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The term unreached people groups is increasingly a misnomer in the 21st century. We need a more vivid phrase to encapsulate the dynamism and fluidity of missions today. The growth of Majority World missions also underscores the importance of localized missions and ought to remind us that we should not view the world as either “reached” or “unreached” anymore.
As a missiology professor in Southeast Asia, I struggle to use the term in class because it is dismissive of the current complexities of missions. Proponents of unreached people groups often lament that only 1 percent of missionaries serve among the world’s least-Christian peoples in the world. But this statistic creates a false picture of today’s missions landscape. It fails to recognize the role of indigenous churches and their members throughout the history of missions.
Courses on this subject in many seminaries and Bible colleges generally center the accomplishments of individual Western missionaries. While we must never diminish individual efforts and sacrifices, we can consider how churches, not individuals, have always been the prime movers in missions, as church historian Dana Robert argues in her book Christian Mission: How Christianity Became a World Religion.
Many Majority World churches are minorities in their communities. They often read the Great Commission in Matthew 28:18–20 and the call to be God’s witnesses in Acts 1:8 as an imperative for every Christian rather than for a select few. Reaching the “unreached” in these minority Christians’ eyes is not something that only those who are qualified to preach or teach do. Rather, they encounter the unreached every day as they live in homes with altars to other gods or are forced to participate in non-Christian rituals and customs.
In 2019, I visited the Santal tribe in Jharkhand, India. Once a region considered a “graveyard of missionaries” for its remoteness and for Hindu nationalists’ persecution of Christians, the Santal are now seen as a “reached” group. This largely took place because of missionaries sent by churches from Kerala, India, rather than through Western missionary efforts.
Today, the Santal church evangelizes to neighboring tribes that are categorized as unreached, but it does not think of them this way. The Santal think of evangelism as a natural outworking of their faith.
I have repeatedly witnessed this type of story in my visits to Nepal, Cambodia, and Thailand. Local churches, rather than missions agencies, are effectively spreading the gospel by multiplication through caring for their neighbors and carrying out good works (Eph. 2:10). Sending Western missionaries to unreached Majority World people groups is currently a less urgent need than before, as 21st century Majority World churches now possess the means, methods, and motivation to reach their neighbors.
The location of the “unreached” is also changing. In the first century, most Christians were situated around the Mediterranean basin, and by the 1900s, there were parts of the world that believers had never set foot in. Now, however, churches and communities can be found in almost every geographical region, according to the Atlas of Global Christianity. Consequently, the term unreached people groups has lost its meaning today.
Christianity is growing more rapidly in the Majority World than in the West. African and Asian churches are experiencing the fastest growth in the faith, the Center for the Study of Global Christianity observed in a 2024 report.
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When we do not recognize how the locus of Christian growth is shifting, we create a romanticized view of missionaries, focusing on fulfilling the “ends of the earth” portion of Acts 1:8 while neglecting our own Jerusalems. This idealization of mission work often results in the inefficient, and even detrimental, allocation of personnel and resources.
In 2018, 26-year-old American missionary John Allen Chau was killed by the Sentinelese, one of the most isolated tribes in the world, after attempting to contact them. I do not doubt Chau’s fervor and zeal for Christ, but I wish he had partnered with Christians in the region, who make up roughly 20 percent of the population on the Andaman Islands, before embarking on his mission.
Additionally, a traditional view of the term—which often assumes that the “unreached” are only in the Majority World—fails to address the term’s implicit Western bias. But the West is becoming unreached again, British missiologist Lesslie Newbigin and pastor Tim Keller warned. Missions to the West, where the vast majority of youth have no religious affiliation or have never heard the gospel, is just as vital as going to people groups in far-flung corners of the globe.
To move beyond a binary understanding of people as “reached” and “unreached” and to illustrate a multidirectional approach to missions more clearly, I use a metaphor of a waffle to describe missions in my classes.
This image draws from the “spreading and filling” process found in passages like Genesis 1, the conquest of Canaan in the Book of Joshua, and the Book of Acts. We have an existing worldwide Christian network, with churches as the raised grids of a waffle thanks to the tireless work of mission pioneers like Adoniram and Ann Judson, who ventured to Calcutta (Kolkata), India, and Burma (Myanmar) in the 1800s.
What is most needed now is to galvanize the filling of the waffle’s voids—areas of the world with little or no active Christian mission. These voids signify the unreached people in our neighborhoods and cities who are closed off to the gospel message. Churches can act as the syrup that infuses these voids by proclaiming the gospel, exercising the love of Christ, and spurring each other on toward love and good deeds (Heb. 10:24). The Bible consistently calls Christians to holistic and integral service toward not only the lost but also the least and the last (Deut. 10:18–19; 1 Pet. 2:9–12).
If we understand missions as a slow, steady pouring out of all that God has given us—like how thick, golden syrup spreads over a waffle and gradually fills all its grids—we will come to recognize that speaking of God’s mercy, love, and grace remains necessary in our Jerusalems as well as at the ends of the earth. Until the Lord returns, may we never cease in telling people near and far about how God’s words are “sweeter than honey” to our mouths (Ps. 119:103).
Samuel Law is associate professor for intercultural studies and dean of advanced studies at Singapore Bible College, as well as the pastor at large for the Evangelical Chinese Church of Seattle.
This article appeared in the November/December 2025 issue of Christianity Today as "We Need a New Metaphor".
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