Rick Warren, Francis Chan on Mission to Share Gospel With World's Last 'Unreached' People
Evangelical leaders such as Pastor Rick Warren of Saddleback Church and Christian speaker Francis Chan are joining forces for a conference aimed at reaching out to the last remaining 3,000 groups of people who have never heard the Gospel.
"As part of the 'H' Initiative for Daring Faith we are 'Helping take the Good News of the Gospel to the last 3,000 unreached, unengaged people groups!' Unreached, unengaged people groups are those around the world with NO Bible, NO Believer, and NO Body of Christ," Warren wrote in a Facebook message, previewing the conference scheduled at Saddleback Church for Dec. 2-4.
"We are inviting pastors and churches to come listen to world-class speakers Francis Chan, Paul Eshleman, and others (including myself!) about helping churches choose the 3 P's; a People group, a Partner (an in-country church or outreach organization) and a Plan to reach their people group by the end of the decade," he added.
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The website for the outreach, called Finishing the Task, notes that Jesus "gave us the task of making disciples of all nations, and we know that eventually there will be people from every tribe, tongue, people and nation around his throne."
It said that according to its statistics, there are 3,226 people groups who are not only unreached, but so far no one has tried to reach out to them.
The effort calls on churches and mission agencies to join forces and help plant churches and lead outreach efforts to areas around the world that have not heard of the Gospel.
"Finishing the Great Commission can be defined in different ways, but what is most important is that we start to finish the task. It will be accomplished primarily through local congregations planting indigenous churches among the people groups they adopt," the website adds.
Warren, one of the most popular megachurch leaders in the U.S., has partnered with a variety of Christian leaders in the past.
Back in September, he gave the final keynote address of the World Meeting of Families conference in Philadelphia, praising Pope Francis' strong statements on the importance of the family during his week-long trip to America.
Chan, who is also a best-selling author, has often focused his motivational speeches on urging Christians to become more active in outreach.
"We've created a church culture in America where we assume we do nothing until we hear a voice from Heaven," Chan said in a speech in September.
"And so if I go to church on Sunday, the pastor's going to preach a sermon [and] we pretty much assume we're not going to do anything radical in response to it unless he gives a really great sermon and gives us steps right afterwards, or this or that or really, really, think that we hear a voice from the Lord."
