Unreached Peoples

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. 1979. Unreached peoples ’79: The challenge of the Church’s unfinished business. Elgin, IL: David C. Cook.

From the Introduction to the first volume:

This book is intended to be the first of a series of annual publications on unreached people. The series will constitute a growing reference library for mission executives, missionaries, professors of mission, church mission committees, seminary libraries, and Christians with a higher than average interest in and commitment to world evangelization. … Each book in the series will contain indepth articles by recognized missiologists on reaching the unreached.… It is a planning guide for those responsible for making missions happen. … Where are workers needed? Where has God ripened the harvest? Where should we concentrate our prayers, our funds, and our personnel at this particular moment of history?

From Ralph Winter’s chapter, “Penetrating the New Frontiers":

Strategy I: Rebuild pioneer mission perspective (pages 41-46)

            Class I Tactics: Rebuilding in the local church, among students, in the mission agencies, and in the ‘younger’ churches. … “Most strategizing takes place on the level of the mission society, and therefore whatever task is inherently beyond the scope of any one mission society has fallen by the wayside. … An example is the Misisonary Research Library … the decline of [which] is one of the great tragedies in modern mission history.” (pages 56-63)

Strategy II:  Rediscover the Hidden People (pages 46-51)

            Class II Tactics: “The tactics necessary to rediscover the hidden People must be developed in close coordination with existing churches and missions, especially missions arising inside the same political boundaries as the hidden People.… Ultimately, however, the Hidden People belong to God, not to man, and we must all recognize the need to obey God rather than man in fulfilling the biblical mandate to seek and find those who sit in darkness. An overemphasis on ‘partnership in mission’ is stagnating many potential efforts.” (pages 63-68)

Strategy III: Reevaluate All Previous Approaches (pages 51-53)

            Class III Tactics: “There is much to be gained by disciplined reflection upon past experience. Have we learned all we should from the movements of Jewish and Christian merchants in the early centuries, and the importance of a relatively simple process whereby a synagogue or a church can be founded? Or the significance of the involuntary cross-cultural transmission of the gospel to or from captured peoples? … Or rigorously-committed communities devoted to the transmission of the Bible? … Or puzzling proposals for maintaining respect but not worship of ancestors?” (pages 68-71)

Strategy IV: Reconsecrate Ourselves to the Wartime, Not Peacetime, Life-style (pages 53-54)

            Class IV Tactics: “God cannot expect less from us in our struggle to save Hidden People than our own nation conventionally requires of us in wartime. … To reconsecrate ourselves to a wartime life-style will involve a mammoth upheaval for a significant minority. It will not go uncontested any more than did the stern warning of Isaiah and Ezekiel. But we do not need to defend our campaign. It is not ours.” (pages 71-76)

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

From the Unfinished Task to the Finishable Task, Part II

Ralph Winter’s list of “Twelve Frontiers of Perspective” shows the major shifts in his thinking since 1976 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

Today I found another book on this theme with contributions by Ralph Winter. Other authors include: David Bryant, Elisabeth Elliot, Gordon MacDonald, Robert Munger, Peter Stam, and J. Christy Wilson.

Kyle, John E., ed. 1984. The Unfinished Task. Ventura, CA: Regal Books.

From the back cover: "In August 1806, five Williams College students, caught in a thunderstorm, took refuge under a haystack. There they prayed for an awakening of student interest in foreign missions. Although none of them knew it, this was the launching of the modern missionary movement. On the 175th anniversary of the Haystack Prayer Meeting, a key group of leaders met to examine ways to finish the task of reaching the world for Jesus Christ. Their comments are found in The Unfinished Task, a book which presents new perspectives for missionaries and those considering a missions vocation."

     In Winter's chapter, "Missions Today--A Look at the Future," he discusses the three eras that he is known for coining. In a section titled, "The New Era: The Nature of the New Frontiers,"  he wrote, "We've mentioned that the first era represented the impacting of missionaries on the coastlands and the second era their moving into the interior. What then is the nature of the new third era of missions? It is what is left--the residue--what you might call the 'bypassed' peoples. … In the third era today, where the frontiers? They're everywhere.…" (pages 71, 72).

     Winter also contributed the final chapter of the book, "A Prayer for the Nations" (p. 277 ff.).

Exceprts from his prayer:

* "Many of us are wayward people, rebellious children; we have not obeyed with a beautiful, filial love. Heavenly Father, will you forgive us for the coldness of our hears, for the busyness of our lives as we have bustled about even attempting to do your work, without being with you in that work!"

* "We pray that we might be more useful than we've been, as we seek to serve and to do your will. We're glad, Lord, that we're not going backwards; we're glad that there are more people in the world now but fewer nations to be penetrated. We're glad, Lord, that the rate of population growth is not exceeding the rate of growth of the Christian movement."

* "Father, we really await your voice. Our prayers, Lord, must be listening prayers. So much has been given to us. It seems as though we have many, many people but are not organized as teams. Thousands of people are mired and ensnared by many trivial and secondary concerns, available only theoretically for your highest. Oh, God, we thank you for the challenge to give our utmost for your highest.

* "We pray for these nations, nations which have never been closer to us or better understood by us of more accessible to us."

* "And Father, I pray most of all that as we go from this place we might have a firmer grasp on your task of world evangelization and its role in our lives. Give us collaborative energy…. "

* "Oh, Father, give us renewed courage, not for our own benefit, not for our careers' sake, not for our program's sake, but only for your glory. May your will be done on earth as it is in heaven."