Almost 50 years ago, Frontier Ventures was founded on an idea. At the core of it, our thinking goes something like this:
•   We want the gospel to take root in the cultures where it has not yet.
•   Usually, that happens best when people share with those who are like them. We’ve called these people groups.
•   The people groups that do not have a viable church movement are called unreached people groups (UPGs).

Frontier Ventures continues to pursue the mission of God at the edges—meaning where there are unreached groups with little or no presence of believers.
In the last few years, we have been encouraged to see Christianity Today begin to include more about global issues. Their Nov-Dec 2025 issue included three articles on the idea of unreached people groups. This is my response to CT’s coverage. The articles included helpful observations and questions about this idea, such as:
•   Reaching the unreached has become a compelling and convicting framework that helped catalyze a movement of workers globally.
•   The concept of UPGs has enduring strengths yet has growing limitations.
•   It remains a key factor in mobilizing new workers around the world, especially in the Global South.
•   Is the phrase “unreached people group” helpful for mission in a majority world context?
•   Can the UPG idea effectively grapple with migration and increasing urbanization?
•   How might social media, AI, and other digital tools affect how the gospel is spread?

As you have likely seen in some of the 270+ issues of MF we have published since 1979, we have engaged with these issues and with many global mission leaders. When an idea about reaching people is shared, we pass it on to other leaders—many of whom are “on the ground” among UPGs. Just this morning our Missiology Catalyst group heard an update from one of our Edge Network leaders in Asia about what he is learning there.

In all this, the vocabulary we use and what we mean is important. Some have used “the unreached” very differently, and we can’t control that. But it may be helpful to clarify our perspective again.

I will not detail here the biblical foundation of our vision and mission, but we have sought to grapple with the Scriptures about this. Many articles in MF have done this, including a series on the biblical foundation back in the 1980s. The first third of the Perspectives course are biblical lessons, plus many other biblical reflections throughout.

Our ultimate motivation is to bring glory to God and see some from every “tribe and tongue and people and nation” before the throne (Rev 5:9 and 7:9).1
I won’t include more from Scripture here. I encourage you to take the Perspectives course and get 10 hours of class time along with dozens of readings reflecting on Scripture. Below, I reflect on our perspective on the meaning of UPG and how we have expressed more detail in these key ideas.

Are there believers in fellowship among the people group?

A key factor is the presence or absence of a viable church within the people groups.2 If they have a viable church that is spreading faith within their culture, they are no longer a UPG—even if there are many non-believers in the culture. Remember, we are talking about a group, not individuals. In both reached and unreached, there will be many individuals who are not yet believers.

Why has there been no response?

The gospel may not have taken root because of language or cultural distance from believers. Nearby believers may speak the same language yet have not been able to communicate in an effective way. Sometimes, these believers may be afraid or oppressed by the majority population—either religious or secular. Or they may be disdainful of those among the unreached group.

Are there barriers between religious traditions?

An underlying issue is that the divide between those from Christian religious traditions and those from other major religious traditions is often huge. A study in 2007 noted that, “Buddhists, Hindus and Muslims have relatively little contact with Christians. In each case, over 86% of all these religionists do not personally know a Christian.”3

What do we not know?

In many contexts, we simply do not know what the “boundaries” of a people group are until “global servants” are “on the ground” among them. Usually this means people from different places coming into the unreached group and learning the language and culture to begin to understand the how the message of the kingdom might spread among the people.4 All of that hard work does not mean that the message of the gospel changes, but that the method of sharing it increases in effectiveness—all founded on the work of the Spirit!

Why outsiders?

Global servants come from many different peoples and places all over the world, and they have for many years. If these believing witnesses are from a nearby group, sometimes animosity between the groups is strong, creating barriers to the gospel that would not exist for someone from further away. Barriers morph over time making it harder to understand what might be effective. Unreached peoples may be more open to global servants who come from certain cultures than from others. Certainly, some people groups may not be as open to workers from the US as they used to be. Yet, loving and serving people still opens doors for sharing.

Peoples are not people.

Part of the challenge of the idea of the unreached is that we try and apply it to individuals. People have taken the idea of unreached people groups (UPGs) and applied it to their neighbor. And, certainly, if your neighbor is Hindu, or Muslim, or Buddhist... then they are part of a group that is likely considered a UPG.

We would call any non-believer who has not heard the gospel, unevangelized, not unreached. There are not “unreached individuals.” Of course, how people relate to their culture and those around them continually shifts from one village to the next, especially in places like India. This is why on-the-ground presence and observation is so crucial.

God values all people.

We know that the Lord is “not willing for any to perish, but for all to come to repentance” (2 Pet 3:9). Every individual non-believer’s soul is valuable. God is working among people groups that are reached but need more evangelism. He sends people there, too, and empowers local Christians to share their faith and establish fellowships.

So, what is the priority?

If we consider the people among unreached groups with very little or no witness, it seems best to make them a priority for our mission efforts. This is, in part, because a non-believer who lives in a culture with viable churches is more likely to hear the gospel. Someone who lives among the 2 billion Muslims (who live in some 2,500 different cultures or people groups), or 1.2 billion Hindus (who live in some 1,670 different cultures or people groups), or Buddhists, Sikhs, Ethnic Religions, or Parsee… is not likely to hear that Jesus has visited the earth and “news” that is “good” about him.

Note: when we say that reaching UPGs is a “priority” we do not mean they are more important than any other group or unsaved individual. It is a “priority” to get the process of witnessing started among them. Otherwise, there is no one to evangelize them.

The urban and migrant challenge.

Many have noted the significant increase of “displaced” people, both within and outside of their homeland—including 300 million international migrants in 2024. We should do all we can to reach out to them, and they can be key in extending the gospel to their people group in their homeland. Still, “the whole world” is not coming to our door. 300 million is fairly small when you consider that the frontier people groups represent over 2 billion people.5 And many of those displaced people are from Christian contexts.

Some suggest that because so much of the world lives in urban centers, the idea of people groups is shifting. While most UPGs are not isolated tribes, we must grapple with the issues that large cities represent and remember that many cultural barriers do not dissolve when people move into big cities. Often immigrants try to hide, and different religious traditions continue to avoid each other. Some will blend in with Christians, which can make true faith harder to determine. Some groups from other religious traditions, such as Muslims or Hindus, become stronger in their opposition to Christian faith if they are in the Christianized West.

What about the global youth culture and AI?

We recognize that the global youth culture (think TikTok) is shifting, and we need to continually find new ways to reach out to them. Some suggest that they know enough of a major language (like English, Spanish, Hindi, Urdu) to communicate with others outside their cultural groupings, yet others wonder if that is an effective way to engage them in spiritually deep matters. Will all churches speak these major languages? And if they do, will those for whom it is a second or third language thrive in those fellowships? Certainly, AI can help produce tools in many languages, and while generations need different approaches, relationships are always central to effective witness. Heart language is important also.

Perhaps some illustrations will help us. Large diverse places like China and India (and of course Africa) are complex. For India, it is social distinctions which seem to mark the difference between peoples with a gospel presence and those without. Even if they are geographically right next to each other, caste differences isolate groups within the same village. For China, although there is one written Chinese language which is readable to all Chinese, spoken Chinese is a very different story. Cantonese, one of the major Chinese language families, with some 85 million speakers, has 25 mutually unintelligible dialects! That means they can all read the same Chinese Bible, but if they speak it out loud, they cannot understand each other!6

In 2016, I was in central China with a co-worker. We were in a third-tier city (population almost 4 million) waiting at our hotel lobby. As the hotel shop keeper came to open his store, a friend of his came by, and they chatted for about 10 minutes. When the shopkeeper’s friend left, my co-worker (who spoke both Cantonese and Mandarin) told me, “I did not understand one word they said!”

The world is complex. We continue to look for better ways of explaining all this. God has always worked through the relationships of people for his purposes. Yet, moving across language and cultural barriers introduces new problems which we often can’t see clearly without significant time living in the culture. And our enemy lurks seeking to hinder us. Still, our hope is to see the gospel spread where it has not yet. May God give wisdom to us as we pray and struggle to strategize and witness, by the power of the Spirit against the powers of confusion and chaos.