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In Summary In the July 1985 issue of the IJFM Timothy Monsma interacted with Harley Schreck on the practical distinctions between "homogeneous units" and "people groups" in urban evangelization. Here Monsma continues the discussion and suggests that a new term may help to keep important distinctions distinct.

In 1974 Ralph Winter presented to the Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization a new perspective on the missionary task. Using some key words recorded in the Great Commission of Acts 1:8-Judea, Samaria, the ends of the earth-as categories for classification, Winter spoke of E-1, E-2 and E-3 evangelism. E-l evangelism addresses those of the same culture, E-2 those of a similar culture, while E-3 addresses those of a very different culture (Douglas 1975: 213-225). Winter went on to point out that there are many ethnic and sociological groups in the world for whom E-2 and E-3 evangelism is necessary because there is no one within their culture to carry out E-1 evangelism.

The question naturally arose: Who are these groups that need E-2 and E-3 evangelism? They came to be known as "unreached people groups," and concerned agencies began drawing up lists. Notable among these lists are the Unreached Peoples series published by MARC (a division of World Vision), and the recently published Peoplesfile Index from the Global Mapping Project.

A listing is very helpful for assessing progress in world evangelization and determining where new efforts ought to be launched. It is also a useful guide to mission agencies as they deploy new recruits or veteran missionaries whose work in a given area has been completed.

But there is a problem. For some time it has been recognized that many individuals can be assigned to more than one people group. If by "people groups" one means only ethnic groups, this is not a critical problem. Ethnicity, even for those who have mixed ancestry, is rather easy to determine. David Barrett and others have chosen to take this route. The policy of equating people groups with ethnic groups is to be recommended from the point of view of its simplicity. It is true to the word of our Lord, who said, "And this gospel of the Kingdom will be preached throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations (ethnic groups), and then the end will come" (Matt. 24:14).

But simplicity can also paper over many vital distinctions. If ethnic groups were the only groups to consider, all Japan and all Korea would constitute one group each. Instinctively we sense that there must be additional categories into which the millions of people living in these two great countries can be meaningfully divided. Some day persons "from every tribe and tongue and people and nation" (Rev. 5:9) will be gathered before God's throne. This passage suggests that groups other than ethnic groups need to hear and respond to the gospel before this present age is terminated. Ralph Winter's estimate that there may yet be 16,750 unreached groups in our world (Conn 1984:51) is credible if certain sociological groups are included in the count.

It makes sense to include in our lists of peoples those sociological groupings that call for significant adjustments in the way the gospel is presented, and for whom separate congregations are desirable because of cultural distinctions. If, for example, in the city of Tokyo, it were found that the worldview and lifestyle of shopkeepers varied greatly from the worldview and lifestyle of corporate executives, we might wish to assign these individuals to two different sociological groupings and count them as two in our master tally. Religious differences might also be important. People of Arab descent living in Saudia Arabia and Syria might be assigned to different groups if the sects of Islam to which they adhere suggest totally different strategies for evangelism and church-planting.

If this is the case, how far ought we to go in dividing humanity into categories and subcategories? Winter has suggested that the number of categories we use will have a natural limit if we attempt to assign each person on earth to only one group. That group will be the group in terms of which he or she can best be reached by the gospel: "For every person in the world there is only one people-oriented approach that, to the best of our knowledge, is the best way to reach that particular person. That way no one will be counted twice" (Conn 1984:51).

THE NEED FOR AN EVANGELISTIC STRATEGY

While that is a good scheme for assessing the progress of the gospel and determining the deployment of missionaries, Harley Schreck of World Vision has rightly pointed out that it does not cover all the bases from the point of view of evangelistic strategy. This is especially true in cities, where people become involved in interlocking relationships at different strata.

When general assessments have been made and workers have been deployed, how does the missionary approach people with a message that speaks to them where they are? Is there a mechanism for understanding the web of relationships in which the average urbanite in every part of the world is involved?

Anthropologists speak of subcultures as subdivisions of the larger culture or society of which people are part. On occasion missionaries have also spoken of subcultures, but this term is not entirely helpful because a person is normally assigned to one subculture. Urban missionaries have observed that many people are members of several subcultures at once. But if the "subcultures" overlap, are they really subcultures?

There can be no doubt that the groups we have in mind overlap one another. They generally fall into five categories: relatives, work mates (including school mates), neighbors, play mates, and co-religionists. An urbanite does not necessarily work with relatives. His relatives and work mates might not live in his neighborhood. He or she might go to the movies or a soccer match with still another group of friends. And for those who take their religion seriously, religious expression sometimes brings them into close contact with people whom they would otherwise not know. While the groups overlap, the categories remain discrete.

IS "PEOPLE GROUP" AN APPROPRIATE TERM?

These are realities that urban evangelists and pastors must take into account as they work with converts and potential converts. It has been suggested (Shreck and Barrett 1987) that all these various groupings ought to be called people groups. Thus "people groups" becomes an overlapping label; the same person might be counted several times as one attempts to describe the people groups in a given city. But this is confusing. The same term-"people group"-is used both to assess the progress of the gospel in the world and to help describe the nitty-gritty communication problems faced by individual evangelists at the local level. If anthropologists distinguish cultures from subcultures, do we not need an intermediate term that describes the evangelistic task, pointing to a group smaller in number than that designated by "people group" but larger than the individual?

A BETTER TERM

The term "homogeneous networks" is a term well-suited to our needs. It represents conscious acknowledgment of recent missiological thought as well as contemporary sociological/anthropological discussions. McGavran defined "homogeneous units" in How Churches Grow in 1959 and Understanding Church Growth in 1970. He repeated his definition in 1980: "The homogeneous unit is simply a section of society in which all the members have some characteristic in common." Peter Wagner elaborated on homogeneous units in Our Kind Of People (1979), and the first Lausanne Occasional Paper (Lausanne Committee 1978) reported on the Pasadena Consultation on the Homogeneous Unit Principle.

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Timothy Monsma served for 12 years as a missionary in Nigeria. He is the author of An Urban Strategy for Africa and the founder of the Institute of Global Urban Studies Pasadena, California.


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