We use the word “unreached” quite a bit in this magazine. It is a simple expedient—a little box packed with a universe of significance. We use this word so frequently that it would be easy for it to fade to cliché, so let’s open the box and remind ourselves what it means. How does it feel to be unreached?

In the West, it’s not easy to imagine being unreached. Though we certainly have deep brokenness and dysfunction here (the sin problem is global), under everything we have a bedrock awareness of the possibility of a loving, redeeming Creator. Even if we try to wall Him out, His love and His invitation to eternal wholeness seeps into our awareness through our cultural context, media and relationships.

To really put yourself in the shoes of an unreached individual, you must imagine a life experience stripped of any suggestion that there is any such thing as a loving Savior. All you have to guide you is the hungry God-shaped hole you were born with, which rages against the survivalism, the fearful superstitions, the grinding gospel of self-salvation that your world offers you. When you are wounded by sin and dysfunction, there is no recourse—no healing. Just perpetual, lifelong brokenness.

AFM missionaries choose a very painful task. They come alongside profoundly broken and hope-starved people and open their hearts to their pain and searching questions. They introduce hope at the point of need because, until the Gospel begins to heal a person’s deepest hurts, it remains nothing more than a pretty fairytale.

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