What Type of a Thing is a Jesus?

07 Dec


Pastor Paul Fang making initial contact with members of an unreached people group

What Type of a Thing is a Jesus?

A question in Mandarin Chinese defines the UPG

Dear Friends,

Recently, the Unreached People Groups Ministry—along with our ministry partner, Pastor Paul Fang—trekked through dangerous conditions to bring the gospel to the “Lalu” people and interact with them. The Lalu are a previously unreached people group (UPG) in remote China who had never heard the name of Jesus. Pastor Paul boldly proclaimed the name of Jesus to these people who had never before heard, and openly shared about who Jesus is. The few individuals in the village who are literate also received gospel literature to share with the others.

Through the duration of our visit, the common response to Pastor Paul’s teaching was, “Yesu shi shenme dongxi?” which literally translates to, “What type of a thing is a Jesus?” This strange reaction blessed our team with the opportunity to share the name of Jesus with a truly unreached and unengaged people group—for the very first time!

There are still 1,204 unreached people groups on Earth today, and China has hundreds of them. The Chinese government currently refuses to acknowledge tribes who are unable to contribute due to severe poverty. The government simply lumps them into a single, larger minority group, imposing a shared name and identity to the collective group as a whole. Doing so not only cuts these people groups off from government aid and protection, but also alienates and ostracizes them, causing fellow countrymen to shun them which, in turn, disallows travelling ministers and foreign missionaries to discover them.


At left: One of the many landslides we trekked during our trip to the Lalu people; At right: Pastor Paul sharing gospel literature with literate members of the Lalu tribe.

Please keep the Unreached People Groups Ministry in your prayers as we head back to China in December, where we will continue to share the gospel with unreached people groups who have never heard of Jesus and haven’t yet received the choice to choose everlasting life.

Many blessings,

Todd Matthews
Director, Unreached People Groups Ministry

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