This post by Steve and Gill Bryant was originally published at Reaching the 42%
So what is it? 42% of the world’s people groups are classified by the Joshua Project as unreached. This is a disturbing statistic. It means that in these groups, there is little or no history of Christianity and there are millions who do not know who Jesus is. There may be a handful of evangelical Christians but they make up less than 2% of the population. Many of the groups have no known Christians at all.
One unreached group in Bangladesh has more than twice as many people as the UK. Japan with so few Christians has almost twice our population. Some colleagues who recently returned to the UK from Japan commented that Britain seemed to be full of Christians, compared to the situation they had come from.
So what can we do? It’s too big for each one of us and despairing about it won’t help. Neither will dismissing it and finding a distraction. It is one which should challenge us deeply and drive us to our knees, and there is something we can do……we can ask God to give us a burden for one, single unreached group, and make them part of our daily time with God. Or we can pray for a different group each day using an app from the Joshua Project at https://joshuaproject.net/
It may only take 2 minutes of our day, and let’s face it, we are on our phones anyway. You can even see how many others are praying alongside you, so you are not alone.
Phew! That’s OK then. Sorted. But be prepared! As you ask God to open your eyes and give you a burden for unreached peoples, there may be more……..