The Joshua Project is a Christian organization based in
Colorado Springs
Colorado Springs is a home rule municipality in, and the county seat of, El Paso County, Colorado, United States. It is the largest city in El Paso County, with a population of 478,961 at the 2020 United States Census, a 15.02% increase since ...
, United States, which seeks to coordinate the work of
missionary organizations to track the
ethnic groups of the world with the fewest followers of
evangelical Christianity. To do so, it maintains
ethnologic data to support
Christian missions
A Christian mission is an organized effort for the propagation of the Christian faith. Missions involve sending individuals and groups across boundaries, most commonly geographical boundaries, to carry on evangelism or other activities, such ...
. It also tracks the evangelism efforts among 17,000 people groups worldwide—a people group being "the largest group within which the Gospel can spread as a church planting movement," according to the project's website—to identify people groups as of yet unreached by Christian evangelism.
History
The project began in 1995 within the former
AD2000 and Beyond Movement. From 2001 through 2005 the Joshua Project was at different times informally connected with the Caleb Project, and the International Christian Technologists Association (ICTA) and World Help. In 2006, the Joshua Project officially became part of the
U.S. Center for World Mission, now called the
Venture Center.
The goal of the project is to bring definition to the unfinished task of the Great Commission by providing accurate, regularly updated ethnic people group information critical for understanding the scope of the work required.
Focusing on ethnicity, the project maintains a database of "
unreached peoples" listed by country and language. As of 2010, they list 9,803 ethnic groups. These are further divided into 16,350 peoples-by-countries, counting national minorities individually for each of 236 countries, of which 6,642 are classified as "unreached peoples". Ethnic groups are organized hierarchically in 251 "People Clusters" which in turn are divided in 16 "Affinity Blocs" (
Arab World
The Arab world ( ar, اَلْعَالَمُ الْعَرَبِيُّ '), formally the Arab homeland ( '), also known as the Arab nation ( '), the Arabsphere, or the Arab states, refers to a vast group of countries, mainly located in Western A ...
,
East Asians,
Eurasia
Eurasia (, ) is the largest continental area on Earth, comprising all of Europe and Asia. Primarily in the Northern and Eastern Hemispheres, it spans from the British Isles and the Iberian Peninsula in the west to the Japanese archipelago ...
ns,
Horn of Africa-Cushitic,
Iranian-Median,
Jews
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
,
Latin-Caribbean Americans,
Malay peoples,
North American peoples,
Pacific Islanders
Pacific Islanders, Pasifika, Pasefika, or rarely Pacificers are the peoples of the Pacific Islands. As an ethnic/ racial term, it is used to describe the original peoples—inhabitants and diasporas—of any of the three major subregions of Oce ...
,
South Asians
South Asian ethnic groups are an ethnolinguistic grouping of the diverse populations of South Asia, including the nations of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, the Maldives, and Sri Lanka. While Afghanistan is variously considered to b ...
,
Southeast Asians,
Sub-Saharan Africans,
Tibetan / Himalayan peoples,
Turkic peoples
The Turkic peoples are a collection of diverse ethnic groups of West, Central, East, and North Asia as well as parts of Europe, who speak Turkic languages.. "Turkic peoples, any of various peoples whose members speak languages belonging t ...
and Unclassified). Each ethnicity is listed as speaking at least one of 6,510 languages.
See also
*
10/40 window
*''
Ethnologue''
*
John Allen Chau
References
Notes
Bibliography
*Johnstone, Patrick; Hanna, John; and Smith, Marti (1996) ''Praying Through the Window III: The Unreached Peoples''. YWAM Publishing. .
*Stump, Roger W. (2008) ''The Geography of Religion: Faith, Place, and s]Space'', Rowman & Littlefield. , 381f.
*Thomas, Pradip Ninan (2008) ''Strong Religion, Zealous Media: Christian Fundamentalism and Communication in India'' SAGE Publications Ltd. pp.142-145.
External links
*{{official website, http://www.joshuaproject.net/index.php/
Christian missions
Ethnography
Organizations based in Colorado
Religion and geography
Evangelical Christian missions
Christian organizations established in the 20th century
Evangelical organizations established in the 20th century
Christian organizations based in the United States