I am doing something different in this post today. Rather than rewrite something I have already written, I want to direct you to an article I published with Lausanne World Pulse in March 2009. The article is titled: “Immigration and North America: Who in the World Is My Neighbor Anyway?” I’ll provide you with the highlights below, so you can determine if you want to read it:
- There are many of the world’s unreached peoples, including some of the highest priority groups, living in the thirty-six countries and territories representing North America.
- Many of the world’s unreached people groups are removed from the global database when they reside in a North American country or territory.
- There are large discrepancies between the numbers being reported in our two best people group databases.
- There is a great amount of ignorance when it comes to knowing the evangelical percentages of the world’s unreached peoples living in North America.
- It is ironic, ridiculous, and a shame, that we have better data on a people group on the backside of the Himalaya Mountains, than we do regarding those same people living in our backyards in the United States and Canada.
Check out the article. After you read it, what are your thoughts?
For those of you who want more details and charts reflecting the data, I will direct you to a paper I presented at an Evangelical Missiological Society meeting in 2008. Here is a link to “In Through the Back Door: Reaching the Majority World in North America.”