10/40 Window
The 10/40 Window is the rectangular area of North Africa, the Middle East and Asia approximately between 10 degrees north and 40 degrees north latitude. The 10/40 Window is often called “The Resistant Belt” and includes the majority of the world’s Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists. The original 10/40 Window included only countries with at least 50% of their land mass within 10 and 40 degrees north latitude. The revised 10/40 Window includes several additional countries, such as Indonesia, that are close to 10 or 40 degrees north latitude and have high concentrations of unreached peoples. An estimated 4.75 billion individuals residing in approximately 8,366 distinct people groups are in the revised 10/40 Window. The 10/40 Window is home to some of the largest unreached people groups in the world such as the Shaikh, Yadava,Turks, Moroccan Arabs, Pashtun, Jat and Burmese.
Church
“Usually written as “church” with lower case “c.” A gathering of followers of Christ. Does not imply a building or specific location. A fellowship of believers committed to spiritual growth and mutual encouragement. Starting these fellowships is often called church planting.” (Operation World, www.operationworld.org, 2010)
Additional definitions of church from various sources:
“God’s message fleshed out in their culture, producing vibrant churches that plant other churches, with locals leading from the beginning – that’s the goal. A group of local people who follow God and love each other will deeply impact their community in the long term.” WEC (Church Planting, www.wec-int.org.uk, 2012)
“An autonomous local congregation of baptized believers, associated by covenant in the faith and fellowship of the gospel; observing the two ordinances of Christ, governed by His laws, exercising the gifts, rights, and privileges invested in them by His Word, and seeking to extend the gospel to the ends of the earth.” IMB (“Definition of a Church” www.IMB.org 2005)
“An assembly of disciples who know and reflect their identity in Christ expressed through corporate worship and mission.” (AIM International www.aimint.org 2008)
Church Planting Movement
A rapid and multiplicative increase of indigenous churches planting churches within a given people group or population segment. Characteristics of a CPM:
Rapid
As a movement, a Church Planting Movement occurs with rapid increases in new church starts. Saturation church planting over decades and even centuries is good, but doesn’t qualify as a Church Planting Movement.
Multiplicative
This means that the increase in churches is not simply incremental growth—adding a few churches every year or so. Instead, it compounds with two churches becoming four, four churches becoming eight to 10 and so forth. Multiplicative increase is only possible when new churches are being started by the churches themselves–rather than by professional church planters or missionaries.
Indigenous
This means they are generated from within rather than from without. This is not to say that the gospel is able to spring up intuitively within a people group. The gospel always enters a people group from the outside; this is the task of the missionary. However, in a Church Planting Movement the momentum quickly becomes indigenous so that the initiative and drive of the movement comes from within the people group rather than from outsiders.
Evangelical
Followers of Christ who generally emphasize:
- The Lord Jesus Christ as the sole source of salvation through faith in Him.
- Personal faith and conversion with regeneration by the Holy Spirit.
- A recognition of the inspired Word of God as the only basis for faith and living.
- Commitment to Biblical preaching and evangelism that brings others to faith in Christ.
The noun “Evangelical” is capitalized since it represents a body of Christians with a fairly clearly defined theology (as also Orthodox and Catholic bodies, etc.). Evangelicals are here defined as:
- All affiliated Christians (church members, their children, etc.) of denominations that are evangelical in theology as defined above.
- The proportion of the affiliated Christians in other denominations (that are not wholly evangelical in theology) who would hold evangelical views.
- The proportion of affiliated Christians in denominations in non-Western nations (where doctrinal positions are less well defined) that would be regarded as Evangelicals by those in the above categories.
- This is a theological and not an experiential definition. It does not mean that all Evangelicals as defined above are actually born-again. In many nations only 10-40% of Evangelicals so defined may have had a valid conversion and also regularly attend church services. However, it does show how many people align themselves with churches where the gospel is being proclaimed.
Source: Operation World by Patrick Johnstone
Field: The location where ministry, church planting, and evangelism takes place.
Frontier: Pertaining to unreached areas or peoples.
Great Commission: Matthew 28:18-20. Jesus’ final instructions to his followers to go everywhere to make disciples among every people.
Mission: The loving work of God to bring humankind to himself as the Church. Secondarily, the overall ministry of the Church for world evangelization.
Missiology: The study of missions and mission strategies; the theology of missions; how and why we do missions.
Mission agency: A Christian organization helping to further God’s work in the world. “Mission board” and “sending agency” are virtually the same thing.
Missionary: One who is sent with a message. The Christian missionary is one commissioned by a local church to evangelize, plant churches and disciple people away from his home area, often among people of a different race, culture or language.
National: Any person who is from the country to which you are going.
People Group
A significantly large grouping of individuals who perceive themselves to have a common affinity with one another. “For evangelization purposes, a people group is the largest group within which the Gospel can spread as a church planting movement without encountering barriers of understanding or acceptance.”
In many parts of the world lack of understandability serves as the main barrier and it is appropriate to define people groups primarily by language with the possibility of sub-divisions based on dialect or cultural variations.
In other parts of the world, most notably in portions of South Asia, acceptance is a greater barrier than understandability. In these regions, caste, religious tradition, location, common histories and legends, plus language may be used to define the boundaries of each people group.
People Group
A people group which has no active church planting underway. According to the IMB Global Research Office: “A people group is engaged when a church planting strategy, consistent with evangelical faith and practice, is under implementation. In this respect, a people group is not engaged when it has been merely adopted, is the object of focused prayer, or is part of an advocacy strategy.” At least four essential elements constitute effective engagement:
- apostolic effort in residence;
- commitment to work in the local language and culture;
- commitment to long-term ministry;
- sowing in a manner consistent with the goal of seeing a Church Planting Movement (CPM) emerge
Joshua Project marks people groups as unengaged in the following cases:
- where it has been reported to Joshua Project that the group is unengaged
- where Joshua Project and an IMB people group match and the IMB considers the group unengaged
- where engagement status is unknown (Note: many groups fall into this category)
Tentmaker: A cross-cultural witness who works at a paying, usually secular, job overseas. Often they are able to gain entry into “closed” countries which restrict traditional mission efforts.
Unreached People
An unreached or least-reached people is a people group among which there is no indigenous community of believing Christians with adequate numbers and resources to evangelize this people group.
The original Joshua Project editorial committee selected the criteria less than 2% Evangelical Christian and less than 5% Christian Adherents. While these percentage figures are somewhat arbitrary, “we should not underestimate the significance of the small group of people who have a vision of a just and gentle world. The quality of a whole culture may be changed when two percent of its people have a new vision.” – Robert Bellah, Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University, originally quote in Psychology Today in the 1970s, currently quoted in Christianity Today Oct 2011: 42.