112 Most Strategic Languages to Learn (To Witness To All Peoples)
No Christians, No Scripture, No Missionaries: Update to the List by Ted Bergman and Bill Morrison [from Lausanne World Pulse]
It is imperative for those of us who follow Christ to disciple all peoples. Of the many peoples that need missionaries, which are highest priority? We believe it is the groups which, so far as we know, have no Christ-followers among them, no books of the Bible, and no missionaries with the intent of bringing the gospel to them.
In an earlier article we listed languages some missionaries must learn in order to witness to these highest priority peoples.
This article is an update of that list based on further research. The result is a reduction of the number to only 112 languages! These peoples are found in 21 countries.
The largest number, 25, are in China; 16 are in Nepal, and 15 in Iran. The previous list was a combination of data from the World Christian Database (WCD) and SIL’s Ethnologue. The WCD was chosen because it could be consistently correlated with SIL information about scripture availability for nearly every people group in its database. The WCD gives corroborating information about data that a people group has no Christians (though we don’t know for certain how accurate and current this is).
But other databases have information and sources we can use to improve our list. For instance, Joshua Project data often relies on Paul Hattaway (author of Operation China), Patrick Johnstone (former editor of Operation World), Omid (for data on South Asia)1, and others. The IMB’s Church Planting Progress Indicators (CPPI) is informed by IMB field workers. In fact, researchers from all four of the global databases work together. There is value in having these different perspectives on the situation.
The biggest difference is in whether a list includes only those with fewer than 2% evangelicals, or no Christians of which we know. The “evangelical or Christian” distinction is important to understand. Joshua Project takes both into consideration. To be designated “unreached,” the group must be less than 2% evangelical Christian and less than 5% Christian adherents. An evangelical is a subset of Christian adherents and is defined on their website.
To continue reading the article: http://bit.ly/sWvNGE
To download the list of People Groups with little or no Christian witness: http://bit.ly/uBpLJh