I’m glad I took something of a middle road on the question of unreached peoples. Regardless of one’s position on the Great Commission vis-a-vis ethnolinguistic peoples, the practical goal ends up similar. Because evangelism is difficult across cultural and linguistic boundaries (which are not hard dotted-line boundaries like national lines but nuanced gradients with complex topography), if the goal is for everyone to have the gospel communicated to them, this by nature requires higher resource dedication to crossing and bridging those boundaries. In other words, because there’s not really a natural spread to different “people groups”, we have to put more intentional effort toward “unreached”. (I put these terms in quotes because the terms are almost useless at this point, but hopefully it gets the point across. Here is a useful 2019 article about recent attempts to reclarify focus.)
Where people get in trouble is 1) being weirdly ethno-conscious and sometimes borderline or outright racist and 2) ignoring needs of others due to the needs at home. Both of these are pretty messed up and I want to avoid pointing any fingers here, because at the end of the day in Christ we’re forgiven for our sins and stand as equals under grace, but in a practical sense it’s helpful just to keep in mind the risks of going overboard in a couple directions.
First, ignoring the needs of others—this appears in the severe lack of prioritization of people who have low access to the gospel. Interestingly in my experience Christians who are the most active at sharing the gospel (minus the cults) tend to also be the most supportive of intentional efforts to get the gospel across cultural and linguistic barriers. But this makes sense because, in my humble opinion, the main issue here is not one of prioritization, which I consider more a symptom, but in excessive self-concern, both corporate and individual, rooted in not believing the gospel! Sometimes it’s fear of not having enough at home. Sometimes it’s lack of awareness in the gospel needs of the world due to not being captivated by the gospel. So for myself, I love to see great effort happening in places where the gospel is more readily available because I believe the fruit of those efforts will ultimately lead to people realizing the need of others “far away” and desiring for them to hear and believe as well. But we cannot afford to be selfish. The gospel changes us from being self-preserving to being self-giving, and if we are not acting in self-giving love, there is a grave danger we have not accepted God’s self-giving love for ourselves.
Second, being too ethnoconscious. What I’ve seen sometimes is people being so concerned with the people group they’re in (in my case, the Japanese people) they devalue sharing the gospel with people not of their “target” group, but in the same proximity. This is different than deprioritizing—I understand we are limited and can only prioritize so many things—but when people start talking about how certain opportunities should be limited to only a certain ethnicity (again, in my case the example is it would be best if they were Japanese), to me this is pretty much racist, accidental as it may be. Or when someone believing and being baptized is less celebrated because it wasn’t a Japanese person. This is wrong! I can’t say it enough. It’s wrong. God does not choose us based on our ethnicity or language or culture or anything else, but values us based on Christ’s acceptance of us, as precious sons and daughters, as equal friends. So why would we who have received this unmerited status and love then become judges of the value of another’s acceptance? We must celebrate as the angels do.
But if we do not take things too far, we see there is much common ground for any believer on the issue of “peoples”. Let us continue to apply the gospel to ourselves and may God move us to go share it with others.
Ben Shimomura 