Unknown Nations Podcast

This is the Unknown Nations podcast where we'll be sharing about reaching the nation where Jesus is unknown. 

Well, welcome to the Unknown Nations Podcast, highlighting what God is doing in the most spiritually dark places in the world. And today, we are going to talk about access ministries. Now, it's going to be something very specific. You wouldn't necessarily think about a holiday, but it is an amazing opportunity to share the gospel during Christmas.

And that's what our story today is going to dive into. Well, my name is Greg Kelley. I have the privilege of being the CEO at Unknown Nations, where we have the honor to serve God by helping reach these most difficult places. I'm talking about zero access, barrier-ridden, spiritually antagonistic, spoken word-reliant people groups.

And we also bring the church, literally see the church come to life in these places. That is our goal at Unknown Nations and indigenous church planting movement. Friend, you and I can't do the work of the Holy Spirit. He can use us, and we can go into these places and plant the seeds, but he needs a vessel that will operate in obedience and recognize he is the one.

Paul said, "I planted, Apollos watered, God brought the increase."

And that's everything that we think about at Unknown Nations as how we're motivated. Just recently, I got back from a couple of very difficult places. I was in Northern Nigeria, and what they say about Northern Nigeria is that there's more people in that part of Africa killed for just simply being a follower of Jesus than the rest of the world combined. I mean, just think about that. That is just a staggering statistic. Yeah. The Northern Nigeria Christians are being hunted, and I want to put this on your radar, particularly with our topic today, as we're talking about Christmas outreaches and how God can use a Christmas outreach to bring the good news of Jesus Christ. Because, at the same time of that being representative of the most important story ever told, it's also a time where our enemy can really sort of intensify his efforts because he's trying to squelch what God is doing. Last Christmas, when I woke up, my phone had blown up with WhatsApp messages, all from Northern Nigeria, where there had been attacks.

Over 200 people were massacred on Christmas morning of 2023, as these groups of bandits and, really, Muslim terrorists went in and attacked all these Christian villages that they knew of. And so, it's a real kind of two sides to the coin. On one side, it's a real opportunity for celebration and Gospel presentation.

And on the other hand, uh, the enemy is very much at work. Not only was I in Northern Nigeria, but I was also in the country of Bangladesh. And Bangladesh—the reason we're there is because it is the largest unreached people group in the world, called the Bengali people. But also, it's one of the sadder stories of refugee activity.

We're mindful at Unknown Nations that every two seconds, someone is newly displaced in the world because of war, violence, or persecution. Imagine that. I mean, their lives are just completely uprooted. But what better time to share the gospel? Because most of these people that are being uprooted are coming from places like Syria, Somalia, and Afghanistan, in Myanmar, with the case of the Rohingya, places that are unreached, they're getting into these camps and becoming accessible. So that's a big emphasis for us, especially when you think about the Christmas time. What I want to do is focus on this idea of zero access. We mentioned that, spiritually antagonistic—you know, we mentioned that as a focus for us.

I want to give you some numbers because I think it's important for us that we're not just motivated by emotion. There are so many different wonderful causes that are going on around the world. And let me remind you that although we focus on the ends of the earth and unreached people groups, Jesus specifically used the word "and" when He gave us the assignment—how do we carry out the Great Commission, making disciples of all nations?

He said your Jerusalem needs to be a priority—that homeless person that you maybe drive by on a regular basis. Hear it from me: he needs, she needs, that family needs to be a priority just as much as the ends of the earth need to be a priority. Of course, that's our calling here at Unknown Nations. But let me just bring some statistics to you to let you know: how are we doing?

Again, a big issue that's a barrier, I would say, is that we look at missions through the lens of country. There are 195 countries, but as you've heard us say before, Jesus didn't call us to countries. As much as we mix country and nation together, He gave us the word Ethne or ethnos, which means people groups.

So, inside of those 195 countries are 17,260 different unique ethnicities. That is who Jesus told us needs to be the priority: go make disciples of all ethnicities or people groups. And so, when you look at those 17,000, 7,187 of them, according to the Joshua Project, are still considered unreached. These are people who don't have access.

These are the ones who have zero access and are spiritually antagonistic. Those are the places—that's the priority for us at Unknown Nations. If you think of it just from a pure population standpoint, about 8 billion people live in the world today. 3.4 billion are considered unreached, representing these over 7,000 people groups.

People groups like the Yadav, the Turks, the Pashtun, the Rohingya that I mentioned, and the Burmese. These are the nations, the Munyayaya, that Jesus died for, and they need to become our priority. Well, to make it more enlightening, 90 percent of those people without access live in a place called the 10/40 window.

That is the Eastern Hemisphere. That's just where they're at. They're not in our hemisphere. If you're in the West, if you're in North America, South America, Latin America, the Caribbean, or even much of Europe, you are not inside of that 10/40 window. So the 10/40 window is in the Eastern Hemisphere.

It's 10 degrees north of the equator to 40 degrees north of the equator, with that box creating 9,000 miles from Senegal all the way east to the Philippines and Indonesia and that area. That's the corridor where 90% of these people who don't have access to the gospel live. And according to the Center for the Study of Global Christianity—now this is really going to shock you—we spend about $270 billion dollars on Christian work, okay?

So that's a study that's done by the Center for the Study of Global Christianity. That's a lot of money. And the truth of the matter is, it's not about more money for us to finish the job. It's not about more money. The issue becomes the allocation of that $270 billion given to Christian work because only 5.6% of that is spent on missions.

0.1% is going to the 10/40 window, where all these guys are. That would be the equivalent of, for every ten thousand dollars given to Christian work, nine dollars going to the places that are unreached. So that's the reality of it. I'm not trying to, you know, emotionally get you to think one way or the other. This is just the reality. And if Jesus called us to have an expression in the ends of the earth, we need to ask ourselves, "What does my allocation look like as I'm caring for my local church, as I'm caring for my local community, and to the ends of the earth?"

What does that expression look like? And so that takes us into our story for the day, which is this idea of access. We have to get into these places. I mean, it's these places—historically, the Turks, the Pashtun, the Munyayaya, the Yadav—some of these places that I mentioned, these people groups, if they historically have been 0% Christian, that means there is a massive barrier to engage them.

That is why we deploy, you know, strategic water projects or medical missions—being the hands and feet of Jesus. You see God move through signs and wonders, through miracles. Those are all access ministries that create an opening or an avenue for us to distribute our solar-powered Bible and for our indigenous workers to go in there.

But Christmas is an amazing opportunity; it creates access into these places. And so, as Christmas is coming up right now, I think of a place even in northern Nigeria. I mean, there's a number of stories we could tell you, but in northern Nigeria, as some of our guys have really targeted these areas, they went to an area of the Fulani.

Now, the Fulani are considered one of the fiercest, most resistant Muslim people groups, not just in Africa, but in the entire world. In fact, they're known to be the original missionaries of Islam in Africa, and they brought it largely through jihad and aggression. And they started kind of in the north, and they moved to the west, and now they occupy almost 15 countries. The Fulani live in those areas, and they're continuing to cause havoc, targeting Christians, killing Christians. But the Fulani are a people group that Jesus died for.

And so one of our guys was going in there, and this Fulani guy approached him. He said, "You know, it's dangerous for you to come in here." And our friend approached him and he said, "I'm celebrating the birth of one of my friends, and I've come to tell you that story," and just put the guards down.

I mean, everybody wants to have a good party, right? And so when you're going in with the Christmas celebration, you're singing songs, you're dancing, you're having fun, fellowshipping, you're having community. And I think one of the things that's important when you're looking at the target audience in these places that are unreached, one of the things they do exponentially better than us, I'll just say in the U.S. in general, and this is a very, very generalized statement, but they do community so much better than we do. For us, we, you know, we're kind of twisting arms and we're saying, "Hey, it's important for you to go to, you know, go to small group, you know, have fellowship at church," and we're more reluctant.

We're like, "Hey, I want to come home. I want to, I want to shut my garage door, just stay in my living room, and do things by myself." We are more isolated in nature. Our default is that, where their default is, "Let's bring people together. Let's have community." And so you want to capitalize on that when you're sharing the gospel, and everybody loves getting together.

So they're coming together, telling stories, singing songs, breaking bread, and sharing food. And that is where the gospel gets shared. And this brother, who warned our guy against coming in and approaching them, he himself became a follower of Jesus. Why is that? He just put the barriers down.

And when the barriers went down, the Holy Spirit, that message was seeded into his heart as he was telling the birth of his precious friend, of course, his friend being Jesus. I want to, I want to just read this to you that gives you an insight. Now, this is a closed access country. The next one that I'm going to be talking about, this is a place that is incredibly hostile to the gospel. It's in a border area between two countries that are very closed to the gospel. We're talking about people groups that are less than 2 percent Christian. It's mainly Buddhist areas, mainly animist areas, but they said that Christmas outreaches are the best time for sowing and watering the seeds of the good news in our country.

It's the best time, they say, of any time of the year. Christmas is absolutely the best time. Why is that? Because Christmas is actually an official government holiday. Even the government sees it—it’s not threatening. When you think about the Christmas holiday, the birth of Jesus, it doesn't have the threatening aspect of it.

Because it's getting together, it's their fellowshipping. They look at it as a party, and so they say, well, yeah, the people can get together and they can celebrate and do that freely. That's no problem. Even this closed-access country acknowledges that the authorities understand that it's a holiday and a celebration sanctioned. They do not see these as religious events. So when our guys and our teams come together and they're doing, they're deploying things like music.

They're deploying things like lots of food. They're singing lots of songs. It's a very festive environment, and people just invite crowds to come together. And it's in that moment where the gospel message gets seeded. And then the follow-up is with our solar-powered audio Bible. And so you bring all these things together, and all of a sudden you see a beautiful thing in what they do.  

This is the continuation of that story: by sharing with the people about the birth of Jesus as a Christmas message, we continued—and this was an example that just happened last year. For three hours, the people are so hungry. God designed and made us for a relationship with him. Every heart, no matter how hard it is, when you create the environment for them to receive it, that heart will be receptive. Telling them about the life of Jesus, from creation to salvation and concluding with his resurrection.  

Many of those present are hearing the gospel for the first time. We are so grateful for you, grateful for you taking the time to join us today on the Unknown Nations podcast. Visit our website at unknownnations.com to learn more about how you can get involved. Subscribe and follow. Join us in this incredible journey of faith and participation. God wants to use you, friend, to see transformation in these places I'm talking about in the 10/40 window that don't have access to the gospel. Join us in making Jesus known at the ends of the earth.  

You can have an immeasurable impact in these places as we see the kingdom of God expanded in the darkest corners of the world. Looking forward to seeing you next time. God bless.