Is it OK to Prioritize Reaching the Unreached?

Once again we’d like to look at that quote by Dr. Ralph Winter where he said, “All men are equally lost but not all men are equally needy.” We really affirmed that here. All men are equally lost, and we would add, loved by God. The people in the streets of your city are as lost and loved by God as the people and the most unreached part of the world. And yet, 2000 years after Jesus commanded us to go to all nations, roughly one third of the planet has no access to the Gospel. Very limited opportunities to hear the gospel in a way that is relevant to them. No Bible, no workers, no church. 86 percent of the Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists in this world, don’t have a Christian friend.

So in light of this unfinished task, we feel it’s OK for the Body of Christ and specifically leaders in the Body of Christ to stop and evaluate, How are we doing? How are we doing in terms of stewarding the time, talent, and treasures of the Body of Christ? And so going forward with that, if it’s okay to evaluate, one concept that’s been helpful to us is the concept of “triage”. Triage is a French word. It probably sounds familiar to you, especially if you’ve had any medical training and we could illustrate triage this way. If you are driving down the road and you came upon a bus accident with forty people that have been injured, you’d know your first order of business is to evaluate who needs help first. Who’s got a broken toe, who can hang in there? OK and who’s got a broken neck that needs help now! We’ve got a world where some parts of the world have a broken neck and need help now.

So triage, evaluation, how do we do that? What are some factors to consider? Well we would say there are probably more factors than what we’re going to mention now but here are some. One is what season is this people group in? What geopolitical trends have impacted them and might inform our strategy and how to reach them? What issues are they facing? Is it famine? Is it clean water? Is it slavery? There’s issues that are impacting these people and we need to let that inform our strategy and how we come and be a blessing to them. What people groups are in this region? What influence do they have. How can we partner with them to reach the surrounding people groups there? Unreached people groups. What places are important? And is God highlighting to us? Because in this day and age there’s urbanization is affecting everything and we must consider the city in our strategy going forward. And other strategic places like Omega’s zones. We can also consider spheres of influence if they are not open to religious workers, well they may be very excited about engineers or businessmen or artists and what spheres of society is God highlighting as a means of being a blessing and bringing the kingdom of God into that area.

So these are factors we can consider. But on top of all of it is the understanding that God is the one who really sees the big picture best. We should do research. We should come up with a plan. But we also need to come back to God and say “What do you see that we do not?” You’re the only one who sees the big picture. So these things are exercises that could inform how we as the Body of Christ do a better job of stewarding the time, talent, and treasure of the Body of Christ, in light of the unfinished task, in order to bring the Kingdom of God to the unreached.