Defining Your Disciple-Making Mission
As disciple-makers passionate about seeing the Great Commission furthered, we often start with an admirable big-picture vision like "reaching India" or "impacting the Arab world." These massive ambitions stir our hearts, fuel prayer, and mobilize action. However, until we define a more focused entry point, the overwhelming scale can leave us unsure of where to begin.
Effective movements take shape not through haphazard evangelism but through strategic focus. Establishing priorities and goals allows us to go deep rather than spreading efforts wide but thin. Just as you can't dig a wide well very far down, Gospel impact requires us to dig concentrated, penetrating wells among specific people segments first.
This segmenting process starts by considering the population through different lenses, each providing a unique vantage point:
Global Levels: At the highest level, the world's people are classified into 16 affinity blocs, like Arabs or South Asians, based on shared identity factors. Beneath these are 269 people clusters, typically delineated by a broadly shared culture. A people cluster would be Kurds, which comprises multiple languages and people groups.
People Groups: People groups are defined as "the largest group within which the Gospel can flow without encountering barriers of understanding/acceptance,” and there are over 10,000 distinct people groups globally. This grouping accounts for complexities like dialectical differences or class/caste separations that inhibit Gospel movements.
Sociological Levels: Within some people groups, an even more granular "Unimax" level identifies the optimum sociological segments for Gospel evangelism, catalyzing indigenous multiplying discipleship, and church planting movements.
Geographical Levels: People groups can be strategically divided based on their geographic vantage point—country, region, city/urban area, or neighborhood. Location contexts shape engagement and strategy.
Pinpointing Your Unique Objective
With this nuanced segmentation in mind, we must prayerfully determine the specific population focus for our disciple-making efforts to prioritize laser-like focus. For some, geography takes precedence, such as "reaching Arabs in the diaspora" or zeroing in on a particular local neighborhood. For others, the people's group identity rises to the forefront, like Pashtuns or Somalis, regardless of location.
The key is intentionally selecting and defining both a target PEOPLE and PLACE. Then, objective benchmarks must be established to determine the extent of the mission: Is the goal to see the first few thousand believers emerge who can disciple others? Or continue until multiple self-sustaining movements reach the entire population with the Gospel?
A standard benchmark states that a people group is "reached" once the Gospel has taken root, with approximately 2% following Christ and able to spread the multiplying movement within their communities. However, for those pioneering new works among unreached populations, the extent will likely be something like "until there is local ownership of disciple-making and church multiplication vision and practices among this segment" before moving on.
This focused approach is biblical. Jesus sent the 72 to specific towns and people groups in Galilee. Paul's strategy concentrated on filling up cities and regions by equipping disciple-makers before moving on. Ephesus's revival allowed "all in Asia" to hear the word of the Lord through the mobilization of disciple-makers from that beachhead church.
Without defining intentional constraints like these early pioneers did, our efforts drift and defuse. The driving force behind movements is missional concentration. So, let's reject the vague in favor of the strategically targeted. Whether it's reaching Arabs in your local diaspora neighborhood or Hazaras in Central Asia, may we be encouraged to set Spirit-inspired, specific objectives for our focused harvest field. The Lord of the Harvest seeks laborers who will focus, dig deep, and initiate generational, multiplying movements to His glory!