The What and Why of People Groups

I realized the other day that I throw the term people group around quite a bit, but have never defined what one is or why we focus on them so much.   While there are different opinions of what exactly a people group is, the best definition I've found was crafted by a group of mission leaders in 1982.  They said that a people group is; "a significantly large grouping of individuals who perceive themselves to have a common affinity for one another because of their shared language, religion, ethnicity, residence, occupation, class or caste, situation, etc., or combinations of these."  For evangelistic purposes it is:

"The largest group within which the gospel can spread as a 

church planting movement without encountering 

barriers of understanding or acceptance."

The "why" of people groups is twofold, having both a biblical and strategic aspect to why we focus on them.  In the great commission (Matt 28: 18-20) Jesus commands us to make disciples of all "nations."  The word used for nations in this passage is "ethne" which has a meaning closer to families than nations.  We have an English word that is very similar: Ethnic. It is the same idea we see in Genesis 12: 1-4 when God tells Abram that through him "all the families of the earth will be blessed."  As an example, let's look at India and China.  Each one is considered a single nation, but how many families, or ethne, are there in each?  China has 56 recognized ethnic groups, but Joshua Project lists over 500 distinct people groups in the country ranging in size from around 1,000 - 840 million (Han).  India on the other hand has over 1,800 unique people groups with the largest being 77 million (Shaikh).  So the task is much more complex than just reaching a politically defined nation.

The strategic aspect of why we focus on people groups is mentioned in the definition above.  By focusing on individual people groups, the hope is to remove as many barriers as possible to a person accepting the truth of the gospel.  The same strategy and approach will not work in every group.  As an example, let's look at India again.  The Shaikh and the Brahman are the two largest people groups in India (77 million and 55 million respectively).  One is 100% muslim and speak Urdu, while the other is over 99% Hindu and speak Hindi.  Thus, these two groups need different teams working to reach them using their own language and culture.  In many instances there is also animosity between people groups that hinders the flow of the gospel between them.   This is why we focus our efforts on unreached people groups rather than a whole nation.  Today the waters are muddied even more by the mass urbanization we see around the world.  In many urban settings the worker needs to discern whether it is more efficient to work among an ethnolinguistic people group (one that shares a language and ethnic background) or a sociopeople group (one that sees each other as peers, regardless of background).  

The 56 recognized ethnic groups of China