“Sure, Evangelicals and Catholics have some words in common, but they mean entirely different things. Grace, faith, saints, church, Jesus, Mary are all words that we might both say but they are entirely different in meaning. The Roman Catholic Church believes in salvation through merit, but Evangelical Christianity rejects that entirely.”
(Jordan Standridge – The Cripplegate) Thankfully, the American church is becoming more aware of unreached people groups.
Generally speaking, these are defined as populations with little to no access to the Gospel. There is, however, much disagreement over what constitutes an unreached country. The IMB, for example, considers any country with less than a 2% evangelical presence as unreached.
While the Joshua project (which has been so helpful in shedding the light on the unreached and I’m very thankful for that!), on the other hand, would agree with the 2% evangelical number, but in order to consider a country unreached it would also expect a less than 5% “christian” number. The “christian” 5% would include Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Orthodox and Roman Catholics, which would make predominantly Roman Catholic and Orthodox countries reached by their standards.
Research