Ta Ethne: The gospel of Christ for all peoples

Then Jesus came near and said to them, ‘All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to observe everything I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always to the end of the age’ (Matthew 28:18-20).

God has called us to make Christ known among all peoples or, as rendered in Greek, panta ta ethne. The church’s mission—given to us by God—is to make disciples of every group of people. When we help usher people into the Kingdom of God through the doorway of Jesus, we participate in God’s mission that spans the entire scope of human history.

Then the woman left her water jar, went into town, and told the men, “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did! Could this be the Messiah?” They left the town and made their way to Him. –John 4:28-30

A hot wind curled toward the well where the woman leaned over to glance at the sounds of water gathering into her jar. She was alone and aware of every sound—the distant muffled chatter from the village market, the scamper of insects, the beating of her own heart. As someone approached she heard the soft footfall come to stop nearby. She looked up to see a Jewish man who asked her, a Samaritan woman, for a drink.

And you probably know the rest of the story. She finds the living water in the One to whom she is talking, leaves her clay jar and becomes a vessel for the living water she had just received.

She becomes a witness for the Lord!

This is only the beginning of, we would assume, an amazing story in her life and in the town of Sychar. Jesus offered this woman eternal life not simply so she could return and give up her life of sin to sit quietly at home, but that others would come and receive the same life. This illustrates a people-focused approach to making disciples.

“The New Testament gives examples of one-on-one sharing, but in the majority of New Testament evangelism stories, groups, households, even towns came to Christ,” says Mark Snowden, a coordinator of Strategic Planning and People Groups for NAMB’s Church Planting Group. “That’s how the gospel becomes a movement.
“There are certain networks of relationship—a group of people in which the gospel can flow unhindered,” Snowden adds. “Jesus’ encounter with the woman at the well exemplifies this pattern. After the Samaritan woman’s conversion, she took the gospel to her hometown community where many others eventually heard the gospel. This is how we will see North America come to Christ.”

To lay this out as a way for churches to reach their communities, the North American Mission Board has developed the North American Peoples Spectrum along with other practical resources. The Spectrum is a visual tool illustrating the ways in which people group themselves according to kinship, geography, and interests. To apply this understanding toward evangelism in a community, additional tools such as surveys, people team training, and online databases will assist churches in locating the different peoples in their communities to help members network for evangelism.

“Sharing a full gospel message requires understanding who the people are, and how they might process and understand what you’re saying,” says Snowden. “With a love and concern for the lost we can strip our cultural baggage that may confuse the gospel message and enter their world just as Jesus entered our world to give us life.”

A whole new world
North America, once thought to be a melting pot, has evolved into North America the salad bowl. Now people immigrate here and are mixed together, while maintaining much of their unique cultural identities. As a result, communities are transformed and reflect new compositions of unique cultures.
 
Living near someone from Mexico, India or Bosnia isn’t a novel these days. The foreign-born population has increased steadily since 1970 due to mass immigration.
Today, one in eight Americans are foreign born. That translates to 12.3 percent of the population or 37 million people. By 2050 that number could rise to one in five. And many more Americans were born here and still maintain their ethnic heritage. Hispanics make up the largest foreign-born population followed by Asians. With this influx of people come opportunities to evangelize people groups from all over the world right on our own block.

Take a look at Dearborn, Michigan, for instance, where someone can witness to Muslims over cups of tea. One million people of Middle Eastern heritage call Michigan home. In Dearborn, the Muslim calls to prayer from a loudspeaker are a common sound.

In Boston, missionary Paul Biswas works tirelessly to reach the Bengali population (more than 7,000), most of whom come from Muslim or Hindu cultures. Because of work schedules, most of this group agree to meet at night getting home from gatherings in the early morning to prepare for work the following day.

In Toronto the Canadian National Baptist Convention is planting churches among the Chinese population. They’re also working to reach peoples from other ethnic heritages including Middle Eastern, other Asian, Hispanic and even Anglo populations.
 
Chances are in your community you have a population of non-English, bilingual, even English-only speakers who practice other religions, eat very different food and have very different customs from that to which you’re accustomed.

Geographic and association groups
In the Great Commission we hear Christ tell us to make disciples of panta ta ethne. This Greek phrase refers not to countries but to people. If you’ve not heard then hear it now, the world and its peoples have come to us! But with a people-focused approach for sharing Christ, evangelism involves knowing about the worldview and culture of a person or group. This means we must make Christ known to the whole spectrum of peoples found in North America, the kinship groups, the geographic groups and association groups.

While the diversity of our continent does not absolve us of our call to the geographic ends of the earth, it does provide the church an opportunity to reach the world’s people in our own backyard. But this is not limited to speakers of other languages.

People also tend to group themselves by social networking communities and interests, even along economic lines and temporary residences. It’s the phenomena that causes cowboys to corral with other cowboys and college students to hang with students regardless of ethnic identity. Thus we have a growing number of cowboy churches and campus church plants to draw certain types of people to a presentation of the gospel and to fellowship.
 
We have men like Mission Service Corps missionary Jeff Smith trading out business suit and brief case for wranglers, hat and horse. And countless Baptist Campus Ministry directors helping reach our future leaders as they temporarily gather in the halls of academia.

In your community right now, there are people who look a lot like you, who speak English, send their kids to school alongside yours, and even share your same ethnicity. But because of experience, family dynamics, and other life-hewn factors they’ve not understood the gospel in a way that’s relevant to them and their “tribe.”
 
“It makes a big difference to know just a little bit about them,” says Snowden. “There are hundreds if not thousands of kinship, geographic and association groups. And we have the opportunity as followers of Christ to communicate the gospel effectively. That may mean communicating something to someone in story form. Others may need to have something in writing that they can sit down and analyze.”

Van Sanders, who works in the Strategic Initiatives Office, says our awareness of peoples naturally flows out of our relationship with Christ. “When people worship God they get a view for all peoples, because they enter into the mind and heart of God whose redemptive plan involves making disciples among all kinds of people.”
Armed with a heart for reaching people with the gospel, how do we  begin?

Who are the people in your neighborhood?
Sanders explains how the Peoples Spectrum can assist churches to follow the New Testament pattern of identifying groups of people who needed the gospel: “In the New Testament, Jesus talked of witnessing and discipling peoples living in villages, towns, cities and regions. Place names like Jerusalem, Galilee, Judea, Samaria and the ends of the world added geographical understanding to the entire scope of His Great Commission. He ministered among association groups like fishermen and tax collectors and distinguished between Hebrews, Samaritans and Gentiles. The book of Acts records many interactions among these kinds of groupings also. Arabians, Medes, Lycaonians, philosophers, artisans, the people of Athens, the Ethiopian eunuch, the Macedonian vision, rich and poor, and slaves, all exemplify the Spectrum’s groupings.”

We need to see the different peoples of our communities with as much clarity as possible if we are going to obey the Great Commission command to make disciples of all people groups. The process for using the Peoples Spectrum is designed to be flexible and adaptable to any context. Initially the goal is to develop a portrait of the community with already existing data. The following points summarize how one initially gathers information to identify the groups of the Spectrum in a community.

1.    Ethnic Group information is gathered at peoplegroups.info
2.    Economic Group information is gathered at www.factfinder.census.gov
3.    People Group information is gathered by interviewing Christian and non-Christian leaders in the community. Web research is also used to supplement the interviews.
4.    Geographic Group information is gathered by interviewing Christian and non-Christian leaders in the community. Web research supplements interviews.
5.    Affinity Group information is gathered by interviewing Christian and non-Christian leaders in the community. Web research also is used to supplement the interviews.
More accurate descriptions of all nine categories in the Spectrum are developed after the initial identification of the groupings. A more detailed portrait of the community emerges as churches and missionaries begin to sow the gospel among these groups.

Our part in the picture
On mission Christians are poised to share Christ with the peoples of the world who are now our neighbors. Knowing about the peoples on your block is the first step in introducing them to Christ. Actually knowing them is a small step across the street, but a giant leap for the Church! Relationship is key.

“Not everyone is reached in the same way,” says Ken Ellis, team leader for People Groups and Interfaith Evangelism. “For some a cup of tea is an open door. For others it’ll mean meeting physical needs. Others may require intellectual barriers to be broken down through apologetics.”

Regardless of the approach, says Ellis, a heartfelt Christ-centered, gospel-driven love for your neighbor is the beginning of whatever method you use to build a relationship.

“Live the gospel even as you share the gospel,” he says. “We need to be the bread of life even as we share the Bread of Life with others.” Your church’s community will tell you how to reach it with the gospel.

“We need to be careful to listen to the lost,” says Sanders. “We should keep our eyes open and our ears attentive to the people around us, their needs and their level of understanding about the gospel.

“Jesus didn’t approach everyone the same way, but He gave them all the same thing—Himself. Likewise, we approach people where they are—at the level of their interest, need, language, family ties—but we offer them the same Christ and we also offer them ourselves! We serve them, teach them and relate Christ to them!”

What people group are you?
When you think about people groups in your community, you might begin by thinking about yourself. Here’s a little self-exploration exercise: What country or countries do your ancestors come from? What ethnic group do you identify with? What’s your language? And more personal questions such as what do you do in your spare time? How would you describe the culture in which you were raised? What groups do you gravitate toward at work, church and social settings? What in your past experience has been defining for you? If you feel strongly about something—patriotism, the arts, peace—ask yourself “why?”

To understand the “why” in your own way of life, your own way of thinking, and your own way of looking at the world will help you begin to understand those same things in the minds of others—even, and especially, those different from you.

The next step is to ask those same questions of those in your community and add to this the question: “What needs do they have?” And if you answer this question by action in meeting those needs, you’re well on your way to being Christ’s presence in the people groups of your community.

Two chapters, one story
Several thousand years ago a group of people made brick and mortar to build their way to the heavens, and in response God confused and threshed them with language. Several thousand years later Peter and the other disciples broke through language and culture barriers with Holy Spirit-filled gospel witness in the tongues of many languages. What God had scattered He then brought together through the redemptive vessel of the church.  We talk about people groups for the same reason Paul became all things to all people, for the reason he declared no separations like Barbarian, Scythian, slave or free. In Christ we live and move and have our being and extend this life no matter our grouping or theirs!

“The Church itself carries the distinctive message of Christ and Him crucified,” says Sanders. “But Christians must always guard against allowing their cultural baggage from hindering the clear communication of the gospel. The gospel of Jesus Christ judges every culture. Christians must do their best to maintain the impartiality of the gospel for all peoples in all cultures.” OM

Adam Miller is associate editor of On Mission.

Action Item

Visit www.omxtv.com to watch the People Groups episode of On Mission Xtra.