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Jesus said to Peter and the disciples, “I will build my church.” (Matthew 16:18a) In light of this truth, the essential missionary task seeks to establish fellowships of believers where there are none.

While there are many phrases and terms used in missions circles, Unreached peoples (or sometimes “least reached”) refers to a culture or people group that does not have a viable, indigenous, church planting movement within their people.

Often, people think about individuals that are “unreached,” but the term refers to ethno-linguistic peoples—peoples from similar language or ethnic background.

The reaching of unreached peoples then, means getting the Gospel to them in a way that makes sense and allows it to flourish and grow. Once the Gospel is in a culture, tasks such as evangelism become the role of the new believers, who understand that culture and language better than the outsiders. Letting the Gospel flow inside a culture has proved to be one of the most effective ways to see the church grow both in number and depth. From that base then, all kinds of good works flow from the church to help transform the society for good (Eph. 2:10).

Much more about reached and unreached peoples and the task of reaching them can be found in the book, Perspectives on the World Christian Movement by Winter and Hawthorne (2009). The course, Perspectives, is based on this book has been taken by some 80,000 folks in some 300 locations in North America.