A Prayer for Missions
O God, you have made of one blood all the peoples of the earth, and sent your blessed Son to preach peace to those who are far off and to those who are near: Grant that people everywhere may seek after you and find you; bring the nations into your fold; especially ethnolinguistic nations still waiting for the Good News to arrive to them 2,000 years and 67 generations after Jesus ascended into heaven. Especially bless AFM missionaries and all other missionaries who minister in hostile and frontier environments where your church has not yet been planted. And pour out your Spirit upon all flesh; and hasten the coming of your kingdom; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Missionaries often talk about the term “people group”:
A people group is “a significantly large grouping of individuals who perceive themselves to have a common affinity for one another because of their shared language, religion, ethnicity, residence, occupation, class or caste, situation, etc., or combination of these.” For evangelistic purposes a people group is “the largest group within which the gospel can spread as a church planting movement without encountering barriers of understanding or acceptance.”[1]
So, a people group is what make us “us,” and everyone else, “them.” The Gospel can spread naturally within the same people group because individuals within that group share a common language, culture, and set of values. Quite simply, it’s easier to share the Gospel when barriers of language and comprehension do not exist. But the gospel cannot fluidly and unimpededly spread when it encounters the barrier of a different language, culture, and worldview in the recipients, that is, when the recipients come from a different people group.
Today, some 2,000 years and 67 generations after Jesus ascended into heaven, there are still 1,300+ ethnolinguistic people groups (over 41 million people) that are completely unengaged with the Gospel. This means these people groups not only have no Christians living among them, but also that there is no commitment (at present) by Christians from anywhere on the globe to bring the gospel to them. We call these 1,300+ people groups unengaged unreached people groups.
The vision and calling of Anglican Frontier Missions is to send missionaries to unengaged unreached people groups, in the frontier/pioneer regions of the globe where there is no viable or visible church yet present to do evangelism and church planting.
