If you weren’t already aware, the “Unreached Peoples Paradigm” in missiology has been under scrutiny the past several years. Here are a couple examples.
The 3 Words That Changed Missions Strategy—and Why We Might Be Wrong
And a response, Should Missionaries Focus on Unreached People Groups? Yes.
A deeper discussion is found here:
Beyond people group thinking: A critical reevaluation of unreached people groups
And a response, Beyond Groupism: Redefining Our Analysis of Ethnicity and Groups
I’ll be attending a webinar on January 9, 2020, 2:00-3:15pm EST titled: The People Group Paradigm in 2020: Relevant for Today, Relic from the Past or Something in Between? by Dave Datema with Frontier Ventures. (It is free, but you have to register with Missio Nexus- as a member of a North American mission agency you most likely get to sign up for free: https://missionexus.org/join/#join.) Here is the description:
The last ten years have witnessed an increasing number of questions and criticisms related to the people group paradigm. Is panta ta ethne really talking about people groups? Haven't the seismic forces of globalization, urbanization, migration and the digital revolution made the people group concept irrelevant? Aren't the realities on the ground simply too complex for the simplistic notion of people groups? If the people group paradigm represented the third era of mission and is over forty years old, isn't it time for the fourth one to appear? This webinar will delve into these and other questions and will attempt to give an up-to-date synopsis on the current status of the people group paradigm.
I’m looking forward to this webinar by Datema. Here are several questions I’m asking:
- The People Group idea was, to a large extent, built upon a modern cultural anthropology that had cultures essentialized and boundaries fixed. However, postmodern anthropology sees more value in hybridity and recognizes that people often live in more than one cultural world while juggling multiple identities. How does this impact our view of peoples?
- Does panta ta ethne simply mean to make disciples of everyone (Jews and Gentiles), regardless of background? If so, why did nearly all of the original disciples travel to new places? There were plenty of Jews and Gentiles right around them who didn’t know Jesus… On a related note, does the idea of church expansion or extension necessarily entail the tragic legacies of colonialism and Christendom?
- Is the UPG paradigm utilitarian in nature? Does viewing apostolic mission as a task necessarily mean that it is the kind of task that can be completed/finished? Is it also a task that can be analyzed and managed? Is there a balance in here that needs to be maintained? (I.e. “Don’t through the baby out with the bathwater.")
- Critics of the UPG paradigm claim that it diverts far too many resources away from equally important ministries. UPG paradigm proponents claim that there are not near enough resources utilized for the unreached. What does a responsible interpretation of the data reveal?
If you have any thoughts, please don’t hesitate to share.