It has always been my ambition to preach the gospel where Christ was not known, so that I would not be building on someone else’s foundation. Rather, as it is written, “Those who were not told about him will see, and those who have not heard will understand.”

Romans 15:20-21 NIV

City for the Nations prioritizes taking the gospel to where it has not yet been proclaimed. There is a great deal of evangelism and discipleship that is needed in all places and times, and we rejoice wherever we see them happening. Nevertheless, we deeply believe that there are some places and people who must be regarded with unique urgency in the overall task of the Great Commission. Those are the unreached, the people who right now have little-to-no access to the gospel. Those who have not heard cannot believe, and if there is no gospel presence within a people group or location, then there can be no hearing.

To clarify how we prioritize where to work, below are details on: people groups, places, what makes a either of those unreached, and distinct tiers of priority of the unreached.

What is a People Group?

Those who study and give careful thought to the missionary task have had to think critically about what is meant by the New Testament term ethne, the Greek term usually translated “nation,” in passages such as Matthew 28:19-20 or Matthew 24:14 or Romans 15:9-10. Because this word strikes close to the heart of the mission of the church and to our understanding of the gospel, having a clear sense of its meaning is important!

It can feel tempting to identify the word nations in these verses with modern nation states, but it’s important to remember that such nation states didn’t emerge until a few hundred years ago, long after the time of the New Testament. But if ethne doesn’t refer to countries, to what does it refer?

The typical answer is well put by missiologist Timothy C Tennent, “The word ethne refers to neither geography nor political entities; rather it indicates social and ethnic groups of people.” It is captured well by the phrase people groups. This is significant because it recalls the language found in the Abrahamic covenant, whereby God promises to extend a blessing to all the ‘extended families’ or ‘ethnic groups’ of the world.”01

There are a few different perspectives on how precisely to think about people groups, each with their own utility, but they are generally regarded as being the largest group of people through which the gospel can spread without steep linguistic, cultural, or worldview barriers. 02 At City for the Nations, we take the perspective that a people group is a group of people who share a common language, mutually understood cultural assumptions, and likely some distant common ancestry. People inside a people group typically regard others in their people group as existing in a distinct community with a shared identity.

This makes identifying and understanding people groups incredibly valuable, because someone who has believed the gospel is best equipped to share the good news of Jesus with others who belong to that people group. When a people group has many believers, non-Christians inevitably have much more hope of encountering, understanding, and believing the gospel than when it has few or none.

A people group is a group of people who share a common language, mutually understood cultural assumptions, and likely some distant common ancestry.

Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo I am with you always, even to the end of the age.
Matthew 28:19-20 NASB

This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all the nations, and then the end will come.
Matthew 24:14 NASB

And again he says, Rejoice, nations, with his people.
Romans 15:9 DBY

What Does It Mean to be Unreached?

The definition and implication of people groups above provides us a helpful way to distinguish between reached and unreached people groups: as John Piper puts it, “a group is reached when mission efforts have established an indigenous church that has the strength and resources to evangelize the rest of the group.”03 

Ideally, the global church could look at the exact condition of every people group, find out whether any indigenous church existed there and whether it had the ability to evangelize its fellow members. While great strides and labor are put towards exactly this task, the sheer number of unreached people groups combines with the dynamic, ever-changing state of churches around the world to make it a practically insurmountable task. Practical approximations are needed to make sure the global church’s resources, energy, prayer, and people are devoted to reaching the unreached.

A group is reached when mission efforts have established an indigenous church that has the strength and resources to evangelize the rest of that group.

There are a few standard ways to try to measure this. One that is widely credited among those who work in missions are the criteria established by The Joshua Project, which establishes four categories of people groups: Unreached, Formative/Nominal Church, Emerging Church, Growing Church, and Significantly Reached. 04 Furthermore, they distinguish a few additional relevant categories of unreachedness, namely the Frontier Unreached and the Unengaged Unreached.

Practically speaking, the Unreached are those groups whose population are made up of 5% or less of Christian adherents of any variety and 2% or less of evangelical Christians.05 The extra categories of Frontier and Unengaged have very important implications. The Frontier Unreached are those whose populations have less than 0.1% of their population professing Christ. The distinction clarifies that while the indigenous Church of unreached people groups lacks the strength to evangelize the rest of its people group, the church of frontier groups is functionally absent altogether. Unengaged Unreached People Groups are those groups to whom there is no history of the gospel having been sustainably sent.

We are able to make similar observations for geographic locations. When an identifiable geographic area of people have no or very few Christians, there is little ability for those who live there to encounter the life-changing gospel of Christ, which means that location merits special consideration for missionaries.

The Priority of the Unreached

City for the Nations unapologetically prioritizes getting the gospel to the unreached. When relevant, we prioritize reaching frontier people groups. There are over 7,000 people groups who are unreached. That means the 3.5 billion people (nearly half of the earth’s global population!) in these people groups will not encounter the gospel if missionaries are not sent to them. Focusing upon bringing hope to these groups means inevitably declining some amount of good work that could be otherwise done in order to devote our time, energy, and resources to the task of bringing the news of Christ to all nations.

This determined focus on the unreached is vital because of an effect known as the Great Imbalance. Of the 253,000 global missionaries and workers sent out from Evangelical churches and organizations, only 24,000 are working with the unreached people groups who contain half of the human race! 06 At most, that is 1 in 10 missions workers, and some estimate the amount to be even lower. 07 It gets worse, however. Of the $700 billion given by evangelical Christians to Christians causes, only .3% goes to missions in any sense, but only .001% goes toward taking the gospel to the unreached. 08 For every $100,000 evangelical Christians make in income, they give only $1 to reaching the unreached.

City for the Nations strives to overcome the Great Imbalance. We partner with the indigenous church across the world to mobilize Christians to reach the unreached people within their own borders, enabling even the smallest of indigenous churches to reach those who never could have otherwise.

The 3.5 billion people in these people groups will not encounter the gospel if missionaries are not sent to them.

For every $100,000 evangelical Christians make in income, they give only $1 to reaching the unreached.

  1. Timothy C. Tennent, Invitation to World Missions: A Trinitarian Missiology for the Twenty-First Century, Invitation to Theological Studies (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, 2010), 139.[↩]
  2. Tennent, 354–64.[↩]
  3. John Piper, Let the Nations Be Glad!: The Supremacy of God in Missions, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 1993), 192.[↩]
  4. “Definitions,” accessed June 27, 2025, https://joshuaproject.net/help/definitions; “All Progress Levels,” Joshua Project, accessed June 27, 2025, https://joshuaproject.net/global/progress; Ralph D. Winter and Bruce A. Koch, “Finishing the Task: The Unreached Peoples Challenge,” in Perspectives on the World Christian Movement: A Reader, ed. Ralph D. Winter et al., 4th ed (Pasadena: William Carey Publishing, 2013), 539; Tennent, Invitation to World Missions, 366–67.[↩]
  5. “Definitions.” Importantly, evangelical here does not contain the political implications globally that it does in many uses in the United States. It refers only to a historical and global tradition of faith that generally emphasizes four factors:

    1. The Lord Jesus Christ as the sole source of salvation through faith in Him.
    2. Personal faith and conversion with regeneration by the Holy Spirit.
    3. A recognition of the inspired Word of God as the only basis for faith and living.
    4. A Commitment to Biblical preaching and evangelism that brings others to faith in Christ.[↩]

  6. Winter and Koch, “Finishing the Task: The Unreached Peoples Challenge,” 543.[↩]
  7. David Platt, “What Is the Great Imbalance?,” Radical (blog), June 27, 2023, https://radical.net/article/what-is-the-great-imbalance/.[↩]
  8. “Mission Statistics,” Message Ministries & Missions (blog), September 25, 2012, https://messagemissions.com/mission-statistics/.[↩]