One way of thinking about reaching the world is ONE PEOPLE GROUP AT A TIME; not one country at a time, because countries vary so much. (Think of India with about 900 million people, 15 languages, thousands of castes, tribes and other social groups.) Not one religion at a time; since most religions are spread through many different people groups. Definitely no natural division (geographic) or man-made (geopolitical) makes sense.

A people group is the largest group within which the gospel can spread along natural lines without encountering barriers of understanding or acceptance due to culture, language, geography, etc.

For instance, assume that you are looking at the population of the United States. In your mind, see a subset of people whose common language is English. Do you see groups that do not speak the language?

Next, do you live among different ethnic groups? Which is yours? Hispanic? Middle-Eastern? White? Black? Asian? Do you see that many people in your ethnic group speak English?

Have you ever visited other regions of the country where people of your ethnicity and who spoke English lived? There were probably some differences in accent, customs, world view, etc. They somehow did not feel like ‘your people’ nor did they accept you completely until you acquired some of their customs and local dialect.

Another area that defines your people group is your caste or social class, in some countries your profession or some other defining characteristic of your social group.

Lastly, what is your religion? For many people, religion is one of the primary ways they identify themselves with a group.

So a People Group is defined by language, ethnicity, region, social group and religion. See if you can define yourself in these terms and don’t be surprised if the definition is not perfect; it is intended to be helpful in classifying people all over the world.

Exercise: How many people groups do you know of in our city? Are Koreans in our city the same as in Korea? Are North and South Koreans the same people group? How about Koreans in Japan?

An unreached people group is one among which there is no indigenous community of believing Christians with adequate numbers and resources to evangelize their own people. They lack a church that has the numbers and strength to reach their own people. This is the situation for over 2.2 billion people in the world today.

A reached people group is one among which there is a viable local church capable of preaching the gospel to their own. Notice that this is different from stating that everyone is a Christian or ‘saved’.

Material taken from That Everyone May Hear by Edward Dayton Copyright 1983 and Caleb Project’s “Start 1” Discovering God’s Global Purpose, by Annette Elder et al.

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