Reaching unreached people groups should not be a separate separate ministry of the church applicable only to a small percentage of members. Payne, Pressure Points: Twelve Global Issues Shaping the Face of the Church (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2013), 2. The UPGKAS results confirmed my sense of a lack of familiarity with unreached people groups.
Unreached People Group Knowledge Assessment Survey
The concept of reaching unreached populations with the gospel should not be a niche focus of just a few members, but should be understood and shared by all members. The Ministry's project goals were well aligned with the project's goal of equipping LBC members to reach unreached populations and were effective. Similarly, most participants indicated that they could not identify specific unreached populations or their locations.
The general lack of knowledge about unreached groups among the participants assured me the need for this project. The pretest assessment also confirmed my suspicions that LBC members have a good biblical foundation; however, they needed to be further equipped to reach unreached population groups. UPGKAS sufficiently enabled me to effectively assess knowledge of unreached ethnic groups among the participants; therefore the first objective was achieved.
Curriculum Development and Evaluation
I divided the sessions into topics that I felt would be best to give such a person a very biblical and simple understanding of the need to reach unreached people. The research helped ground my personal views regarding unreached people groups more and more in the biblical metanarrative of God's mission to redeem the sinful world. Additionally, the panel of ministers who were to review the curriculum gave me further confidence that the curriculum was biblically informed and would be beneficial to the members of LBC.
The panel helped me to better formulate some of the questions in the curriculum for clarity. The panel also encouraged me that the curriculum would be good for our church and complete its goals. Based on the evaluation curriculum tool, the panel indicated that 100 percent of the curriculum achieved the adequate level in each area evaluated, giving me confidence in the potential effectiveness of the curriculum.
Curriculum Implementation and Evaluation
Upon completion of Session 6 training, the UPGKAS was administered a second time to serve as a post-test for participants. Using the UPGKAS before and after the training was the best way to determine the effect of the implemented curriculum. The post-test results were extremely encouraging as they showed real gains in knowledge of unreached populations among the participants.
Observing that most training participants demonstrated increased knowledge from the beginning of the training to the end confirmed the legitimacy of the survey used and the curriculum taught. The statements participants were asked to respond to were effectively targeted to assess prior knowledge of unreached populations as well as the extent to which they grew in knowledge as a result of the curriculum. When reverse scored, the change in response to these statements showed a slight positive effect of curriculum impact on participants' knowledge.
Development and Evaluation of Three-Year Training Calendar
The calendar is a simple grid to help keep ministry to UPGs in front of the members of the church. The content of the sixth session of the curriculum seems to have helped the participants a lot in knowing practically how they can use everything they have learned. One weakness of the project, expressed elsewhere, was the timing of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The entire project took place amid the ever-changing aftermath of the pandemic. In retrospect, another potential weakness of the project is the Socratic approach to teaching the project curriculum. However, perhaps a weakness of the curriculum is the potential for it to be used by other teachers who do not have significant content area knowledge.
Would Do Differently
A BIBLICAL METANARRATIVE
Equipping LBC members to achieve UPGs is best done within the context of the broader narrative of God's mission. However, we must be aware that there is continuity between the sixty-six books of the Bible through which the Bible tells the story of God's plan for humanity and the world. Teaching: God's plan for man was to image who God is and to spread his glory with him to the ends of the earth.
Man's mission to rule and fill the earth in God's image was marred by man's sinfulness, and man departed from God's dwelling place, the garden. Teaching: The promise of the seed of the woman in Genesis 3:15 is resolved in the expression of the word of God's promise to Abraham. The promise to Abraham is part of the fulfillment of God's redemptive plan revealed in Genesis 3.
Samuel 7:12-16 and Luke 1:31-33 and discuss the following questions
He intends to redeem all nations (mankind) through Christ and brings about this promise over time through imperfect men like Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and David. The true seed of the woman, the true seed of Abraham, the true heir to David's throne, would be Christ. Christ would be a blessing to all nations by crushing the serpent's head through the cross.
The kingdom of Christ would be established forever and consist of people from all nations (or all families of the earth) who put their faith in Christ for the forgiveness of sins. A snapshot of the New Testament reveals the continuity between what God was doing in the OT and in the NT. God's plan to redeem all nations was fully revealed in the atoning death and resurrection of Christ.
THE CONCEPT OF PEOPLE GROUPS AND THE UNREACHED
Teaching: In Genesis 10 we see specific distinctions made between peoples such as lands, languages, clans, and nations. In Revelation 5 we see that Christ bought people from every tribe, tongue, people and nation. Through such texts we see that the idea of groups of people based on certain barriers is a biblically rooted concept.
Teaching: In Genesis 10 we see the origin of various nations from the sons of Noah, Shem, Ham and Japheth. In Revelation 5 we see that Christ bought a people from every tribe, tongue, people and nation. As a church, we must begin to have a people group perspective as we think about the Great Commission.
SOTERIOLOGY: HOW ONE IS SAVED
As a result of sin, man's relationship with God has been broken and he is under God's judgment. Teaching: These texts communicate the problem of mankind that began in the garden of Eden. Because of sin in the garden, all of humanity has been affected and needs salvation.
Throughout Scripture, God's plan to redeem the nations through Christ is unpacked. It is through Jesus that we become righteous or justified in the eyes of God, while apart from Him we are condemned as sinners. We must understand the effect of sin and the absolute necessity for everyone to hear the gospel to be saved.
THE ROLE OF THE CHURCH IN MISSIONS
We are called to go, in the light of Christ's authority, to make disciples of all nations. In other words, we are called to disciple all ethnic groups of the world. Teaching: If we look at a brief outline of Paul's ministry, we can see that he emphasizes taking the gospel to the unreached.
In Paul's ministry we see the communal nature of the Great Commission and the role of the church in all that Paul did. Did Paul focus both on reaching the unreached and on the ongoing teaching of the church. We also see the need to fulfill the Great Commission within the local church.
MISSION DEFINITIONS AND STATISTICS
One day people from every people group will be in heaven praising God for their salvation. People group - A very large group of individuals who perceive themselves to have a common affinity for each other because of common language, religion, ethnicity, residence, class or caste, situation, etc., or combinations of theirs. For evangelistic purposes, a group of people is the largest group within which the Gospel can be spread as a church planting movement without encountering barriers of understanding or acceptance. 5.
UPG - (Unreached people group) An unreached people group is a group of people among whom there is no indigenous community of Christian believers with sufficient numbers and resources to evangelize this people group without outside help.”6. UUPG - (Unengaged Unreached People Group) A group of people is unengaged when there is no strategy for church planting, in accordance with evangelical faith and practice, in implementation. 7. From the China UPG list, develop a list of 3 obstacles that may hinder the transmission of the gospel by Western missionaries to members of those people groups.
OUR PERSONAL PARTICIPATION TODAY
In Luke 10 we are told to ask God for workers (ie pastors, missionaries, etc.) to go into metaphorical fields of service. In light of the need to save people, we must ask God to send messengers with the gospel. Since we are shaped by the word of God, then we pray according to the will or name of Jesus.
In Colossians 4 we are told to ask about opportunities for others to share the gospel. We are also told to ask if they have the opportunity to clarify the gospel massage. That is why we can pray in these ways and really participate in God's mission to reach those who are unreachable with the gospel.
John 5-8 and discuss the following questions
Teaching: Surely one of the purposes of Paul's ministry was to take the gospel to people who had never heard it. Wednesday, October 12 - The concept of groups of people / Unreached Wednesday, October 19 - Soteriology: how one is saved. Wednesday, October 11 - The concept of groups of people / Unreached Wednesday, October 18 - Soteriology: how one is saved.
Wednesday October 9 - The concept of people groups/Unreached Wednesday October 16 - Soteriology: How to be saved. Wednesday October 23rd - The Church's Role in Mission Wednesday October 30th - Mission Definitions & Statistics Wednesday November 6th - Our Personal Participation Today. Specifically, this chapter explores the history of the church's involvement in reaching the unreached, as well as contemporary missiological concepts, terms, and definitions pertaining to unreached peoples.
