Rethinking UPGs

One of the straplines of our organisation is: Partnering with Churches, reaching Africa’s unreached. Amen to that. It is our joy and privilege to serve our organisation to achieve these biblical, God-glorifying ends. Conceptually, the unreached is a near-perfect term to describe the people that we seek to preach the Gospel of Christ to. However, the application of that concept in our everyday evangelisation is a little harder to define. It is prudent for missionaries and mission organisations to focus their efforts within the broader term of “the unreached” so that they are most effective in their strategy and resources.

For our organisation, like many others in the field of missiology, the term “unreached” is further focused into unreached people groups (UPGs). This term was popularised by Ralph Winter in his 1974 address at Lausanne and has since been a helpful term for classifying areas where the greatest need for the gospel reside. Indeed, many organisations (ours included) base their entire missions strategy around this term. As a result, the number of unreached people groups is diminishing and the gospel is extending further across the globe than ever before.

However, the term UPGs has been recently giving me pause for thought, especially when strategising where we operate in Madagascar. Is it possible that modern missions have now conflated the term UPGs with the broader term of “the unreached”, at the expense of other groups that may fall into this category? At times we have certainly run into issues because of the rigidity of this focus on unreached people groups. Is it time to rethink the usage of unreached people groups as a helpful classification for world evangelisation? Here are a few things to consider.

UPGs and the urban mission field

When people groups are settled in rural areas, then the classification of unreached people group has great value (even if they are nomadic). However, in the hustle and bustle of urban cities, people groups are more amorphous and fluid in many cases. In Antananarivo, for example, there are small pockets of Gujurati and Comorian in the city. However, they aren’t located in any discernible district, but rather they are spread out across the city. The cultural ties that bind them are still strong, but just by lack of proximity to one another, these ties are weakened. The evangelisation strategy to “reach the unreached people group” lacks the same force and meaning in an urban setting, simply because one cannot have access to the people group as a whole, or even a majority.

Alternative classification

Especially in urban centres, it may be more helpful to separate peoples into other categories where they are more likely to be at closer proximity to one another. In Antananarivo, there are many different “unreached” subcultures whose members regularly engage with one another and form deep relationships, even if they come from different people groups and cultural backgrounds. In these cases it might be easier to evangelise to these subcultures, rather than isolate the members into their particular people groups. Other classifications that might be superior in certain situations could be by social/economic classes or ethnic castes. I'm encouraged by more specific versions of UPGs, such as those organisations who home in on "frontier people groups", or the IMB's emphasis on "unreached places". All are useful tools of categorisation.

At times we have found it frustrating when individuals and groups who really need to hear the gospel of Christ are not considered a priority in the mission’s strategy of the organisation because they are not part of an “unreached people group, despite being part of the broader term of “unreached”. If we came across two equally vulnerable young people in the same city, both in need of the gospel but one belongs to an unreached people group and the other does not, must we direct our efforts to one over the other? By no means!

Rethinking “unreached”?

I read a lot of blog posts and theological articles online as part of my weekly routine. But there is one that I have repeatedly come back to, especially in my work with mobilising the Malagasy church to reach Africa’s unreached (I have mentioned it on other blogs I have posted). It is entitled Who Needs Missionaries (It’s Not Just the ‘Unreached’) by A. J. Gibson posted on the Gospel Coalition website. Gibson aims to rethink, not merely unreached people groups, but the term “unreached” as a whole, arguing that perhaps there are other categories that we have overlooked in our missions strategies. In summary he identifies three additional classifications: the misreached (where the gospel has taken root but in a syncretic form), the once-reached (where Christianity has largely fallen away among the people) and the underreached (where the Christianity is weaker as the gospel is not accompanied by strong discipleship).

Gibson has touched upon three important groups that mission organisations should not forget in their evangelisation, lest these areas then become unreached after a short time, either by no root or a rotten one. We don't want to become the proverbial bridge painter, doomed to go back and forth from country to country in an endless, Sisyphean routine. Gibson offers a gentle reminder to ensure that our initial intentions of evangelism must be full-orbed, not just that our listeners hear and receive our preaching of the Word, but that they also put them into practice. He also proffers a healthy corrective that we do not consider the job done once a group is "reached" (again, like UPGs, there is a necessary arbitrariness that defines who is "reached").

But it's fair to say that these three categories from Gibson suffer from some of the same issues as UPGs and the unreached. How do you search for the "misreached" in an urban context? Would cultural, socio-economic, and other classifiers be considered in outreach to the "once-reached"? And whilst the unreached can be accused of being a vague term, surely the same can be said of the "underreached" (if not more so)? Useful reminders, but possibly poor monikers to hang a missions strategy on.

Concluding Thoughts

Of course, no one is suggesting that UPGs are the only ones who are “unreached” with the gospel, all non-believers can be given this particular moniker - from the checkout assistant in an English corner shop, to a German accountant, to those in the hostile, unreached Sentinelese. Faithful Christians, including those who target UPGs specifically, are well aware of the reality that the gospel must be preached to all those who have not heard, whether they are in a UPG or not.

But it is not unwise or imprudent to strategise where missionaries should be sent and who they should focus their energies on. Therefore the term “unreached people group” still retains great value in modern missions. Although great work is being done to reduce the number of UPGs, it is still one of the most difficult and under-resourced mission fields. Whilst I do not believe an exclusive focus on these groups is overall helpful for the Church, it is acceptable for these groups to warrant greater emphasis or priority, primarily because they have never been preached to in the past, and the lack of preachers is great. I understand the Apostle Paul’s desire to be always expanding and breaking new ground rather than “building on someone else’s foundation”. Similarly, it is no small thing that the redeemed in Revelation are classified as being from “every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages”, as opposed to age, social class or subculture. It would seem from this that to arrange these people according to unreached people groups is far from arbitrary, God is at work.

Most importantly, reflection is needed into how much stock mission organisations place in UPGs, not because their need has been overestimated, but because it may lead to underestimating the need for areas and peoples that are already considered “reached”. Even a cursory tour of European Christendom or American Evangelicalism might lead an onlooker to raise their eyebrows and conclude that there is more God-fearing spiritual vibrancy in the 10/40 window than in these places. The need for mission for the lost among “the reached” is still enormous.