The Unreached Among Us

Twin Cities Church Seeks to Reach 9,500 Thai

They’re staggering numbers, when you think about them.

Currently, the world population unreached by the love, truth, and hope of Jesus is estimated somewhere between 3-4.15 billion. (With a “B.”) It’s hard to wrap the human brain around that number—let alone the faces, the souls, who have no choice to love the One who loved them first.

In the book of Jonah, God pitied even the 120,000 living in Nineveh (4:11). In Luke 15, the Good Shepherd leaves 99 sheep to go after the one.

But consider that only 3% of the Church’s cross-cultural workers go to that 40% of the world. That’s a ratio of one global worker to every 250,000.

Five years ago, numbers like these—and the stories and hearts they represent—pressed John and Kathie Pederson into prayer. The Pedersons left years of service around the world to partner with Scattered to Gathered, a Converge initiative to reach the least-reached peoples of the world.

See, reaching the unreached doesn’t require venturing into hostile or remote territory—or even that one be some version of a Christian superhero without a family (because “Hey, wanna live in a remote, suspicious nation with me?” can be a bit of a first-date killer). The Pedersons settled in the distant land…of darkest Minnesota.

Minneapolis-St. Paul boasts over 100 people groups as immigrants and refugees—unreached people living in America. Scattered to Gathered compiled a list of those top 100 people groups in the area, then narrowed their list to the top 13 least-reached. (Who knew that the largest concentration of Somalis outside of Somalia was in Viking territory?)

The Unreached People Groups among us: Where Do We Start?

“Our passion is to bring awareness to churches so they gain a passion to reach the least reached,” John explains.

So the Pedersons, along with teammates Bruce and Julie Adamson, began with two prayers: First, that God would make aware and mobilize the area’s Converge churches toward their unreached international neighbors.

Secondly, they asked God to reveal the people group He’d equipped Scattered to Gathered to reach. Hadn’t God “determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him”? Wasn’t He “actually not far from each one of us” (Acts 17:26-27)?

Together, they petitioned God for not just a handful of conversions, but an unstoppable movement of people. Missiologists have found people groups are only reached by movements, never one-by-one—yet 90% of work among the unreached ends up with one-by-one evangelism.

When Your Dentist Appointment is Divine

In the end, God worked through a simple dentist appointment for Kathie. As she declared her faith in Jesus to the dentist.

The dentist leaned over her. “I’m a believer, too!”

Through the dentist, Kathie met a hygienist whose husband pastors a Thai church of 20—the single congregation among 9,500 “diaspora” Thai Buddhists who live, play, and work in the Twin Cities. (Of The 71 million in Thailand,  1.02% are evangelical; 86%, or 61 million, remain unreached.) For years, the dentist and her husband had sponsored Thai pastors to attend Bethel Seminary. Kathie struck up a friendship with the pastor and his wife, who began meeting in the Pederson home for training in the Discovery Bible Study method.

Together, they strategized to effectively reach the Thai of the Twin Cities—who were highly unlikely to appear in a pew. Method after valiant method to woo the Thai community fell flat: The badminton outreach at the tail-end of the COVID pandemic; the kids’ sports day; the women’s aerobics class, all complete with posters and Facebook notifications in Thai. 

“It’s very hard to find and reach diaspora Thai,” John articulates. “They don’t have a community cluster like other people groups do in many cities—like the Somali, here in Minneapolis.”

The Gospel Finds its Way Back Home

Yet God was on the move. Jamie, who with her husband managed their local Thai Street Market restaurant, had been recommended to translate the aerobics-class poster. And Kathie then met Bang, a Thai wife of an American, and Taai, a new Thai believer.  The three met in the Pederson home once again to learn the Discovery Bible Study method.

Kathie handed Taai her first Bible in her own language. In response to the stories she’d heard, Taai witnessed to her sister in Thailand, who was suicidal at the time. Thai’s sister, too, became a believer, and brought the end to a series of family feuds.

Together, Thai Movement Fellowship materialized—and was already reaching back to Thailand.

Kathie explains part of the international Converge model: “You get into the community, start Bible studies—and the last step of the Discovery Bible Method is to share it with someone.” Through relationships, they’re “declaring Jesus in families in word, wonders, and works.”

"I've Never Found Someone Who Wanted to Reach My People"

Meanwhile, John visited Jamie’s husband, Niw, at the restaurant, where they chatted for three hours.  “I’ve never met someone who wanted to reach Thai!” Niw marveled. “I could help you, but I don’t know if I could start a church.” 

Niw was a member of Converge North Central’s Grace Fellowship, a large congregation who began to pray for God’s focus on their missions’ efforts—which, as God would have it, focused on the Thai people. Converge’s regional leader in Asia connected Grace Fellowship pastor Joe Boyd, a repeated church planter, to Niw, Jamie, and Thai Movement Fellowship. And the urge to plant another Thai church in the Twin Cities, 30 minutes across town from the existing church, crystallized.

Jamie marvels at God’s orchestration. “We have been so blessed to see how God has brought people together for his work.” That’s included a woman moving to the area because of the prospective church plant, and young, Christian Thais with no church home. One non-Christian Thai woman attended the church’s launch team meetings, then invited a friend and her husband—all who accepted Christ and continue to be involved in the church plant. 

This past January, the core leadership began meeting every Sunday to pray and plan for the much-anticipated September 8 launch of Thai Fellowship Church. In cultural Thai fashion placing high value on community, the church closes every service with a shared meal. It’s a thoughtful strategy to create gospel movements, as well: Most unreached peoples place a high value on their group identity, observes mission strategist Robby Butler.

Yet the original problem stared them down: How would the church find Thai to reach?

Technology Pinpoints the Mission Field

Kathie’s online prayer group for the Thai mentioned a Realtor who’d employed technology to map all the Thai in Dallas/Ft. Worth. Kathie perked up: Could the Realtor do the same for the Twin Cities?

Thai Movement Fellowship could now pray for 450 Thai families by name. And the newly-birthed church has recently sent postcards to every family.

Yet because of the lack of interest, “Our technique has had to be ‘go and tell’ versus the more Western ‘come and see’ method of church planting,” John clarifies. To that end, the church set up a booth at a recent Thai market, held at a local Thai temple.

“It can be a very long process to lead Thai people to know Jesus,” Jamie acknowledges. “We are excited and energized by any small strides that we see in our relationships. We hope and pray for their spiritual transformation, and we ask God to be at work in their hearts and minds, that they would begin to wonder and ask questions about Jesus.”

Empowering Them to Become Fully Thai

The Pedersons will be taking a backseat in leadership; to create a gospel movement, it’s key that the movement be indigenous. It’s focused on Jesus meeting—in Thai ways—the unique soul-holes felt and heart-questions asked by Thai culture.

After all, He’s as much a Thai God as He is an American one. It’s He who helps them become the fullest image of God found in the Thai people.

So what’s next? Statistically, Christians give 2% of their income to Christian causes. Seven percent of that 2% goes to cross-cultural workers; 1/100 of that .1% goes to the least reached, the 3 billion who don’t know Jesus. So in reality, 99% of cross-cultural giving goes to reached areas, who have Christians, Bibles, and churches. 3% of our workers with 1% of our cross-cultural finances go to the 3 billion, the 7,000 ethnolinguistic people groups.

How will we give? How will we go?

Converge is asking God for a gospel movement among every least-reached people group – in our generation. Learn how we are playing a role in accomplishing the Great Commission and how you can be involved.