A unimax people

From a church planting perspective, a complete peoples list would be a unimax peoples list. Unimax people are defined as “the maximum sized group sufficiently unified to be the target of a single people movement to Christ, where “unified” refers to the fact that there are no significant barriers of either understanding or acceptance to stop the spread of the gospel.” 

The World Christian Encyclopedia estimates approximately 27,000 total unimax peoples.

Jungle tribes and other small, geo-graphically remote peoples are almost always single unimax peoples. Discovering unimax realities within larger ethnolinguistic peoples in complex societies is a bit more challenging.

While language is often a primary means by which a person understands his or her cultural identity, in order to reach all peoples we must consider other factors that keep peoples separate. Religion, class distinctions, education, political and ideological convictions, historical enmity between clans or tribes, customs and behaviors, etc., all have potential to develop strong socio-cultural boundaries within ethnolinguistic clusters of unimax peoples. This fact alone helps to 
explain the differing estimates for the number of “unreached peoples.”

Unimax way of looking at peoples has more to do with finishing, not in the sense that there is nothing left to do, but in the sense that the essential first step for the gospel to flourish with in a people has been accomplished. The unimax 
approach to peoples can help us press on toward closure—our corporate finishing of what is completable about Christ’s mission mandate.

The value of the unimax approach lies in the way it identifies the boundaries hindering the flow of the gospel, while at the same time firing the ambitions of dedicated Christians to pursue the evangelization of the peoples beyond those boundaries, leaving no smaller group sealed off within a larger group.

These often subtle but powerful socio-cultural barriers exist within groups which often appear unified to outside observers. Some have dismissed the usefulness of the unimax concept because socio-cultural prejudice barriers can not easily be identified or precisely quantified. But even though intangible prejudice barriers cannot be quantified these factors are not irrelevant. What could be more important than identifying and penetrating every barrier which holds 
people from following Christ? 


The unimax peoples definition was never intended to quantify precisely the total task. Instead, it helps us recognize when the unreached peoples task is finished and identify where that task is not yet begun.

The word “closure” refers simply to the idea of finishing. In the 1970s, the Lord began to open the eyes of many to the fact that the irreducibly essential mission task of a break through in every people group was a completable task. At the time, over half of the world’s population lived within unreached people groups. Even so, a small group of mission activists had the faith to believe that if a movement could be mobilized to focus attention on the unreached peoples, which for a time were called “hidden peoples,” then the essential mission task could be completed with in a few decades. In faith, they coined the watchword “A Church for Every People by the Year 2000” to capture the essence of 
the completable nature of the mission man date. While no one ever predicted that it would be completed by the end 
of the year 2000, they were confident that it was possible. The watchword succeeded in igniting the hearts of 
countless thousands with a passion for seeing Christ honored, worshiped and obeyed within every people. God was at work in similar ways among others in order to birth the now global movement focused on the unreached peoples challenge. Today we are seeing the fulfilllment of vision that only a few dared to dream just two decades ago.

We can confidently speak of closure to this unreached peoples mission. There were an estimat ed 17,000 unreached 
peoples in 1976. Today there are an estimated 10,000 unreached peoples (unimax peoples), and a dynamic global movement now exists that is committed to establishing “a church for every people.”

But how measurable is the presence of a “viable indigenous church planting movement”? It might perhaps be better to say “verifiable” than “measurable.” We don’t normally say a woman is partially pregnant, or that a person is partially infected by AIDS. Rather, in such cases we “verify” the presence or absence of a condition. In the case of reaching unimax peoples, there can be only three possibilities: 1) definitely reached, 2) definitely unreached, and 3) doubtfully reached. Logically we expect to focus our highest priority energies on those that are in doubt or definitely unreached. 
Just as in the case of asking, how many unreached peoples are there, we cannot very well evaluate whether a group has truly had a missiological breakthrough from a distance or from sources that are not concerned with such things.

We can make some well informed guesses about the presence or absence of a church movement from quantifiable data. But what if an ethnolinguistic people is actually a cluster of unimax peoples and one of them is experiencing a church planting explosion, while other groups in the cluster have little or nothing happening within them? The unreached unimax peoples in the same cluster, may vigorously oppose the movement to Christ in the group that is ablaze for God. In addition, the growth of the church in the one unimax people may divert missionary attention from 
the needs of the other groups in the cluster.

After nearly 2000 years, an estimated 10,000 unimax peoples encompassing 2 billion people still live beyond the 
reach of any relevant local church.


 The job is large, but relatively small for the enormous body of believers around the world. There are approximately 670 churches in the world for every remaining unreached unimax people group! We need only a small percent age of dedicated believers to be mobilized and equipped. Judging the remaining task by the potential work force makes it quite small and with in reach by comparison to the forbidding prospect faced by our forefathers.

 Instead of talking of evangelizing 2 billion individuals, we can talk of beginning in approximately 3000 ethnolinguistic peoples and then finishing in maybe as few as 10,000 unimax peoples. With in a very short time all of the 3000 “least evangelized” ethnolinguistic groups will be targeted and engaged by some mission-send-ing structure in the world. It is already true for more than half of them.