Raising awareness of lost peoples
[Estimated reading time: 4 minutes]
Before you finish reading this, Jon Fugler hopes you’ll be praying.
“That’s a simple thing to do,” said Fugler, chief content officer for TWR, also known as Trans World Radio. “If you read an article or read about people in a people group and you learn specific things about them, pull something out and turn that into a prayer request.”
Fugler is one of the five co-founders of the International Day for the Unreached, to be observed for the 10th time on this coming Sunday, June 8. The point is to call Christians to awareness of the 3 billion people – one out of three of the world’s population – who have never had the opportunity to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ.
The idea of setting aside a day to focus on unreached people groups came out during a lunch meeting in 2015, said Jeff McLinden, executive director of Alliance for the Unreached, the organization that was created to spearhead the annual observance. McLinden and Fugler then were among the leaders at Bibles For the World and Reach Beyond, respectively, and were joined by three other leaders from the two organizations.
Fugler noted there was an International Day of Prayer and a Day of the Bible, McLinden recalled. Why not a day to call attention to the unreached?
They decided it should take place on Pentecost Sunday, the day that commemorates the miraculous appearance of the Holy Spirit recorded in Acts 2, McLinden said. “The concern for growing the Church of Jesus Christ began, literally, on the day of Pentecost.”
Pentecost is observed seven weeks after Easter Sunday, meaning the International Day For the Unreached can occur anytime from mid-May to the second week of June. Alliance for the Unreached is itself has a small staff, but it’s backed by more than 70 like-minded organizations, including TWR.
Over the decade, awareness of the unreached seems to have grown, Fugler said.
“We have seen some, especially the average Christian, become more aware,” he said. “And those who do become aware seem to latch on and say, ‘Yeah, this is something. I can be a prayer warrior. Maybe I can get involved with a missionary that’s out in the field.’”
As a media ministry, TWR plays a key role in reaching unreached people groups, Fugler said.
“Many of these are in the hardest places to go to, and media is the only way we can get the gospel in, whether it be by radio or social media or video or TV or satellite,” he said.
Reaching the unreached doesn’t mean just presenting the gospel within the political boundaries of a nation, McLinden said. And it doesn’t always require missionaries from the West. Believers in Vietnam, for example, committed themselves within the past year to reaching seven different unreached people groups within their country.
It’s not unusual for many people groups to be contained within a single country, he said. Mongolia includes 17 people groups that don’t know of the saving grace of Jesus,, each with its separate culture and dialect. Nigeria includes more than 500 people groups.
Praying yet? Drawn from separate interviews with Fugler and McLinden, here are specific actions you can take:
- Yes, pray. Alliance for the Unreached is making TWR’s “Reach the Last” prayer guide available as one tool for prayer guidance.
- In your church, identify an unreached people group and “adopt” them, along with the missionaries who have been sent to that group.
- Advocate for the unreached within your church, your family, your Bible study group and in Sunday school classes.
- Serve. “We need more missionaries who are willing to go into those areas where there are no existing churches, where there are no existing believers,” McLinden said. Those who go need the prayer and financial support of those who stay.
- Share. For instance, McLinden said, tell people about it on your social media sites.
Need resources? For access to a prayer guide, webcasts, a “Great Commission Action Guide” and more, visit alliance for the unreached.org.
