Why the change from 1,600 to 6,639 unreached?
You might be saying “I thought that by the end of the 1990s we were about finished with unreached peoples. Didn’t all the unreached people groups have ministry commitments for church planting by the end of 2000?” Or maybe it seems like the unreached people focus of missions is sort of “been there; done that.” Why is Joshua Project suggesting that there are 6,639 unreached / least-reached people groups? Good question! The original Joshua Project list of approximately 1,600 entries was limited to only the largest ethno-linguistic people groups. Three things have happened to give a clearer picture of the unfinished task and expanded the number of unreached peoples to 6,639. 1. Smaller People Groups Now Included While the original Joshua Project list only included groups larger than 10,000 in population for any given country, the current Joshua Project list includes ALL peoples regardless of size. This added several thousand unreached peoples. Interestingly, the total population of all peo
