50 Largest Unreached Peoples
Christ’s concern is to reach the last and the least. Each of the seven Transform World Challenges is called to have a special focus on these people groups and participate toward the expected outcomes. The Challenges are: Ideological Challenge of Islam; Family Challenge; Orphan Challenge; Poverty Challenge; Human Rights Challenge; Christ’s Missional Challenge; and the Celebration Challenge.
For example, two of the expected outcomes of Christ’s Missional Challenge are to reach the 50 largest unreached people groups by 2020 and to engage the 50 largest unengaged people groups by 2020. An expected outcome of the Ideological Challenge is also to reach the 50 largest unreached people groups and engage the 50 largest unengaged people groups which are Islamic, in collaboration with Transform World 2020 Christ’s Missional Challenge and the Poverty Challenge. An expected outcome of the Poverty Challenge is to build transformational, self ‐ sustainable model communities among the fifty largest unreached people groups and the fifty largest unengaged people groups.
This booklet can serve as a roadmap for accomplishing these outcomes. The following pages provide listings and profiles for both the 50 largest unreached people groups (UPGs) and the 50 largest unengaged unreached people groups (UUPGs). An unreached people is a people group among which there is no indigenous community of believing Christians with adequate numbers and resources to evangelize this people group. An unengaged people is an unreached people group in which no known active onsite church planting is occurring.
The relationship between these two lists is shown graphically on page 2. The profiles presented here have similar format, however, these two lists have different sources, methodology and criteria. Joshua Project provides the list of 50 largest UPGs and Finishing the Task provides the list of 50 largest UUPGs. Please see the introduction to each list (pg. 3 and 55) for more details.