Geography or Ethnicity?

It has been estimated that 80 to 90 percent of North American missionaries are working with Christians. We do not diminish the sacrifice and value of these ministries. Yet the utterly critical, uniquely missionary need in the world today is for missionaries who will do the pioneer work of evangelism and church planting among those with no access to the saving knowledge of Christ. Career missionaries and tent-making professionals who will learn the language and culture are needed to do the deeper work of missions and begin churches in
unreached areas.

With today’s emphasis on unreached peoples and frontier missions is there still any justification for missions outside such categories?  How compelling are the concepts of Frontier Missions in reality?

At the turn of the twentieth century, this found expression in ‘the “incredible whirl of activities” relating to the A.D. 2000 movement’.  The central idea underlying this ‘whirl’ as well as an assessment of this movement’s impact is succinctly expressed in ‘Introduction to World Missions’. Moreau, Corwin and McGee write, ‘the priority of reaching unreached peoples’ … ‘as opposed to unreached people’ … ‘has been established in global mission strategy to the position of primacy’.  Today, the official website of the Joshua Project speaks of 6,547 unreached peoples groups out of a total of 15,935 peoples. These unreached peoples constitute the major missions frontier of this movement.

A host of well trained, highly motivated, cross-culturally sensitive Christian workers who consciously aim at penetrating these frontiers! Nothing short of the creation of viable indigenous church planting movements can count as a missiological breakthrough. Such congregations will then effectively evangelise their own people, free from cultural and linguistic encumbrances.

Given the case then that the unreached peoples are still not easily reachable, we may ask, ‘Why should millions of unconverted people who are accessible and perhaps even receptive be ignored?’ To simply state, ‘They do not qualify, because they do not live between the designated latitudes or they belong to the wrong ethnic group’, will not be satisfactory! We readily agree to give special attention to unreached people groups, yet it remains questionable whether it is helpful to the cause of missions to deliberately restrict human and
financial resources toward any mission field that does not lie in these frontiers. The legitimacy of such considerations is consolidated by the fact that the missionary capacity of today’s Church seems big enough to accomplish both.

The uneven distribution of missionary resources is both an imbalance and a scandal. The reality of resistance’ and ‘inaccessibility’ calls for continued prayer, ingenuity and courage. At the same time it seems to justify a missions’ perspective which makes allowance for frontiers other than the frontier of unreached people groups. Wherever wrong aspirations and sinful motivations have contributed to the predicament of the remaining unreached peoples, a return to high ethical standards is necessary. This would do a lot on account of both, correcting the imbalance and reducing the scandal.

The neglect of all other mission frontiers in favour of unreached people groups would prove disastrous.

‘Jerusalem, all of Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth’ are geographical rather than ethnic descriptions and do not stop short of complete coverage. The ‘and’ of Acts 1:8 binds the whole world together! Therefore, missions - according to Acts - is mission at the frontiers of unreached peoples living in the 10/40 window ‘and’ unreached people everywhere! The word ‘all’ (in connection with Judea and Samaria) gives saturation evangelism an integral place in the missionary task.

Mission-fields, over saturated with personnel of different agencies, often suffer from competition. Such problems would be limited if the influx of aspiring mission agencies could be redirected to contemplate new and unreached mission fields. Instead of intensifying the scandal of missionary imbalance such practice would gradually help to reduce it. Targeting new frontiers as well as teaching disciples would be taken care of in a fair and healthy manner.

Most references to Paul’s apostolic calling mention ‘Gentiles’ and ‘Jews’ alike (e.g. Acts 9:15). During New Testament times, ‘Jew’ was a primarily religious designation, whereas ‘Gentiles’ pointed to the entire non-Jewish world. Galatians 2:7-9 assigns strategic priorities along these lines. Additionally, Paul’s calling was ‘to all men’ (Acts 22:15). Other scriptures include geographical details (Acts 22:21; 26:20) or point to the spiritual frontier between ‘darkness’ and ‘light’, i.e. the dominion of Satan versus God’s rule (Acts 26:17-18). Terms like ‘regions’ and ‘no more place’ in Romans 15:18-24 confirm that Paul’s strategic thinking
was along geographic rather then ethnic lines.

Did Paul have a conscious missiological reason for placing strategic emphasis on geography rather then ethnicity?