International Day Of The Unreached with David Bogosian & Rotimi Akinpelu

We talk with David Bogosian from A Third of Us and Rotimi Akinpelu from Joshua Project about why the “unfinished task” still includes thousands of unreached and frontier people groups, and why prayer is the first strategy, not the last resort. We lay out how the global Church can wake up, reprioritize resources toward the hardest-to-reach places, and take practical steps toward lasting breakthrough. 

• David’s upbringing at the US Center for World Mission and learning to trust God’s provision 
• Joshua Project’s shift from data publishing to catalytic mobilization for frontier peoples 
• A Third of Us as an alliance to raise awareness, fuel prayer, and connect believers with trusted agencies 
• Why frontier people groups require a “furthest ship first” strategy for people and funding 
• The link between unreached peoples and the persecuted church in restricted access contexts 
• International Day of the Unreached on May 24 and the goal to “light up” a global prayer map 
• A real story of healing and movement growth among Dalits in Bihar, India 
• Practical on-ramps like the action pack, the three-line symbol, and people group adoption 
• Joshua Project’s ADOPT pathway: awaken, decide, orient, pray, take action 
• What ongoing engagement looks like after May 24, including reaching unreached neighbors through diaspora 

LINKS:

https://missionexus.org/a-third-of-us/day-for-the-unreached/

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Transcript

Revelation Vision And The Unfinished Task

SPEAKER_02 0:05

In Revelation 7, John shares his vision of heaven with members from every tribe, tongue, people, and language standing in the throne room before the Lamb. Yet today, there are still over 7,000 unreached people groups around the world. My family and friends have been on a journey to find, vet, and fund the task remaining. Come journey with us to the ends of the earth as we share the supernatural stories of God at work through the men and women he has called to reach the unreached reach.

Meet The Hosts And Guests

SPEAKER_02 0:41

Hello, friends. Welcome back to the Unreach Podcast. Dustin Elliott and Clint Hudson here today, co-hosting with two guests, one in Virginia, one in Nigeria. We've got David Bogojin. He's the one in Virginia, and he is heading up a movement that you probably have heard of. It's called A Third of Us. This is a Missio Nexus kind of combo with the Alliance for the Unreached that's come together. They've got a big event coming up on May 24th for International Day of the Unreached. And then we have our other friend with us from Nigeria. This is Rodomi Akampulu. And he is part of Joshua Project in people group adoption and mobilization. So, gentlemen, thank you so much for being with us and welcome to the show. Good to be here. Thank you guys.

David’s Story Of Faith And Provision

SPEAKER_02 1:35

David, let's start with you. Give us a little bit of your background, kind of catch us up to speed on how'd you meet the Lord, how'd you get involved in missions, and what brought you to the space you're in today?

SPEAKER_03 1:44

Absolutely. I had the privilege to grow up in a missional community founded by a guy named Ralph Winter. You may have heard of Dr. Ralph Winter. He founded a missional community in Pasadena called the U.S. Center for World Mission. And my parents were early staff members there. It was an amazing environment to grow up in. You had missionaries coming from all over the world. It was an environment where God was just birthing things right and left. So many things got birthed on that campus, the 82,000 movement, Caleb Project, Global Mapping, Frontiers. And I got to grow up and see that. I got to see the work of God. Perhaps the most amazing thing was we had this campus that had to be paid for. $15 million we had to come up with. And we had these balloon payments. Every three months we had to come up with, you know, a quarter of a million dollars. And we weren't well known. And we would pray and we would fast and we would do everything we can at the last minute, God would provide. And then we had to start all over again. And uh and just trust God. And I got to see that growing up, just living by faith, seeing how God provides and seeing how God is really behind the soul initiative to get the gospel to the last frontiers and how important that is to him. And how when you when you're willing to set yourself in that direction, he puts wind in your sails. He's the prime mover and the prime driver of all of this.

SPEAKER_02 3:03

I love it.

Rodomi’s Call And Joshua Project Shift

SPEAKER_02 3:04

I love it. Okay, your turn, Rodamy. Tell us your story real quickly, sir.

SPEAKER_00 3:08

I met God being the son of an evangelist, and uh there was a revival back in Nigeria that on the last day of the revival, God came to me, and it was as though I was going to transition from my body into the heavens, but I'm still here. So I feel that God's purpose upon the earth is transgenerational because I'm picking up from where my dad stopped, just like Dave, David, similar, similar story. Then I responded to missions because as a teenager I resolved to preach the gospel my entire life. And uh so after graduating from the university, I became a full-time missionary and I've pioneered quite some work here in Nigeria until I felt plateaued, seeking for more, and God brought me in contact with Joshua Project, and it's been a great joy serving through that platform.

SPEAKER_02 4:07

Sickened for more. How about that phrase? I love that. I love that. So you got to know Joshua Project, and obviously we've had Chris Clayman on before, and Chris introduced us. So maybe give us the kind of the next chapter in your story about your involvement with Joshua Project and what is your role? Uh, what's God doing through you there today?

SPEAKER_00 4:26

So, in the last 30 years, Joshua Project has been focused on making data available, profiling people groups across the globe and challenging the global church with it. But we see that God is bringing Joshua Project to a more catalytic role, uh-huh, which is beyond making data available, mobilizing the global church to work and run with the data towards ensuring church movements are being established among frontier people groups. So that phase is where Joshua Project is right now, and uh we have grown so much in staff strength and at the forefront of uh engaging and mobilizing the global church. So we see Joshua Project at the center of what God is doing across the globe with regards to finishing the Great Commission.

SPEAKER_01 5:21

That's awesome. David, you said that you've kind of had a seat at the table since you were a kid and you've seen all of these different missions movements happen globally around the world, and now all of that's kind of culminated to this new project that

What A Third Of Us Mobilizes

SPEAKER_01 5:34

you're working on. Uh a third of us. What can you tell us about a third of us? What are you guys doing and what's next for it?

SPEAKER_03 5:39

Yeah, it's super exciting. There's a part of it that is challenging and even convicting because when the Frontier Mission Movement began, you know, let's say 40, 50 years ago, actually 50 years ago, we were talking about a third of the world that's never heard the gospel. And we're still talking about that today. Imagine that half a century later. And one exciting thing, I'm I'm excited that Rotomy is on this uh podcast with us because my dad was a pioneer of the Adoptive People program back in the 80s that was started there on the campus there at the Center for World Mission. And Rotomi is now leading that globally. And so it's so awesome to see how all of this kind of comes full circle in one sense, right there on the front lines, you know, in Nigeria, where you have this amazing spiritual battle that's taking place. And we see we hear about it in the news, you know, the conflict that's taking place there between Muslims and Christians. But what's happening is God is raising up an intercessory movement around the world to take the light into the darkness. And that's what adoptive people was all about. It's what a third of us is all about. We want to raise awareness, but this area of the world that is least reached with the gospel, primarily to focus prayer. Yeah, we want people to go. We want people to give. We want people to get behind the agencies that are going into those places. And a third of us is an alliance of those agencies. But principally, we want to see millions and millions of Christians raised up to intercede for spiritual breakthrough because we believe that fundamentally this is a spiritual problem. And we can only go forward on our knees into these areas. This is what the apostle Paul talked about. These are spiritual strongholds. And so when we think about why there is an unfinished task, when we think about why there are so many people who haven't heard the gospel, it's because we haven't been listening to the scriptures. We haven't been listening to Jesus who said, Pray the Lord of the harvest to send forth workers. And when he saw so many people, the multitude, he said, pray. The first thing is pray. And the reason why there are still people that are unreached today is because we have a church that hasn't yet been mobilized and equipped to pray. First of all, we have a church that doesn't even know that there is a 1040 window, doesn't know there's so many people who haven't heard the gospel. And so it's like they're not informed, but not going to pray. But we also have a church that is not necessarily a praying church. And so we need to first pray that there will be spiritual awakening. Part of that prayer for laborers to be thrusted out is for a church to be awakened because that's where the laborers are. That's where you have your sleeping missionaries who haven't yet been awakened. And whenever there is exposure, you see this all throughout history. Whenever there's exposure to information about the unfinished task, it causes movement. You look at William Carey, his book, An Inquiry, which launched the modern-day Protestant mission movement. What was that book? It was a book exposing the Christian world to the unfinished task. Half of that book is just going through the world and saying, here's all the places in the world that haven't heard the gospel. And he didn't even have good data. He was just going with what he had. He was making estimates. You look in that book, and he is just saying, okay, look, there's probably so many people per square mile, and he's just making estimates because they didn't know. But he was actually pretty spot on with a lot of estimates. Pretty close. And so here's the amazing thing that today we have an incredible opportunity like never before to actually fulfill the Great Commission or generation. When William Carey went out, man, he was just a handful of going out, right? And there were so many places and people groups that had never heard, so many languages where the scriptures have never been translated. And you look at where we are today, thousands and thousands of languages now have the gospel translated, at least portions of it in their language. You now have today a situation that's totally the reverse in terms of demographics of 100 years ago. 100 years ago, 80% of Christians were of European descent. Today is the reverse. 80% are African, they're Latino, they're Asian. And so, this what this means is that the cultural distances between those that have not heard and between those places where the church is, that distance is shrinking day by day. And that's an amazing reality of our time. So this is why we want a third of us to be a global alliance. And we got people running with this thing in Brazil. Africa is moving, the whole church is getting mobilized, and the whole church is a global church. And so imagine what it looks like when a billion evangelical Christians start working together, linking arms to say, let's reach this three billion that's never heard. We can do it. You know, think about the ratios there. Okay, that's one evangelical for every three people that are least reached, that do not have access to the gospel. If we mobilize, if we work together, we can do this thing. And that's what a third of us is all about. It's saying, let's link arms together, together we can do it.

SPEAKER_02 10:29

Yeah, that's fascinating. I think it's a bold and audacious claim that we could see the Great Commission fulfilled in our lifetimes. I think it's bold and audacious goals that we say we're going to complete translation by 2033. And I think it's really important that everyone we're meeting and interviewing when we're talking about these concepts are very clearly saying these are faith goals. These goals are only accomplished through faith, through the Spirit, according to God's will. And what we're doing when we're talking about mobilizing prayer at a global force is we're talking about aligning our lives to God's will. We're talking about responding to the clarion call to play our part in the Great Commission. We're leveraging technology, we're leveraging platforms to connect and to come together. But the real end of the day story is every individual believer in their own Bible on their own knees getting to know their Maker and then playing their role in the Great Commission. Rodami, how is this playing out in Nigeria and across other parts of the world that you're getting to lead?

Prioritizing Frontier Peoples And Resources

SPEAKER_00 11:40

I think that we are extensions of what God began with the fathers. And uh I'm so glad that as a generation the burden remains, reaching the unriched. But for us in Joshua Projects, we are trying to prioritize frontier people groups brought in each region of the world. Now, frontier people groups are the unriched of the unriched, and it's important and strategic that we prioritize them. Why? Because frontier people groups are about two billion, constituting 70% of the global rich people groups. So we are trying to direct the attention of the global church to take the bull by the horn and start the work where it's hardest, like where people will not naturally want to go. So it's time as a global church, even in every region of the world, to align with what God is doing, especially among frontier people groups, which will require pioneering. So I think that's one season has brought the global church in and we sense as Joshua project to sound that alarm so that the global church can be awoken to the divine responsibility of attending to the work among frontier people groups, which will make it more strategic.

SPEAKER_02 13:12

Very, very well said. It makes me think of the story, the analogy of the uh five cruise ships that are sinking offshore. Have y'all heard that one? So, you know, you're standing on the beach and the the military commander says, you know, go rescue as many people as you can from these f from the from the ships. And so you go you go naturally to the first ship, the closest ship, and you get everybody you can off that one, and then you go to the next ship and you get as many as you can, but maybe the third and fourth and fifth ships sink. But when he changes the command to say, we need a representative from each ship, then you have to change your strategy and make sure you've got some folks going all the way out to the furthest ship first. And that's the analogy that really resonates with me that I think Rotomy is talking exactly what you're saying. Right now, 99% of the resources are going to the first ship. And we've got to flip the script and we've got to focus 99% of the resources on the hardest to reach places, the furthest ship, and we've got to start going there first. When you're talking frontier, you're talking unreached, another term being unengaged people groups. You're talking about prioritizing people and resources to those areas uh over and it's not because somebody across the street from you doesn't matter. It's not because they're of less value in God's eyes, but it's because the the task was clear to get to every tribe, tongue, people, and language. So all we're trying to say is let's look at how we're allocating resources and let's consider where we're giving and where we're donating our time and maybe try to refocus it on the furthest and hardest to reach places first. Is that fair, David? That's fantastic.

SPEAKER_03 14:53

Yeah, frontier people groups are the biggest challenge for the church today. Outreach people groups are are groups less than two percent evangelical Christian. That's a big challenge. But frontier people groups are 0.1%. And so these are groups that are the most difficult to get to. Uh, you think of places like Somalia, you know, places like northern India, places like Afghanistan, Iraq. There are so many places in the world that are restricted access, highly restricted access to the gospel. And God wants us to reach them, and he will provide a way. I truly believe my theology is that God intends for every generation to reach their generation, and that there's a way for them to do that. And so, especially for us, where we have, you know, almost a billion evangelical Christians, especially for us as Americans, where we have access to so many places that other people don't. But God opens doors. There's doors opening everywhere, even in places where it's hard to imagine, like Somalia and Afghanistan. There are ways for us to get there. And in fact, there are believers in every country, even in places that you know have the highest levels of restriction, places where it's a capital offense to convert to Christianity. There are movements of the gospel, even in places like North Korea. So this is something for us to recognize that God's giving us an opportunity to do something and we have to act. We have a responsibility in this generation for this generation. And Frontier Peoples needs to be a global responsibility for the church. That's why Jesus said, you know, the gospel is going to go from Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the ends of the earth. And that is going to happen. Jesus said, This gospel of the kingdom will be preached to all nations, and then the end will come. And the word he used for nations was the word ethne. All ethne groups are going to hear. And we see the outcome of that in Revelation with a great multitude from every nation, tribe, people, and language. And the apostle says, Who are these people? And the angel says, These are the people that have come out of the great tribulation. So we know that in the context of great difficulty, Matthew 24 is this description of just world chaos, you know, high levels of persecution, there's wars, there's famines, all this stuff is going on. But in the midst of all that, the gospel of the kingdom will be preached to all nations. And that's exactly what we are seeing in our generation. You just look at the last century, what has happened. There's been more martyrdoms, more persecution of Christians than all previous centuries combined. But in that same period of time, more nations, tribes, peoples, and languages heard the gospel than all previous centuries combined. So these two things happen in tandem. And in fact, they happen not in spite of each other, but because of each other. It's because these things are happening that doors are opening for the gospel. So instead of seeing these restrictions as impediments, we need to see them as stepping stones to taking the gospel into these regions.

SPEAKER_01 17:36

David, a few minutes ago, Dustin mentioned the clarion call, and then Rotimi said this to sound the alarm so that the global church can be awoken. How is that practically playing out in this next season?

International Day And The Prayer Map

SPEAKER_01 17:48

You guys have something special coming up. You're doing the International Day of the Unreached. What is the clarion call? What is the alarm that's being sounded and how can we respond to it?

SPEAKER_03 17:57

Yeah, so the first thing we want people to do is to awaken the church. The church needs to be awakened. There are so many people, even pastors that are unaware. We talk to people all the time who are like, tell us how to mobilize our pastor, tell us how to get our pastor, you know, on board with global mission. And it's crazy that that should even be a question because it's all over scripture. So the first thing we need to do is we need to ground people in the word of God. And that's one of the things we want to do with the third of us is create resources for people to awaken the body of Christ to the reality that God has called his church from Genesis to Revelation to be engaged in reaching all peoples with the gospel. So the first thing, the first awakening we need to see is an awakening, a sensitivity to God's global purposes in the word of God, because that is so transformational. We need to see that happen. The second thing is we need to see awareness of where there is least access to the gospel. We need to educate the church about where the priorities are. And the third thing is to help the church take action, to connect those that are interested and activated with those people who are getting the job done. And that's one of the purposes of A Third of Us is to make that connection. So we're lining up on one side all the agencies that are saying we're willing to go into these places. And on the other side, we want to see a mass mobilization of the church and a believer saying, yes, we want to join with those whom God is calling to go there. And Joshua Project is a big part of that. Joshua Project is part of our leadership team at A Third of Us, and they're going to be facilitating the adoption of frontier people groups. And so one of the things that we've done, which is very cool, hasn't been launched yet, but I just saw a preview of it, is we're creating a prayer map of the whole world. And it's basically we want to light up the world every single day. We want to mobilize the whole church to light up the unreached people group map. So on this map is going to be the location of every unreached people group in the world, their name, information about them, and their exact location. And you can go there, you can click on one of those and say, yes, today I prayed for this group. So this is going to be kind of a test for our mobilization. We're going to see how effective we are because if we can't light up that map, then we're not doing our job properly. So here we have, you know, a map of, let's say, 7,000 people groups that we need to see prayed for every day. And we're going to see the evidence of that. The whole global body of Christ can go in and see how activated is the global church in praying for and raising awareness for the unreached people groups. So this is one of the things we want to do. We want to promote May 24th is the day for the unreached. And on that day, we want people to raise awareness in their churches, and we want to drive them to this map. And let's see if we can light up that map. Go to a thirdofus.com, you will see it. And if you go to joshuaproject.org, you will also see it. That's going to be a big thing that we want to see happen coming out of May 24. We're going to light up the world with prayers.

SPEAKER_02 20:40

I love that. I love that. And you know, I don't want the listener to miss this. We've talked about collaboration and open hands a lot lately. Like a lot of ministries are just kind of opening their playbook and saying, okay, who wants to run together? Like we don't want to run alone. We're not going to accomplish this thing alone. We're here, you're there. But wait, let's not both go to the same place next. Or if we do, let's do it in tandem and in partnership. And here you have two different organizations on today, locking arms and working together. And this shared goal and this shared map is on both websites, both working together. And it's not just the two of you. Give us an idea of how many folks, organizations, etc., are currently involved in a third of us.

SPEAKER_03 21:20

Right. We have about 50 organizations that are participating in a third of us. We're growing that out. In fact, we're expanding uh our membership. We're saying, hey, if you're a church, if you're anybody and you want to be a part of this movement, there's now, you know, the ability to do that. Before it was just sending agencies, but we want to see church partnerships come together. So you got groups like Pioneers. They're a great mission organization going out there into these places that are these three to Jesus film that's making resources for those that are going into those places. And what we're doing is we're bringing together everyone who says, yes, we want to be a part of this thing. There's a place, there's a seat for you at the table. And one of the things that we just launched uh just a couple weeks. Weeks ago is an unengaged people groups task force. And this is so important. We're going to have a meeting coming up very soon, bringing together all the major players that are focused on the unengaged. The Assemblies of God have just launched a major initiative throughout their whole denomination. And I mean their global denomination to engage all the remaining unengaged people groups. They're saying, hey, if if nobody else is willing to do it, we'll take it on. And they're big enough to do it. But of course they want to do it with everybody else. The IMB, they're sending out survey teams as we speak to go find all these people groups. So we've got a list that we're working with of about 3,000 groups that are believed to be unengaged. Here's the amazing thing as the surveyors are going out, they're finding about 25% of those do have missionary witness that was not known. And usually this is from local initiative. God just speaking to people, the nearest believers to these groups, saying, hey, go up into those mountains, man. Go find these people and reach them. And so that's very exciting. It's like it's not up to all up to us anymore. And so the answer to that question is very cool because it's not just international agencies that are doing this thing anymore. God is raising up people we don't even know who they are. We don't even know their names. They don't even have branding. They don't have websites. They're going out and they're doing it. And we get the privilege of finding these people and saying, hey, how can we help you guys? And that's one of the big things that we need to do. We need to recognize that 80% of the unreached live in restricted access contexts. And in those same contexts, there is a persecuted church. So we talk about a third of us in terms of a third of the world that's never heard the gospel. There's also a third of the church that is persecuted for their faith. And there is a strong correlation between these two things. There is a persecuted church out there in places like China and India and the Middle East that are trying to get to these last remaining places without the gospel. And it's our job, those of us in the free world, to stand with them. It's the most amazing movement in the history of the Great Commission. And it's why I have great confidence that we are living in the last stretch of this thing, that we're approaching the 100-yard dash about what has been a marathon race. We are literally, I believe we're in the 100-yard dash and we're that close to the finish line.

A Breakthrough Story From Bihar

SPEAKER_02 24:11

How about a story? I think uh we were talking earlier, David, about one you heard recently in India. Give us that story.

SPEAKER_03 24:17

Yeah, I was in BR recently, and God's doing such an amazing thing in that state. That that state used to be known as the Graveyard Emissions, and now there's an amazing breakthrough. Millions of people coming to know Christ. And one of the brothers that's been a part of that movement, I was just recently talking to him asking him about his story. And it's really interesting because he grew up in a very impoverished background, part of what's called the Untouchables, this group called the Dalits. They're the lowest of the lowest, you know, in the caste system in India. And he was a very devout Hindu. Uh, he was very devoted to the gods that they worshipped uh in this village. And his brother was very talented, very smart. The family put all their resources into him, and their their hopes were pinned on him that he would someday get a government job and lift their family out of poverty. He became very sick uh while he was studying, and the doctor said he's not gonna make it. And they they did everything, they spent all kinds of money on him. They hired witch doctors, they hired, you know, real doctors, nothing worked. And so he was uh taken to a hospital in Delhi. He was treated there, and the doctor said, Look, he's not gonna make it, he has a week to live, take him home. And so they brought him home. He was half dead on the train, he had very little life left in him. And two evangelists came to their village sharing the gospel and they learned about his situation and they said, Can we pray for him? And this brother uh talked to him and and he said, I I hated Christians. I heard that Christians were terrible people because they ate our gods, you know, they they worship cows, right? And and they heard that you know Christians are beef eaters, they kill our gods and eat them, and so that he wanted nothing to do with these guys. He told them, go away. And so they left. And that night the Holy Spirit just came on him and he just felt like he had he had no other choice. He had to to pray to this Jesus person that these evangelists were talking about. So he lifts up his arms and he asks Jesus to heal his brother. And that night his brother was completely healed. And so he became a believer, he became a follower of Christ, and he went to his father and he said, Dad, why are we worshiping these gods that did nothing for us? And his dad was so furious about that, he kicked him out of his home, he became homeless, and some Christians took him in. He ended up at uh at a house church about 45 minutes away from his house. And they sent him to Bible college and he studied there, and then he came back and he began to evangelize his people. And during this time, he was introduced to the concept of disciple-making movements by an IMB missionary, and he was trained in how to see movements happen. And what happened next is absolutely amazing in that area of Bihar. So many Christians have become believers that they actually elected to Parliament one of the only Christian MPs. Come on, really right now. Yes. Let's go. Yes, and it happened because Christians in that area turned out and voted for this guy. But this is a real thing, and it's absolutely amazing. It's a just a sign of God, and it's and it's incredible that this is coming from a family, you know, that was a Dalit family, untouchable, and here they have now one of their own, one of the evangelists actually from this movement now as an MP.

SPEAKER_02 27:35

It's great to hear that growth. That's a that's an incredible story. And obviously, God's giving him favor, and by the Bible tells us, right? I mean, you will stand in front of kings, and there's an opportunity right there in real time happening today, and an ability to you know, have a vote and a voice and a in a at a level that's making decisions for the whole community.

Practical Ways To Join May 24

SPEAKER_02 27:58

David, let's talk about you how people exactly can get involved. So with the third of us, you talked about going to the website. If I go to the website now, I see I can be an advising member for a five thousand dollar annual contribution and have a a seat at the table. I can be a contributing member uh to support at a five hundred dollar contribution. And and you kind of talked about this can be your church, this can be your company, this can be your small group, life group, this can be any kind of collection of people, or just you as a family. Um what what do we have a goal for kind of engagement here or what would be kind of your invitation um for anyone hearing this today? Who would they want to take this to to pray pray about it with?

SPEAKER_03 28:36

Yeah, I think you know, the big thing to talk about is what's coming up on May 24th, International Day for the Unreached, and getting people involved in that, getting your church involved. So I think the the main thing that people can do uh for that day is when we release our action pack, they can download it. And that's gonna be released pretty soon. So the action pack will have their in there a prayer guide. It will have some social media stuff that you can spread around, and it will have some ideas, some activities that you can do in your church to raise awareness. So I think that could be a good action step for us.

SPEAKER_02 29:10

Yeah, by the way, your gear's great. Um, and I love the I love the three, it looks like kind of paintbrush strokes.

SPEAKER_03 29:16

Yeah, so one of the things that we're encouraging people to do is draw three lines. And that's one of the things uh that we're promoting in a third of us is this idea of raising awareness on social media as well as, you know, in whatever it is that you're posting about the unreached, to put those three lines on there. So basically what it is, it's three lines, and one of them is separated from the other two. And it's very easy to do, um, very easy to recreate. You can download the logo from our website. And so if you're participating in a third of us or the International Day of the Unreach, you're free to use that logo. And you can just put that on there and just we want to spread that everywhere as just a reminder to everybody, to the global church, that there are 3.5 billion people who have not heard the gospel. Some people are drawing it. We encourage, we're encouraging young people to do that. Uh, some people are getting tattoos. We're not exactly encouraging that, but some people are doing it, maybe temporary tattoos if you're kids. Um, but it's just a way to kind of raise the flag for those that have never heard the gospel. And so that's a very simple thing that you can do. Uh, we want to see people make a big deal on May 24th. This is Pentecost Sunday. And why do we choose Pentecost Sunday? This is because this is the birth of the church. And when the church goes global, and you know, Pentecost Sunday, there's 3,000 people that become believers, and it says they're from all over the place from all these different nations. And so we want to remind the church that there is this amazing opportunity, especially in terms of the diaspora, to reach the world. So think about what happened on Pentecost Sunday. This was the Jewish diaspora coming together from all these different nations, and the Holy Spirit moves in that moment. So imagine if the Holy Spirit moves in our cities where we have people from all of these unreached, restricted places that are coming. Imagine what will happen if the church has awakened and if they boldly proclaim the gospel like Peter did on that day, the church goes global. Even from a city, you can impact the world.

SPEAKER_02 31:12

Yeah, so for anyone listening that's not totally familiar with that, you can go to Acts chapter two and read that story. Uh first it starts out by talking about kind of the day of Pentecost and and um where the the Holy Spirit came, you may have heard it before, descended like flames or tongues and settled on each of them, and it goes through kind of where they were all from. Uh Peter preaches this incredible sermon, which is certainly worth reading many times. And then it says, The believers form a community. I don't want to miss that part because there was an action step later. And if you are a church uh historian and you go back to kind of first century church and you think who planted the first major churches? Well, Paul obviously had credit for several of those, but forty percent of the New Testament is his letters kind of riding back from one city he's gone to after planting a church in another when he's heard of something kind of going wrong in that church and he's correcting heresy and he's encouraging those new believers. Uh but there were a lot of churches that weren't started by Paul. A lot of churches that uh we don't have a name for who started them. Particularly, I believe the church in Rome is is said to be started by, quote, the kind of businessmen, marketplace leaders who likely were in this crowd during Acts Two. So that's worth reading as you prepare your heart and mind for the International Day of the Unreached and for kind of what this movement represents. And, you know, as we say so often on the podcast, there's so many ways to get in the game. Here's another on-ramp or an additional kind of chapter to your story that you could take part in. So, David, thank you for inviting everyone into that. And you can definitely go also to Joshua Project. I know, Rodami, I know y'all are investing substantially right now in upgrading your tech stack, uh, making it more user-friendly for people to access the data that you've kind of uh curated over the last several decades. Um anything maybe you want to share about kind of the updates that are coming with Joshua Project and what's what the big C kind of global church can expect from from your side?

The ADOPT Framework For Action

SPEAKER_00 33:19

We have simplified the adopt framework using the acrostic adopts, which is A D O P T. So A stands for awaken. So we are encouraging the global church to be awakened to the reality of frontier people groups having priority need in the gospel. D stands for deciding, which is decide on which frontier people group to adopt, make a decision from general concern to having a specific decision, and O stands for orient, which is get a proper understanding of the people group you have adopted so that you can be more informed about them, learn about their worldview. P stands for prayer, which is once you are awakened to the reality of frontier people group and you have decided on which frontier people group to adopt and you are learning about them, then we encourage you to commit to praying for them. Then T stands for team up, which is finishing the Great Commission. There's no so much room for long rangers anymore. So you have to team up and build collaboration, then take action. So T is for team up and take action. So we are driving people group adoption with the acrostic adopts so that the global church can be activated in collaborative partnership.

SPEAKER_02 34:56

I love that whole adopt kind of category, the way you've set that up and used it as an acronym. Guys, really, if you think about it, if people really caught the vision for this, it wouldn't take that many people to adopt a people group to see this thing get done.

SPEAKER_03 35:10

So sure.

SPEAKER_02 35:11

Like the threat really here, the risk really here is you don't act fast enough and you don't get one. I mean, in in a in a matter of speaking, like maybe you can come onto the team of another one, but if you want to be the early mover that gets in there and really makes that difference and catalyzes that community, you better take some action. I mean, the time is now. Amen.

SPEAKER_01 35:32

Okay, so at the onset of this episode, we talked about the International Day of the Unreached and all the things that are happening with that on May 24th. We talked about Pentecost. That's happening in May 24th, 2026. What happens after that? What's the future look like for this movement and the future look like for the International Day of the Unreached?

After May 24 What Comes Next

SPEAKER_03 35:49

Absolutely. So May 24th is going to be the International Day for the Unreached, and that's just the beginning of what we want people to do. That's just like the starting point of the activity that we want to see happen throughout the year. Of course, every Pentecost Sunday is going to be reserved for as a day for the unreached. But we want to see people use that as a way to galvanize, to mobilize people to action as a jumping off point. So, what's the first thing you can do? Number one is discover the people groups that are nearest to you that are unreached. It's the first step. It's easy to think about people that are far away. Where the rubber meets the road, is we say, okay, who are the people that are nearest to us that are in our city, that are in our country? So this is a global movement. We want people to think about that wherever they are. And believe it or not, right here in the United States, there are hundreds of unreached people groups that God has brought here from the 1040 window. They're in our cities. Right here where I am in Charlottesville, we have tons of people from Afghanistan. And yet there's very little awareness in our churches of who they are. So that's the first thing. Let's get awakened to the people that are nearest to us. Number two, let's connect with the people that are out there that are doing things. So let's find those agencies, those ministries that are going out to those places from our country. And number three, let's see where the body of Christ is that is nearest to the unreached people groups around the world and how we can assist them. This is the persecuted church. So how can we connect with brothers and sisters that are nearest to these unreached people groups and link arms together with them?

SPEAKER_02 37:16

I love that. So thank you both for being here.

Prayers For Laborers And Awakening

SPEAKER_02 37:19

I think if you uh you may have heard we always ask our guests to pray uh for the listeners and for the the global church uh at the end of the podcast. Since we have two guests today, I think what might be fun if you're up for it, maybe Rotomi, would you pray first in your heart language? And then David will let you pray next in the language most of us will understand. But it's really fun for us and listeners to hear, you know, someone cry out to God in their own language. So would you would you bless us with that, Rotomi?

SPEAKER_00 37:49

Alright, let's pray. Fa one to shit to you. At our tawa bam, I be fou y bukunjor, in two kuan tea, won't be no kung. So fell more sinu. I badura piki, or one la re ore corruption. Latit teswaju Latishtash. Nin to te or lono, ni to for Lugo, no look or Jesu Amen.

SPEAKER_03 38:46

Heavenly Father, we just thank you that you are God, that you are seated on the throne. And when we look at this big unfinished task, it's sometimes get overwhelming. But we just need to fix our eyes on Jesus, the author, the perfecter of our faith, saying yesterday, today, and forever, the God who parted the Red Sea, He can do it all. And so we just lift up to you, God, the three billion who've never heard so many thousands of nations, tribes, peoples, and languages that have not yet heard. But we know that you have a plan for each of them. You have a timing, you have a destiny. And we pray, Father God, for your church. You said to pray that laborers would be sent forth. And so that's our prayer, God, right now for your global body of Christ, that you would awaken your church. That you would call forth workers and you would send them into these places. And we pray, God, that you would open up doors all over the world. We look at what's happening today in our world. It looks like it's in meltdown mode. And yet we also know that you're in charge. And so it's not a meltdown from your perspective. In fact, these things that are happening in the world are happening right on schedule as you ordained them to be. And they are actually going to be opportunities for your church. And so I pray that you would awaken us to understand that, to realize that there is a role and a place for each of us, this great commission. You have called us all. You said, Go, all of you and all the world. And so that is our prayer, God, for your church, that you would show us what it is that you would have us do. Give us the strength, the power, the wisdom, the grace to work together, to be united, to collaborate with you and with your spirit. Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

SPEAKER_02 40:18

Amen.

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SPEAKER_02 40:20

Thank you for listening to Unreached. Our sincere desire is that what you've heard today will cause you to see the mission of God differently and your role in it more clearly. If this adds value for you, and we hope it does, would you please rate and review the podcast wherever you listen? Also share with your family, your friends, your church, your life group, small group, D group, wherever you do life. And if you want to connect with us, find us on Instagram at Unreach Podcast or email us at unreached podcast at gmail.com.