Make a list of your top ten favorite foods in the world. What ranks at the top of your list? Is it a bowl of curry served next to a steaming bowl of rice? Perhaps it is a baguette filled with your favorite vegetables, sauce, and some veggie meat. According to TasteAtlas1, the world’s most popular food is pizza, followed by sushi, burgers, tacos and ramen. Perhaps your favorite falls within this list.

Now list the top ten countries you would like to visit. Perhaps you would want to see one of the ancient wonders of the world, family or simply relax awhile. Condé Nast Traveller, a luxury travel magazine in Britain, asked its readers to rank their favorites.2 The top country on the list was Portugal, followed by Japan, Thailand and Singapore. Each of these countries offers unique tourist attractions, travel destinations and people to meet. Some of these countries would be predominately Christian. But if you are traveling to the 10/40 window, most of them will not be.

Have you ever wondered which of the world’s top ten people groups are still considered unreached by the good news of Jesus? By population, these ten groups represent over 600,000,000 people spread across seven countries.3 They are Muslim, Buddhist, Shinto, and Hindu and comprise over 7.5 percent of the world’s population. Exactly who are these peoples? By population, these people groups are:

Shaikh of Bangladesh (132,871,000)
Japanese of Japan (118,468,000)
Shaikh of India (71,641,000)
Turks of Turkey (59,962,000)
Chamar of India (54,347,000)
Yadav of India (40,856,000)
Persian of Iran (39,721,000)
Sunda of Indonesia (38,375,000)
Java Pesisir Lor of Indonesia (37,456,000)
Hausa of Nigeria (36,918,000)

If we expand these statistics to the top 100 unreached people groups out of the 7,417 total unreached groups, the population grows to 23 percent of the world’s population. These top 100 unreached people groups contain over 1.8 billion people in 44 different countries. They speak 59 different languages. They still need to hear of the love of Jesus, and they need someone to go and share the good news with them.

Your favorite foods may vary over time, and your list of favorite destination countries will likely fluctuate. But what about the top unreached people groups? They will remain on the list—and grow larger and ever larger—unless we go to share the gospel with them. Billions of people still need to experience the life-changing joy and hope that Jesus offers them. They have very little chance of hearing this message until someone goes to them, lives among them, and demonstrates what Christianity can look like in their context.

Will you go and share the gospel with one of the top unreached people groups? Please reach out to us at service@afmonline.org so we can help you begin the journey of taking one of these groups off the list of top unreached peoples.

1 https://www.tasteatlas.com/most-popular-food-in-the-world
2 https://www.cntraveller.com/gallery/best-countries-in-the-world
3 https://joshuaproject.net/unreached/1?limit=1000&s=Population&o=desc

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