The country is home to the third largest number of unreached people groups, behind India and China.
Most church planting in the country is among reached people groups who already have numerous evangelical churches among them.
The country is approximately 26% evangelical and has about 280 unreached people groups.
What country? The country is the United States.
Such was true 7 years ago when I wrote Part 1. Will evangelicals ever change?
I am a worker, and really appreciate your content. I’m also a huge fan of locals engaging and loving their (unreached) neighbors. But just as I have to be careful not to skew my stats about my location, I feel like there is a little skewing possible here too. In the JP list (https://joshuaproject.net/global/countries) the US shows at 3.2% being unreached. Also the US ranks 34th in their stats in terms of most unreached population. (Which is a moderately alarming fact by itself.) It’s getting less poplar to use 10/40 as much, but on that link only Russia and the USA are outside the 10/40 and places of most need. This isn’t meant as a critique, but as a gentle pushback. I would love to see a new crop of workers raised from America who’ve gotten their hands dirty in domestic UPG work. I would love to see the American church embrace this even as a mobilizing effort. But it’s not necessary to conflate the massive workforce that is here, (even if it is unengaged), and the real massive need for new workers overseas. Where the absolute lack of believers is the issue, not disobedience. (But I know we’re on the same team here too.)
Thank you, Henry, for your comment and your ministry. When I published Strangers Next Door in 2012, my conversations with JP revealed (as cited in the book) that their US data was significantly limited, given their focus outside of North America. They pointed me to Global Research of the IMB as the best research to date. Their findings are a combination of pre-2012 research and current research housed at peoplegroups.info. While the greatest needs for the gospel among the upgs/uupgs are outside of North America, the research notes the US is home to the third largest number of upgs and Canada is number sixth.