We Helped Reach the Hardest Group - A Case Study

Eight years ago, the maker of this site studied a list of all the people groups of the world.  We chose a people group that was viewed as the least reached group on earth.

Over the last eight years, we have learned what works and what does not work to reach a least evangelized large people group.

When we started, there was no church, no Christians, no Bible, no Good News cassette tape.  Nothing.  The country this people group lives in was not open to foreign Christians coming there to share the good news with their ethnic groups.

At first, we tried many things and learned much from our failures and then successes.  It is from this work that we developed the MARKET strategy that we mention elsewhere on this site.  Here is a quick history using the acronym MARKET.

M – Meet an un-engaged people group in their markets

            (Don’t make big plans until you meet a member of the group.  Find them in their market place.)        

Since the country where this group lives was welcoming to tourists, we worked through a tour guide and booked a tour to go and meet this tribe.  Since the country restricts any religion other than their own, we were careful on this first trip.  We took video of the people group.  We took pictures.  We asked them many questions.

A – Assess their needs and gospel tools

            (As you do business with them, ask them if there are Christians.  Test any gospel tools or cassettes.)

A friend was willing to go back and visit this people group.  We asked him to bring a cassette that we had ordered from Gospel Recordings that was labeled as being from this group.  When he played it for members of this group, they could not understand it at all. 

R – Record the Good News in their language

            (Hire a bi-lingual member of the group to make a Gospel cassette from a script you provide.)

We attended several conferences where international Christian workers met to talk about reaching all the groups.  When we met people whom we thought could help us, we gave them a flyer we made saying we wanted to meet members of this unreached people group.  Since the group makes handicrafts that are bought in the West, we said we wanted to buy such handicrafts. 

Six months after giving one such flyer, a man living in a country next to the unreached people's country contacted us and said he had a phone number for a Christian from the people group we were trying to reach. 

We called the man, and he happened to speak English.  He invited us to come and meet him.  We traveled there and met the man.  He had been won to Christ through having a vision of Jesus and then meeting with a Christian for two years of weekly Bible study.  He was praying that God would use him to reach his tribe. 

Together we translated this script from English into his language.  He recorded it over the next few weeks and mailed us a copy.  He also started making a translation of the Gospel of Luke into his language.  This was hard since his language was not yet written (it had no alphabet). 

K – Keep your focus on un-engaged people groups

(Move on to another group if you find the first group has Christians.)

As we have implemented our plan to reach this number one least reached people group, we have discovered three other tribes that also had no outreach.  We learned from our mistakes, improved our approach and implemented these same steps with these three other groups.  Now we have church planting work in all four groups.  

E – Evangelize some people using the recording

            (Play the cassette for as many members of the tribe as you can. Ask what they think.)

We first put the recording we made onto a Short Wave radio station that broadcast into the region.  Since many of the people who speak this language cannot write, the responses by mail have not been many.  A few different teams of travelers volunteered to take these cassettes into the country and give them to members of this tribe.  We think maybe 400 people have listened to the Good News cassette as a result. 

T – Train a team of native church planters

            (If you find Christians or if people become Christians, train them to plant churches.  If there are no Christians, train those from a nearby culture.  Usually some members of your minority group have learned a trade language of a majority group where Christians can be found.)

We as Westerners tried and tried to live among our loved people group.  I think the fact that we wanted to live there so badly inspired the first Christian from this group to move back to his home.  He had no job and was hesitant to move home because of lack of employment.  We were able to get him the business training that he needed.  We helped to develop a market for the products he made and purchased.  We provided Bible training and introduced Chronological Bible Storying.  We researched nearby successful church plants and trained in that methodology.  The first Christian has slowly and carefully won many members of his language group to faith.  They meet in the security of their own home for church two times a week.  He is now using his business to meet more people from his tribe who are interested in hearing his Good News. 

We are now spending our time reaching new language groups as God opens the door.  We are continually looking for new unreached groups that do not yet have a witness in their language.  We are like the apostle Paul who said in Romans 15:20, “My ambition has always been to preach the Good News where the name of Christ has never been heard, rather than where a church has already been started by someone else” (NLT).  We like the quote by Dawson Trottman, the founder of the Navigators, who said, "Never do things others can do and will do if there are things others cannot do or will not do."

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