Reaching tribes, transforming lives

“We hereby pledge ourselves to … reaching the last unevangelized tribe in our generation.”
-- Covenant of Paul Fleming, Bob Williams and Cecil Dye, Aug. 1, 1942

From the beginnings of New Tribes Mission in 1942, founder Paul Fleming talked about “reaching the last tribe in our generation.” His generation has passed, and though many poured even their very lives into the task, the numbers still seem daunting. Of the world’s 6,500 people groups, 2,500 are unreached.

But I have come to the conclusion that there’s no reason the world can’t be reached in this generation.

Since I came back from Papua New Guinea in 2006 to lead New Tribes Mission USA, I have done a lot of research to find out what kind of progress is being made  in reaching unreached people groups.

What I found is that in 1974, statistics said about half that world’s people groups were unreached. Thirty-eight years later, the best available statistics say that one-third of the world’s people groups are unreached.

So while it took some 2,000 years to reach half the world’s people groups, the next one-sixth of the world’s peoples were reached in less than 40 years. With that acceleration – which lines up with the continuing acceleration we see in so many areas these days – I can come to only one conclusion: Every tribe can be transformed by Jesus Christ in this generation.

We are living in unprecedented times:

• We hear more about unreached people groups than we ever have. More awareness is likely to lead to greater engagement with what God is doing in the rest of the world.
• I see a young generation who I believe is ready for the challenge to enter into this incredible privilege of being used to reach the last people group.
• God is increasing the impact of the global church. This is not the time to stop sending missionaries. Local churches around the world are asking for missionaries to work with them to reach into unreached people groups.

This is why I believe New Tribes Mission’s efforts can accelerate.

Over the past six years, our missionary teams started planting another tribal church every 45 days. This means that, on average, another team—which has been trained, sent out by their church, oriented to the host country, located in the people group and attained proficiency in culture and language—has begun   teaching chronological Bible lessons every 45 days. Our goal is to cut that to 30 days.

To do that we’re increasing our mobilization efforts, so more missionaries are going out to more of these unreached peoples.  We’re doing that by helping churches identify, equip and send out their missionaries. We’re expanding our specialized training so more missionaries can be equipped for cross-cultural church planting.

Certainly, we face challenges. “The remaining unreached peoples are unreached because they are the most difficult to go to,” said Malcolm Hunter, who has nearly 50 years of missionary experience and is an expert on nomadic peoples.

However, God prepares and equips every generation to engage in His Mission. Reaching the world can  actually happen. We can see every tribe transformed by Jesus Christ in this generation.