Aren’t all unbelievers the same?
Lost is lost, right?
In some ways, yes.
Jennifer’s a 30-something banking exec in the US who doubts that there is a god. Jennifer doesn’t know Ella who’s a real estate agent in Germany putting two kids through university. Growing up in a nominal Christian home, Ella had a series of disappointments with the church that made her gladly agree with her soon-to-be husband that their home would be an irreligious one. Neither Jennifer nor Ella know Houda. She’s a Muslim mom in a South Asian country, whose husband is a farm laborer. He does his best to feed their four children but sometimes he can’t. Houda and her husband are both devoted to the Umma and stop to pray each time the mosque broadcasts the adhan.
God loves each of these women. But Romans 1:18-20 says that He’s also angry with each of them. Not because one’s religion is wrong—or because another has no religion, but because none of them have turned from sin to faith in Jesus. Unless they repent, all will face eternal judgment when their lives end (Hebrews 9:28). All are living in rebellion towards the God who made them, whether by disinterest, defiance or deception.
In other ways, no.
On the other hand, these three women have very different levels of access to the good news. Ella’s country offers freedom of religion to its 83 million people. True, Christianity is in serious decline there with very few of the 44 million professing Christians actually being part of a local church. But if revival came, there are 24,500 churches available for them. Bibles and other Christian literature are easily accessible and can be purchased.
Of course, the US where Jennifer lives is glutted with believers, Bibles and churches. Our state of Pennsylvania has about 15,000 churches for 13 million people. In Jennifer’s hometown of Philadelphia, there are 2135 churches for the 5.8 million residents. Again, PA has plenty of believers who could tell neighbors about Jesus, and Bibles and Christian literature are readily available.
Houda’s situation is radically different. The vast majority of Pakistan’s 239 million people are Muslims. There is a tiny minority of 2 ½ million Christians, but most live in Punjab Province. Houda and her family live far away in Balochistan. Ruled by a government that’s hostile to Christianity as well as other faiths, it’s not unusual for Pakistanis to leverage the blasphemy laws against their Christian neighbors. Pennsylvania’s city of Philadelphia has twice as many churches as the entire country of Pakistan. Here, there’s a church for every 866 people, Pakistan has one for every 192,000 people.
Every person who is unreached is lost, but not every person who is lost is unreached. For example, some of my neighbors are lost. But they have gospel access through me and other Christian neighbors. There are several churches they can walk to and 15 more within a 15-minute drive. They can get a Bible at a local Christian bookstore, on the internet, or from a neighbor.
Where unreached people live there is little or no access to the gospel. In some cases there are a handful of believers among them, but they are too few to make disciples of the rest. Barriers like geography, politics, language, and culture hide such people from gospel influence. The lopsided way in which 97% of today’s Protestant mission efforts are concentrated in places where the gospel has already been established, shouts loudly for a course correction.
All lost people matter to God—and should matter to us. But from the earliest days of Christianity it has been the practice to move on from established fields (we could say “reached” places and people), to those that still need established. Without apology, the apostle Paul insisted, “My ambition has always been to preach the Good News where the name of Christ has never been heard, rather than where a church has already been started by someone else.” (Romans 15:20) This is why at Keystone’s “Pray for the Unreached” nights, we single out people who are unreached. It’s why our Mission Summits usually focus on unreached people. It’s why we choose to send teams on vision trips to countries in the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia (where 96-99% of the people are unreached) rather than to countries in places like Central and South America (of the 743 million people living in all of Mexico, Central and South America, less than a million are unreached).
If you’ve walked through Keystone’s lobby and glanced at the mission display, you’ve probably read Pastor Oswald Smith’s provocative claim from nearly a century ago: No one has the right to hear the gospel twice while there remains someone who has not heard it once. Yes, it’s a bit overstated, but Smith’s point needs to be sharp if the Church is to pack up and leave comfortable fields for those which have been neglected and may require great discomfort. We must raise up and support those who will go to the world’s three billion plus who still lack access to the good news. Jesus is coming back, but apparently not before all people groups have been reached (Matthew 24:14).
It’s not that lost people who aren’t unreached don’t matter, it’s that those who are unreached, should. Shouldn’t those who’ve been at the back of the line for so long, be moved to the front? In 2022, God urged me to invite Keystone to pray that over the next 10 years, He would raise up some of us to go to some of them. As I prayed about how many we should ask for, I thought 12 would be an ambitious number. I still think it is. But I sensed God saying “24” and so I continue to invite you to pray with us to that end; that by 2032 two dozen Keystone people will hurdle some high and difficult barriers for Jesus. In the past year, one family began to work locally with unreached people who have immigrated here. Another woman is currently in training in preparation to serve an unreached people group. God has begun to move! Let us pray to the Lord of the Harvest that He would send out even more workers into ripe fields.