Simplified Mapping

Recent conversations have suggested two issues surrounding the idea of the ‘unreached’ that some are grappling with. One issue is theological—what does ‘unreached’ mean, and are any peoples unreached? The other issue always has to do with the complexity and accuracy of identifying and tracking and ‘checking people off’ an unreached peoples list.

Certainly, in the past decade or so, tracking denominations and people groups has become much more complex. There are many more security issues. Many small denominations are difficult to find now, and newer ones are loathe to give out information. Languages are dying. People groups are moving into new countries far faster than people group lists can be updated. Just as one example, tracking Scripture translation for specific languages is made significantly more difficult because of the many locally- and church-based translation projects that may or may not make it into the global lists.

For those who are doing their own gap tracking, a somewhat simpler approach may be possible. Here’s what I’m envisioning. Consider that most gaps in evangelization, with respect to the work that God tells us to do (and excluding the work God himself is doing), revolve around 4 points:

1 - Are Christians, Christian workers, or Gospel transmission of any sort even present in the place? (Romans 10:14-15). If the Gospel can’t be brought to any language because no one is present to bring it, then it’s useless to wonder about the engaged/reached status of any single people group.

2 - Once the Gospel is in a place, then is it available within each of the languages within the place? If the Gospel hasn’t been translated into a given language, and isn’t “speakable” or “writeable” in that language, then questions of contextualization, etc., really don’t matter.

3 - Once the Gospel is in a place, and can be communicated in a language, then the question of whether there is someone (or multiple someones) who will speak it across the cultural line becomes applicable. In some instances, this may be something that has to be ‘assumed’ to a certain degree, because it’s nearly impossible to monitor the number of churches or evangelistic activities, especially with very small languages. It may be inferred by examining the presence of a church worshiping in a language—if there are four languages in a province, and two have growing churches over a 5 or 10 year period but two do not, then questions should perhaps be asked.

4 - Are there forces of any sort that are opposing Gospel transfer? While there are instances where the presence of persecution can fuel the growth of the church (for example, Iran), there are also instances where persecution can nearly stamp out the church (especially in smaller populations).

These four questions might be given simple scales. For example, I am using a 5 point scale for the first question in every province:

• 0: <0.1% Christian (1 in a 1,000 people)
• 1: Between 0.1% and 2%
• 2: Between 2% and 8%
• 3: Between 8% and 32%
• 4: Over 32%
• 5: Over 90%

These thresholds are easier to measure than specific numbers or percentages. For example, the province of Kabul, Afghanistan had an estimated 5.2 million people in 2020. We can easily judge the thresholds for such a province:

For 5 million people, the stages would be:

• 0: Less than 5,000 believers (<0.1%)
• 1: Between 5,000 believers and 100,000 believers.
• 2: Between 100,000 and 400,000 believers (or, roughly, less than half a million)
• 3: Between 400k and 1.6 million believers
• 4: Between 1.6 million and 4.5 million
• 5: Over 4.5 million

Without know exactly how many believers are in Kabul, my initial thought is that it’s either at stage 0 or, at most, stage 1. This is a much simpler system, and easier for grass-roots researchers to apply.

Anyone could apply a system like this by simply building a list of places - for a given province, whatever the next two levels down are (maybe districts and sub-districts). Then, for each, try and answer question 1 with a simple yes/no. Question 2 becomes a little more challenging, because you might have to have more columns - one for each language, or some other form of organization. But for each language in each place, answer question 2 with a simple yes/no. This forms a basic map. After that, question 3 can be answered “to the best of your knowledge,” within the realm of the work you are doing.

With that admittedly limited map done (it reminds me of the old “here be dragons” maps), you can see which places are “gaps” or “unknowns” that are adjacent to places where you have significant work. Those are the next places to focus on.