The World Comes
to Our Backyard By J.D. Payne
Consider that most individuals and churches do not know the following: 1. There is a very large number of unreached people groups residing in the United States and Canada (I estimate several hundred groups); 2. The best data we have is a listing of the UPGs by names and population sizes; 3. We do not know the evangelical percentages – if any – of most of the UPGs; 4. We know very little about who is ministering to some of these peoples and to what degree; and 5. We have better data on most UPGs across the world than we do on those same UPGs living in the U.S. and Canada.
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SOUTHERN SEMINARY | WINTER 2012
The Lord has brought the nations of the world to our communities and we in the United States and Canada are not aware of this reality. Such is a matter of stewardship, and we have failed greatly in this area. The United States is the world’s largest immigrant-receiving nation. And both Canada and the United States are ethnically diverse. The United States is the third largest country in the world in population. Canada is geographically the second largest country in the world. Therefore, missionary researchers face great challenges and a great deal of work. But it can be done. The reality is that these two countries are two of the most researched nations on the planet. General academia has a great wealth of data already to assist us. Evangelicals easily have
Illustration by Andrea Stember