Lausanne World Pulse – No Christians, No Scripture, No Missionaries: Update to the List

By Ted Bergman and Bill Morrison
October / November 2011

Another difference is that on our list, if individuals of a people group live on both sides of a national border, the language is still only listed once. The question we are asking is how many languages will a missionary have to learn in order to reach the groups who have no Christians or scripture? We learned, for instance, that the Runga of Chad have no scripture and few, if any, Christians; however, across the border in the Central African Republic, there are a number of Runga believers. So we removed this people group from our earlier list.

The final difference with the FTT list has to do with the population. Nowhere in the hundreds of places where God speaks of “all nations” and “all peoples” does he command going to larger groups first. If that were his strategy, Christ might have been born a Roman instead of a Jew.

Let’s advocate for all the unreached peoples as the Bible does, without distinction on size. It is true that the smallest people groups are usually more bilingual and bicultural and may not need a separate witness, but that is a tendency (not a fact) based solely on a low population figure.

The List
So click here to view the new list. Although we asked researchers and field missionaries to review it, it undoubtedly still has errors. There may be peoples that are not on the list and should be, and others that could be removed.²

The JP and CPPI lists do not show data for some languages, but as the two right-hand columns show, there are no longer any of the disagreements that were in the earlier list. There is wide agreement on these very neediest people groups. We offer it with the prayer to the Almighty that he will send out workers to the harvest.

The authors would appreciate feedback on the accuracy of the list.

Endnotes

1. Data coming from Omid is reflected in the South Asian “country” pages in Joshua Project if a state (division/zone/province) is chosen or if a smaller administrative division of the state is chosen.

2. Hattaway noted in an email, for example, that there have been significant advancements among the Qiangic groups in China that are on the list, especially since the Sichuan earthquake. These groups may now have a few believers.

Ted Bergman (PhD) has lived many years in Africa and coordinated language survey work internationally from 1983 to 2006. He is editor of SIL Electronic Survey Reports, is involved in sociolinguistic research in Asia, and is a research editor for Ethnologue. Bill Morrison (MBA) has compiled the Joshua Project database of people groups over the past eleven years. He was systems and programming manager at Campus Crusade for Christ and The Navigators for more than twenty years.