Panta Ta Ethne

The 10/40 Window is a rectangular area of North Africa, the Middle East and Asia between 10 degrees north and 40 degrees north latitude.  This area is often called “The Resistant Belt” and includes the majority of the world’s Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists.  Most of the people living in this region are still waiting to hear the gospel for the first time.

Joshua Project, a non-profit Christian ministry focused on gathering and distributing information about ethnic groups with the least access to the Gospel, estimates that 5.11 billion individuals live in this area, representing 8,717 distinct ethnic groups. 

According to Joshua Project, 68.6% of the 10/40 Window’s ethnic groups (5,984) are considered unreached, with a total population of 3.09 billion. That means there is no thriving local church movement in those ethnic groups. Some of the world’s largest unreached people groups — the Shaikh, Yadava, Turks, Moroccan Arabs, Pashtun, Jat and Burmese — call this region home.  

[ People Group ] : an ethnolinguistic group with a common self-identity that is shared by the various members. The most dominant identifier of a people group is their language, but each unique people group also shares a common sense history and customs. For strategic purposes, a people group is the largest group through which the gospel can flow without encountering significant barriers of understanding and acceptance. In other words, a people group calls “us, us” and “them, them” by distinguishing insiders and outsiders. In the Bible, the Greek word “ethne” often times gets translated as “nations” but really means ethnic groups or people groups.

[ Unreached People Group (UPG) ] or [ Least Reached People Group ] : an identifiable group of people distinguished by a distinct culture, language, or social class who lack a community of Christians able to evangelize the rest of the people group without outside help. The only opportunity for the people group to hear about salvation is through an “external witness.” Most missiologists consider 2% of the population becoming Christ followers as the “tipping point” at which the group is generally considered “reached” with the Gospel.

[ Unengaged Unreached People Group (UUPG) ] : According to Finishing the Task, there are 144 remaining unengaged, unreached people groups numbering over 5.7 million souls that are still beyond the reach of the Gospel. These 144 ethnic groups are perhaps the neediest of the needy as they are unengaged, which means that no church, no missionary, no mission agency…no one has yet taken responsibility to tell them about Jesus Christ.