New Testament you have an equivalent of those words and you have direct equivalents that you see back into the Septuagint and different translations. And so the translation for goyim in New Testament would be ethne or ethnos in singular, and there's probably a dual meaning behind that. One would just be all those non-Jewish people, and so that's why when you read in English New Testament you'll see the word Gentiles, right, there's Jewish people and they're Gentiles. Every time you see that word Gentiles I think every time, at least most every time it's the word ethne. The Gentiles are the ethne. So it's like the singular non-Jewish. But also you see that referenced with specific peoples, distinct languages, distinct cultures, specific peoples, distinct languages, distinct cultures, there's going to have to be new breakthroughs among them for the gospel to be embedded in that culture and to redeem that culture from the inside out. And those are ethne as well. So in the New Testament it goes on and talks about you need to make disciples of all ethne. It says this gospel of the kingdom Matthew 24, 14, will be preached to all ethne as a testimony to all ethne, and then the end will come. And then Revelation 7, 9, and 10, you get this picture of a great multitude which no one can count from all and it's like they're just covering every piece that they can think of of a larger group. These different nations, these different peoples, these different families, these different languages, all of them, all of them are going to be represented before the throne.
Speaker 2:All throughout, maybe, mission's history there have been emphasis on different types of peoples. We know the gospel exists in these peoples or these areas because we often associate those together and so we have to go to those areas and peoples and languages that don't have it. So that's been there. Then you kind of fast forward to like 19,. Late 1960s, 70s, maybe even mid 60s, started noticing that you know there's a church basically in most countries of the world and you could look at maybe an interpretation of Matthew 28, 19 through 20 through a modern geopolitical lens. You know there's 200 to 300 countries in the world, depending on how you define it, what you agree with, and you could say well, we're making disciples of all countries. Like that's happening, there's starting to be strong national churches that were established all throughout the world. At various times the national churches would even call for a moratorium of missionaries, meaning don't send any more missionaries from the West. You know you're inhibiting our growth and our ownership, our authority in this context for spreading the gospel in our country.
Speaker 2:And it was in that context, in a 1974 Lausanne Congress where Ralph Winter was basically illustrating what a lot of people have been starting to say, and the Lausanne Congress, but the whole unreached people group focus. A lot of people attribute it back to this watershed moment. In his 1974 address he said look, there are different types of evangelism in this world and of course Billy Graham started, along with John Stott, the Lausanne movement and so there was a heavy focus on evangelism. He said the greatest need in the world today for missionaries, the absolute greatest, the highest priority, is cross-cultural evangelism. And he would say things like if you have like nominal people around you, nominal Christians in your own people, same language, that's like E0 evangelism. They just need to come into the fold, they need to really understand genuine faith in Christ.
Speaker 2:If you've got people who are not identifying with Christ in any way from your culture same culture, same language we'll call that E1 evangelism. That's where most people in the world come to faith in Christ, is natural family members and friends in Christ. It makes sense. When you communicate good communication, it's going to be clear in what you present, it would also be received in the same way. That happens at an E1, e0 evangelism level.
Speaker 2:There's also a nearer culture evangelism where there's something related in your language or culture, where you can kind of navigate back and forth. It's still not the same culture, language, but it's part of the general family and we call that E2 evangelism. So think even like a British person going to France. It's different cultures but it's still this Western European umbrella. The languages have a similar origin, it's related. It's a lot easier to learn a language or how to communicate, kate, it's certainly not the same but you can relate in ways much more than you could in what is called E3 evangelism, he said, which is very distant culturally.
Speaker 2:Think of that British person showing up in Gujarat, india and man. It's so different Ways of thinking, life, culture, language, everything is so different among their people because there wasn't a significant enough Christian presence among their people that had adequate resources or numbers to evangelize their own people. So around 61% of the world's population. Therefore, he said, our highest priority is cross-cultural evangelism. We can't see God's glory go forth among these people without the influence of outside workers going in and the power of indigenous expressions of faith, indigenous, being a botanical term of what's native to an area. You will sniff out foreignness if the gospel is always presented from foreigners, and so the greatest effectiveness will happen with E1 evangelism. But you can't get there unless the outsiders go in, see the first people come to faith and they're naturally spreading it.
Speaker 2:And from that point it was like something just clicked, because around the world they saw these national churches and Ralph Winter would talk about these 61% basically that were part of peoples without breakthrough, missiological breakthroughs among them, and he called them hidden people groups. They are hidden under the tall grass of the national churches around the world. See them. The body of Christ isn't talking about them. They're not aware, they don't appear into your church, they're hidden and we have to bring attention to them, to the body of Christ, and there's going to have to be intention and deliberate evangelism. You know, sometimes we make a false assumption that if every Christian in the world would just go out and reach a few people for Christ, the gospel would spread to every people in the earth. And that's just not true. You have to move beyond your own network, beyond your own context, to go into these breakthrough type settings.
Speaker 2:And so the other word that Ralph Winter used, which is actually the best word to illustrate what we're talking about with what we call unreached people groups today, but it never took off, and you'll see why. He said these peoples are unincorporable people groups Unincorporable, unincorporable. What he meant by that was if you come to faith in this certain people group that doesn't have an existing church that you would feel comfortable with, there's no existing expression of the body of Christ that you can be incorporated into, how are you going to be nurtured in your faith? How is that going to grow? How are you going to reach your own people if the church isn't established in a particular culture? They're unincorporable people.
Speaker 2:If individuals came to faith in Christ, where do they go? And that is the best expression for actually what unreached people groups really means there's not enough expressions of the faith in Christ where, if people came to faith in that culture, they could easily incorporate into. Now, for whatever reason, that word never took off and therefore we're left with the more confusing and overly misused term unreached people group.
Speaker 1:Well, it's six syllables, Chris. It's six syllables. I mean, you know, if Clint's going to put that in a worship song, nobody's going to be able to get through that on Sunday morning.
Speaker 2:Lord reach the unincorporated yeah.
Speaker 1:You got to try it now, though that's a challenge right there.
Speaker 2:There you go, come on, worship leader.
Speaker 1:Laying it down.
Speaker 2:So Unreached People Group in order to quantify it, to at least give a trajectory of where things are at and at least guide the body of Christ and the missions community in the right direction, towards getting to this wide array of how it's described in the Bible, of all nations and tribes and peoples and languages that in Revelation that's all ethnos, all phile, all laos, all glasa, and I'm not sure I'm pronouncing those correctly, but it's all different words to talk about different layers that overlap with people's. There was a lot of wrangling over decades to try to define that and ultimately landed on a definition that you know, if there's not a significant enough presence and resources of a church and a given people, that it has to have outside assistance to reach their own people. That's an unreached people group. Or, on a strategic level, a people group is the largest group through which the gospel can spread as a church planning movement without encountering barriers of understanding or acceptance. All right, so largest group.
Speaker 2:We're not interested in like dividing the world into a hundred thousand people groups, because we can. You know what's the largest group to which the gospel can spread without encountering these barriers of understanding or acceptance. And so really you don't know what a people group is in that definition until the gospel starts spreading. So our best attempt to at least to give a trajectory is to go all, right, what are the barriers of understanding? That's largely linguistic, okay. So we kind of form some people groups around language. There's a barrier of understanding there, but there are parts of the world where language really isn't the main issue for receiving the gospel. Places like South Asia, they all speak like six languages. You know, that's not the big big barrier. The big barrier has to do with sociocultural divisions within their world caste, different communities, different jatis, they would say. So that's more of a barrier of acceptance than it is of language, just language, yeah. Therefore, if you look at a South Asia people group list with Joshua Project, you won't see just people groups divided by language. You see more of the different caste communities, because the gospel is not easily jumping from caste to caste, except for cases where the gospel starts spreading and we realize oh wow, you know those people groups really are close enough and they need to be combined. Or we find out the gospel starts spreading and it just stops for whatever reason, and we realize maybe that identity is too broad and we need to break that up into other people groups for a strategic church planning effort. That is the case right now with what would be the largest frontier people group in the world. So frontier is a category that only goes back to 2019, where this has been widely used using Joshua Project information. So in order to kind of set a list, to give a trajectory, we said less than 2% evangelical, less than 5% Christian adherent of any kind, because we can numerically track that better than some of these fuzzy more qualitative definitions for an unreached people group. But you could still have within an unreached people group a group that largely has a healthy, multiplying indigenous church that isn't past that 2% threshold. So in order to kind of recover the original intention of what needs missiological breakthrough, the term frontier people group has come about as a subset of unreached people groups where that's less than one Christian for every 1,000 people.
Speaker 2:Like we really need breakthrough and if you look right now as of what is this August 2025 or whenever this comes out, the largest frontier people group we have in the world in our list will be the Sheikh of India, and I can already tell you right now, once we get enough information, that group probably needs to be broken up into a lot of other groups. Sure, that name comes from census information from India. The numbers come from census information comes from census information from India. The numbers come from census information.
Speaker 2:But we know enough already that probably that identity came from an Indian census that wasn't so concerned about Muslim identities they're more concerned about Hindu identities and so they just lumped a bunch of groups together into this one, and so us to try to figure that out on a really India is like its own continent. You know, is incredibly complex because you have to go down to district levels and state levels and try to figure out what. What's all going on there. There's there's a lot of high caste Hindu converts to Islam. Historically that really is what Sheikh should be, but most Hindus who have converted to Islam would come from what we'd call today scheduled caste, so lower caste or outside of the caste system.
Speaker 2:And that's actually not people that should be identified as Sheikh. That would be something else. So the work continues.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. How do you get your information? I mean, how does Bill do this? How do y'all do this?
Speaker 2:You can write info at joshuaprojectnet today to send any corrections or help us with anything. No, that's great.
Speaker 1:That's great. You know, we had Steve Sanford on from Ethnos and we were talking about the group he served in Younger in Life and we were looking up the group while we were talking and I said this is the Joshua Project info. And he said I think it's actually more than that now. And he said I think it's actually more than that now and he said I'm actually going to reach out. I think y'all have actually spoken since then. He said I'm going to reach out to Chris and we're going to talk. So if you have an update on some Joshua Project data, you said to send it to info at joshuaprojectnet or if you look at any people group profile on Joshua Project.
Speaker 2:There will be two or three submit update buttons on each of those pages and that will link directly to an ID.
Speaker 1:A little bit of community work.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so in short, of where we get our information. Historically it's been from large data sets such as census information in countries. You can never replace the amount of time, effort, money put into those things.
Speaker 1:Well, no red marks on census studies in biblical history right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so religiously and politically motivated. You know, always has to be interpreted through those lens. Like the sheikh example I gave. There will be like large denominational censuses done by, say, world Christian Database or Operation World, that we will draw from as well of what's happening. And then there will be people who own national or people group updates and they just see as part of what they do is to regularly send updates into Joshua Project or like I'm raising my hand right now, as a filled missionary I work among a certain people and I look at Joshua Project and I go why are they so wrong? And I actually do something about it.
Speaker 1:Don't just say that, actually send an email and say hey we're up to this now. So where do we stand today? What's the best guess at the count People groups reached unreached. I realize it's not about a scoreboard, but everyone would like to know from the definitive voice.
Speaker 2:So modern, updating beyond what's been done historically all sorts of field software by missionaries, organizations on the ground, starting to be amalgamated, sensitive information taken out, pushed up to Joshua Project partners, imba, peoplegroupsorg, like we're working together to get you know software pushed up, networking with organizations around the world, that's they're capturing this with reports already you know, sending that in working with those national associations, denominations, church planning networks to get updates, having national and regional representatives around the world with Joshua Project that have local eyes and ears. So we were at five staff members October 2024. I think we're right around 30 now in 15 to 20 countries and growing.
Speaker 2:You know, I would imagine us having 100 here in the next couple of years. So just having a local eyes and ears of what's happening, how to use that information to affect the gaps.
Speaker 1:Shouldn't we almost deputize more of the missionary community?
Speaker 2:Yes, please do, and that's what a lot of it is. It's just add-on roles to what people are doing already, but then having a global platform.
Speaker 1:Like every major sending org, should have a monthly reminder for somebody on the team to update y'all.
Speaker 2:Please, yes, please, do. It just helps everyone, yeah, which we've just kind of rolled out again in a version one level on our website and then looking at how do we get to more engagement happening with these unengaged groups. We've never tracked unengaged but that will probably start in 2026 as we've been working with several key organizations to really define what unengaged means and have phases of engagement. So that whole church aspect which has been missing from the unreached definition as we have in our list today, that we can start tracking that, because that's really what we're getting at. Is there healthy reproducing churches among these people? And I'm a lot more confident in a group that's 0.1% Christian but has a healthy reproducing church than I am in a group that's 2.1% Christian but plateaued or declining, and so we hope to add that layer. People group numbers are complex and so you quoted 17,000-something people groups earlier. That is a historical view of people groups in country, meaning that if the Wolof are in Senegal, the Gambia, mauritania, france, us, that's five different people groups. So everywhere the Wolof are is counted as a different entity. And of course, in the past, when people would leave different countries, and still today you're influenced by the culture of those different countries. Communication, especially in the past, was much less and strategies were often happening among people within a given country. Where we really need to push people to think about people group across countries. So even with the Wolof.
Speaker 2:I talked with this woman last couple of weeks. She came to faith. Wolof Muslim background came to faith in New York City for the longest time. People would say there's only like 300 Christians among the Wolof. I think that's more. Now. When she came to faith she led 15 family members and friends to Christ in the first 18 months and they lived in Florida, quebec, canada, italy, france and half of her family back in Senegal. That's like 5% of the Wolof believers comes to faith as a baby believer out of New York and just spreads.
Speaker 2:And we've got to get to the point where we see all of those as potential engagement points that will help everyone connect and see, and not only the geographic locations but the social media and internet spaces where these people are connecting. That's where you can be in a town of 300 in Iowa or wherever, but be a strategic frontier missionary among a frontier people group because you can engage with them online and if you were to talk with that Muslim guy in their small village, with all the village overlooking that guy's shoulder. That person might be having internal questions and dissatisfaction with Islam and wanting to seek the truth in Christianity, but they would absolutely save face and try to defend Islam while you're in person in the whole village overlooking. But on my private home I'm looking on the internet for answers. I'm looking for questions. I'm wanting to interact with Christians answers. I'm looking for questions. I'm wanting to interact with Christians.
Speaker 2:And so a people group across country view is actually a little more accurate and not a moving target as much, because every time we'd have a new group moving into a diaspora we'd have to count a new people group in country and there might be a hundred thousand people groups. Honestly, you know, if you counted them that way, a people group across country view, there's around 10,000 or so people groups. Still the numbers are the same on the unreached, where around 42% of those are unreached. So 4,000 or so unreached people groups out of 10,000 people group across country. We'll be showing both of those numbers on the website because still people organize a lot by countries. So 7,000, something unreached. If you look at your number of 17,000 people groups or so.
Speaker 1:Chris, this has been incredibly enlightening. Thank you so much for taking the time. I guess. One last ask Does Joshua Project?
Speaker 2:need anything. One of the things that I realized pretty early on is and for those familiar with technology, our tech debt is like 10 to 20 years old, so our database was running on Microsoft Access, which I don't even think Microsoft supports anymore, and it was like in order for us to leverage technology to get what we have into the whole world and think Joshua Project is just in English and yet 70% of our users are outside of North America and we have millions of unique users around the world, but even the top mission sending countries like Brazil and Korea, they're not in our top 10 of users of Joshua Project because it's not in their language. And I sat in a meeting with a Korean pastor last year who translated Joshua Project info on his own, had our maps, had a vision of sending 10,000 missionaries from his one church in 10 years and had already sent over 3,000 in three years. He's having to do all this extra work.
Speaker 2:We have to get to the point with Joshua Project where we're internationalizing this information. The info is just getting out there and because of that information, people are taking responsibility and that's happening. People in Uganda and Zambia are places where highly Christian are seeing information for the first time and going wow, we thought we were doing good. But I realize all these Muslims are around in surrounding countries and we had no idea until we saw Joshua Project. We got to get it out there. So we're going through a several year tech process. It's going to be expensive, it's going to be a complete overhaul of everything, but I think we will see an exponential increase in influence.
Speaker 1:I know some guys that might surprise you Craig and Jake, I know you're going to hear this, I'm calling you. You know I'm going to call you. How can we make that process beautiful? Simple, leverage, ai, read it all, get it in the right places.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and there's a lot of people that will volunteer. But we got to have some people that can at least lead that process, because it's beyond the technical skills of what we have. So we've, you know, joshua Project has never raised funds in the past. We've got to at least let people know the needs and what this could do for the wider body of Christ, if we can get this transformed.
Speaker 1:No more if, brother, no more if it's when we get it transformed, it will happen. I believe it. There is more work to do, continuing to work on the data we have. There's more work to do to get the data we have into the hands of other Christ followers around the world, and the time is now. And the time is now, chris. We always ask our guests and just thank you again. We. And the time is now, chris. We always ask our guests and just thank you again. We always ask our guests just would you pray for the listeners and continue to encourage and invite them into this work? And my commitment to you, brother, is we're going to stay in touch. I want to help you with these projects and help you get Joshua Project into 2026 appropriately Awesome.
Speaker 2:Oh Lord, thank you for allowing us to be a part of your work, and it can be overwhelming to think about all these different peoples of the world and complexities of identities and migration and urbanization and all of that.
Speaker 2:But more than ever we need to pray and labor to see breakthroughs happening among these people groups, and just the complexities are new opportunities, as new interactions are taking place with Christians that frontier people groups never had.
Speaker 2:They're technologically connected in ways that they never were. There's all sorts of avenues for your gospel going forth into these groups where in the past there weren't a whole lot of options and now there are. And so, Lord, may we be encouraged, may we be burdened, may we just step into being that one Christian someone knows, or catalyzing being the one Christian someone knows, because your hope in us is often what you use to help people see another way and they ask questions. We point to your word and your spirit works in powerful ways and this is your work that you just allow us to be a part of. So continue to help us raise awareness and that responsibility will rise with the listeners of this podcast and all that you have entrusted to us relationally Be glorified among all peoples, all languages, all tribes, whatever we want to call them or be glorified throughout the entire earth In Jesus' name, amen.
Speaker 1:And amen. Thank you for listening to Unreached and amen your friends, your church, your life group, small group dGroup, wherever you do life, and if you want to connect with us, find us on Instagram at unreachedpodcast, or email us at unreachedpodcast at gmailcom.
