Winter on Moving Targets in Frontier Mission

In the booklet The Challenge of Unreached Peoples, Ralph D. Winter outlines some of the potential dangers and opportunities faced when we consider how to reach the Unreached Peoples of the world.

In post, part of a series, we look at the first challenge and opportunity, what Winter calls "Moving Targets."

Moving Targets

A danger is that we may fail to notice massive changes in a (mission) situation.

For example, the Han Chinese peoples, long a major mission field, whether Mandarin, Cantonese, Swatow or Minnan, are no longer unreached peoples. Han Chinese are thus disappearing from the list!

There are probably more sincere, praying believers in China than in Korea or in the United States. They need help in the form of inter-church aid, not pioneer mission technique. At the same time, right within China as a country are many unreached peoples outside of the Han Chinese sphere. And take note that precisely because Han Chinese believers have long been oppressed by the Chinese government--and so long as that is true--the equally oppressed peoples in China will continue to be open to the Gospel from Chinese believers.

Now is the time to reach those tribal groups, while Christianity is identifiably in conflict with the Chinese government! This is like in Europe where the Germanic tribes would not accept the Christianity of the Romans until the Roman empire itself no longer had military power that threatened them.

Furthermore, regions can't be autonomous because peoples are actually moving. In a few weeks ('96) the U.S. government is relocating an additional 5,000 Hmong tribal people from a refugee camp in Thailand to Fresno, California. Every day there are movements of peoples, and the strategic approach is to try and find out the best place in the world to reach those peoples.

But notice what a mistake it would be for the churches in Fresno to try and evangelize these new arrivals as if they were an unreached people. That would be a waste of time since there are already thousands of Hmong believers both in Fresno and in other parts of the United States who can do that job far better. The Hmong are not an Unreached People. The new arrivals in Fresno can be reached by ordinary evangelism. Missions is not necessary.