A Church for Every People by the Year 2000: An Explanation

An affirmation

We affirm that Jesus commands the Church to preach the Gospel to the whole world (the Gospel for every person), and to ensure that every people (Mt. 28:19) in the whole world is discipled (a church for every people).

We affirm the contributions of many ministries in unreached peoples research and mobilization, particularly:

• The U.S. Center for World Mission for promoting the vision of the unreached peoples as a primary concern for the Christian community worldwide,
• Wycliffe Bible Translators and the Summer Institute of Linguistics for producing the Ethnologue and the more recent Registry of Peoples and Languages (ROPAL) as the best available listing of ethnolinguistic peoples,
• The Foreign Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention for their ongoing research into the peoples of the world and their analysis of both access and response to the Gospel,
• Operation World with its accompanying research in identifying the less reached peoples, and
• The Adopt-A-People Clearinghouse and the Peoples Information Network (PIN) for surveying mission agencies world-wide as well as national leaders and research centers throughout the world to develop a "field perspective" on the identity and status of the peoples of the world.

We affirm that the goal of "a church for every people" can be fully met by crossing all boundaries of understandable language or acceptance to plant vibrant churches within every people group in the whole world.

We affirm that strategies for the spread of the Gospel require an understanding of both languages and dialects and of the many sociological, ideological and other factors involved in crossing barriers of acceptance, and of the cities, towns and villages of the world. We have a general global idea of the extent of these boundaries and habitats, with more specific knowledge in many situations.

We affirm that the best available global approximation of these boundaries is to reflect the barriers of language understanding represented by the ethnolinguistic peoples in each country of the world.

We therefore, representing various mission initiatives associated with the AD 2000 & Beyond Movement, on this day of November 28 1994 in Colorado Springs, do now resolve in a spirit of unity, to invite the Christian community worldwide to the following:

1. To challenge their constituencies towards prayerfully achieving the goal of a church for every ethnolinguistic people by December 31, 2000,
2. To use ethnolinguistic peoples within a country in the ROPAL listing of languages for assessing the global task and for mobilizing the worldwide church for prayer and mission involvement,
3. To publish by May 1995, a list of all the peoples that are deemed to be most needing a church planting movement in their midst or that have insufficient access to the Gospel, are less than 2% Christian, or are identified as adoptable peoples for prayer and mission.
4. We encourage researchers and field workers to refine this list of peoples, including an improved understanding of both the cities, towns and villages where people live, as well as local barriers of acceptance that may hinder the spread of the Gospel.

Conclusion

For the purposes of the global AD 2000 & Beyond Movement, the procedural goal of "a church for every people by the year 2000" means:

to make a priority of establishing, as a minimum, a pioneer church planting movement within every significant ethnolinguistic people within every country of the world by December 31, 2000.

Our aim, as this work is carried out in the field, is that there be a pioneer church planted across every barrier of understanding or acceptance, within practical reach of every person on earth.