Chapter 1 The Number of Unreached is Increasing

(Excerpt from So the World Will Know by J. Christopher Evans)

Why has no one ever told us about this before?

—Afghan man, after hearing the gospel

My first mission trip to “Khorastan” many years ago left an indelible impression on me. I went with a team to do relief work with the many refugees living in camps there.

One day I went down to the English-language bookstore in the bazaar and asked the clerk to see a Bible. To my astonishment, he had never even heard of the Bible! And yet, there was a huge Pepsi Cola sign in the middle of town; everyone knew what Pepsi was, and probably many, if not most, drank it. As a fairly new believer, I wondered how, two thousand years after God in the flesh had commanded his Church to do this one thing, bring the gospel to all nations, there were still so many places on earth where almost no one had even heard of the Bible. This question has haunted me ever since, and it is only now, some forty years later, that I have come to understand how and why this could happen and, more importantly, how the situation can be rectified. That’s what this book is about.

It is a great marvel that Almighty God has chosen, as his junior partner in his mission, the fallen humanity he set out to redeem. That God created this vast and beautiful creation out of nothing is astounding; that he does the greater work of redeeming all nations through a partnership with such a humble and fallible partner is even more amazing.

Consider how great God’s work of creation is: the known universe has two trillion galaxies, each with 100 billion stars, not to mention the wonders of life on the earth. The beauty and complexity of God’s creation are mind-boggling. But consider how much greater God’s redemptive work is. He produced his creation out of nothing, but in his work of redemption, he accomplished a far greater feat. For one thing, accomplishing our redemption cost him his Son. And in applying that redemption, he began not from scratch, but with a humanity so ruined by sin that it hated him and stood in blind and bitter rebellion against him. He began by calling some from among those utterly ruined by sin to participate with himself as a sort of “junior partner” in making that redemption known. Consider the state of humanity before God called Abram to begin the process of preparing the world for the redemption to come:

The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. (Genesis 6:5–6)

Exactly as Jesus taught, the growth of the Kingdom of God has been like that of a mustard seed. The smallest seed in the garden has become the greatest tree in the garden. The Church, in the broadest sense of “all God’s called-out people,” has grown from that one man, Abram, who believed God four thousand years ago to become the largest global organization in the world by far, numbering 2.7 billion. The Church is present in each of the 195 countries in the world, even where conversion to Christ is punishable by death. This growth has been both astonishing and unparalleled.

Much significant church growth has occurred in the past seventy-five years, often in the face of the most severe repression and persecution. China had only about three million Christians at the time of the Communist Revolution in 1949, when the new government expelled all the missionaries. Years of severe persecution followed in a relentless effort to eradicate the faith. According to the Joshua Project, the result has been the most explosive church growth in history, resulting in some one hundred million having come to faith in China as of 2025.

A similar story of God’s triumph over the best efforts of those who oppose the gospel has played out in Iran. At the time of the revolution in 1979, there were only about five hundred Iranian Christians from a Muslim background. Again the missionaries were expelled, and that marked the start of a period of explosive evangelical church growth, now at a rate of approximately 19.6% as of 2024.2 Today there are approximately one million believers from a majority Muslim background in Iran.

Again, a similar story is playing out in Afghanistan. In 1952, when pioneer modern missionary J. Christy Wilson first went to Kabul, there were no known Muslim-background believers. Radicals resisted, and in 1973 destroyed the church pastored by Dr. Wilson, the Kabul Community Church, and Dr. Wilson was forced to flee after a plot to murder him came to light. Today, the number of underground believers is in the thousands.

God has brought these and many other amazing advances, typically through the dedicated work of a relatively small number of career missionaries who have poured out their lives for the sake of Christ and the gospel. And since the 1970’s, radio and subsequently satellite television and social media have fueled significant church growth, especially in countries closed to conventional missions.

In spite of the many other remarkable advances of the gospel worldwide, there remains a massive, urgent problem in the world of missions. Between 1900 and 2000, the number of unreached peoples increased by 969 million. More troubling, without a radical change in the trend, between 2000 and 2050, the number of unreached is projected to increase by another 923 million to a total of 2.772 billion.3

This means that countless millions will live and die without ever having had a chance to hear of the only way of salvation unless there is a change in how we carry out the Great Commission.

The above graph showing 2.2 billion unreached peoples as of 2025 gives the most conservative number, and refers only to people with no access to the gospel.4 Using the broader, more common definition of “unreached people groups,” i.e., those with 2% or fewer Evangelical Christians, yields the number of 3.42 billion as of 2025, according to the Joshua Project.5 Regardless of which figure is used, the number is alarmingly high.

The 10/40 Window
For clarity, “people groups” are groups which share a common language, culture, and identity. Those which are “unreached” have little or no access to the gospel. Generally, these groups have fewer than 2% Evangelical Christians. Most of these groups live in the “10/40 Window,” the area on the map between the 10- and 40-degree north latitude lines. This area runs from North Africa to East Asia. See the above map.

Next: Why the Number of Unreached is Rising

This article is taken from J. Christopher Evans’ book, So the World Will Know: Jesus’ Game-Changing Vision for His Mission and your part in it.

Purchase on Amazon