Unreached Peoples, Part 2

This blog highlights books from Ralph Winter’s Library and compares excerpts to Winter’s own writings on one or more of the themes from his list of twelve “Frontiers of Perspective.” (See the full list at the end of this blog.)

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 (1) Unreached Peoples

"The U.S. Center for World Mission was founded, in part, on the discovery that many people groups still have no viable, indigenous church community in their midst – and require pioneering, cross-cultural outreach." (Ralph Winter’s “Frontiers of Perspective”)

Wagner, C. Peter and Edward R. Dayton, eds. 1981. Unreached peoples ’81: The challenge of the Church’s unfinished business with special section on the peoples of Asia. Elgin, IL: David C. Cook.

This book is one in a series that arose out of Ralph Winter’s famous speech at Lausanne ’74, that came to be known in its written form as “The New Macedonia: A Revolutionary New Era in Mission Begins.” 

From the Contents:

Part 1: The Unreached and How to Reach Them

            The People Group Approach to World Evangelization (C. Peter Wagner and Edward R. Dayton)

            Reaching South Korea’s Rural Fifteen Million People (Donald A. McGavran)

            Evangelizing China (Chirstopher Morris)

            Reflections on Thailand’s Unreached Poeples (Alex Smith)

Part 2: Case Studies

            Singapore’s English-speaking Teenagers: Factors in Evangelization (James Wong and Andrew Goh)

            Reaching Chinese Factory Workers in Hong Kong (Gail Law)

            Ikalahan Mission: A Case Study from the Philippines (Darwin Sckoken)

            The Unreached Sinhala Buddhists of Sri Lanka (Tissa Weerasingha)

            Evangelizing Taiwan-Chinese College Students (Jac Rea, Samuel Chao, David Wyma, and Cliff Good)

Part 3: The Task Remaining (Ralph Winter) (A description of the well-known pie chart, with the introduction of Tribals in the chart in this version.)

In his “New Macedonia” article, in the 1981 edition of the Perspectives on the World Christian Movement Reader (pages 293-311), Winter discusses different kinds of evangelism, according to language and culture (the E1, E2, and E3 scale). He concluded this article with a section on “Unity and Uniformity” that is relevant to controversies today about whether congregations should be homogeneous or multi-ethnic.

Now, I regreat that this subject is so delicate, and I would not embark upon it if it were not so urgently significant for the practical evangelistic strategies which we must have if we are going to win the world for Christ. … Many people asked me what I meant by the strategic value of the establishment of youth churches. … It is by no means a case where we are suggesting that young people not be allowed in adult services. We are not suggesting segregation of the youth. Youth churches are not ends, but means. We are not abandoning the thought that young people and older people should often be in the same service together. We are merely insisting, with what I pray is apostolic intuition, that young people have the freedom in Christ to meet together by themselves if they choose to, and especially if this allows them to attract other young people who would likely not come to Christ in an age-integrated service.           

It is a curious fact that the kind of culturally sensitive evangelism I have been talking about has always been acceptable wherever people are geographically isolated. No one minds if Japanese Christians gather by themselves in Tokyo, or Spanish-speaking Christians gather by themselves in Mexico. … But there is considerable confusion in many people’s minds as to whether Japanese, Spanish and Chinese Christians should be allowed or encouraged to gather by themselves in Los Angeles. Very specifically, is it good evangelistic strategy to found separate congregations in Los Angeles in order to attract such people?

…Let us never be content with mere isolation, but let us … be cautious about hastening to uniformity. If the whole world church could be eventually gathered into a single congregation, … there would eventually and inevitably be a loss of a great deal of the rich diversity of the present Christian traditions. Does God want this? Do we want this?

       Jesus died for these people around the world. He did not die to preserve our Western way of life. He did not die to make Muslims stop praying five times a day. He did not die to make Brahmins eat meat.  … We can’t make every local church fit the pattern of every other local church. But we must have radically new efforts of cross-cultural evangelism in order to effectively witness … and we cannot believe that we can continue virtually to ignore this highest priority.

Ralph Winter’s 12 “Frontiers of Perspective” represent major shifts in his thinking that “profoundly modified and molded his perception of the mission task”:

(1) Unreached Peoples

(2) The Great Commission and Abraham

(3) From the Unfinished Task to the Finishable Task

(4) Failure with the Large Groups and the Off-setting Trend to “Radical Contextualization”

(5) Reverse Contextualization, the Recontextualization of Our Own Tradition

(6) The Reclaiming of the Gospel of the Kingdom

(7) Beyond Christianity

(8) A Different Type of Recruitment

(9) A Trojan Horse

(10) Needed: a Revolution in Pastoral Training

(11) The Religion of Science

(12) The Challenge of the Evil One