... Definitions ...
UPG: Unreached People Group
People groups refer to groups of individuals, families and clans who share a common language and ethnic identity.
More specifically, says Scott Holste, director of the IMB’s Global Research Department, “a people group is the largest group through which the gospel can flow without encountering a significant barrier of understanding or acceptance.”
An unreached people group, Holste says, is a “people group in which the number of evangelical Christians totals less than 2 percent of the population.”
At first glance, the numbers are daunting. According to the Global Research Department, there are nearly 6,500 unreached people groups in the world today, whose combined population is approximately 3.4 billion.
Today, approximately one-third of personnel with the IMB are engaging Last Frontier people groups—unreached people groups with little or no access to the gospel, and ones where no one has started an evangelical church in the past two years.
In Central Asia there are more than 500 distinct ethno-linguistic people groups and population segments. All are unreached—the number of evangelical Christians within the population totals less than 2 percent. More than 50 Central Asian unreached people groups are currently engaged by IMB personnel, while more than 70 Central Asian unreached people groups are engaged by IMB, other GCC groups, or both.