Winter on Parochialism 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 this part of an ongoing series, we look at the first challenge and opportunity, what Winter calls "Parochialism."

Parochialism: a limited or narrow outlook, esp. focused on a local area or in this case, one's own people group.

Parochialism

There are scattered Korean populations out through Central Asia, where the Communists many years ago exiled them from their habitat in Manchuria. These Koreans are now bi-cultural and bi-lingual. Such exiled communities of Koreans may not be Christians. They need the Gospel like everyone else does.

But now note: for Koreans to be sent out from Seoul to evangelize these populations is a good thing, but that activity is not in itself reaching "unreached peoples." However, as those people find Christ, they in turn if they will, can reach out to Kazaks, Tajiks, Uzbeks, etc. that will then be missionary achievement of reaching Unreached Peoples.

So let's evangelize these scattered communities of diaspora Koreans so that they in turn can function as highly effective bi cultural missionaries like Paul and Barnabas. Let's be sure we don't simply win them to Christ as through that is all that is required! Koreans winning Koreans is not missions.