The UPG verses SPG Riddle
Tom wants to open a sushi restaurant. He has two options.
Option A - the UPG community has never had a sushi restaurant, but raw fish is anathema to the culture.
Option B - the SPG community once had a sushi restaurant that was very popular but through a series of events 10,000 people died and it was attributed to the sushi restaurant which was quickly closed down with lingering rumors.
Which community do you think would be harder to open a sushi restaurant in? Is it harder to change the minds of those who dislike something, or those who were burned by something?
Europeans are secular people groups (SPG)whose great, great grandparents generation “burned out” on religion, and now there are generations who have never darkened the doors of churches or even encountered a Christian in their lives, however, religion bears the blame for all the world’s troubles.
Joshua Project deems them as highly closed to the Gospel. The reality is in many of these indigenous cultures between .7 and 1.35 % are actually born again. The stats for Iran (UPG) are higher at 2%.
Those Catholic Churches everyone thinks are revealing the Gospel are “historic only”monuments being tuned into bars and housing, and in many places less than a percent of a percent of “Catholics” will actually go to church on average less than 5 times in a lifetime. In fact the trend is to “debaptize” oneself from Catholicism in some countries. There is usually only 1 evangelical church per every 135,000-150,000 people and n several European nations.
Just because Christianity thrived here at one point does not mean that generations of people have had a realistic witness to the Gospel. Please don’t forget that Europeans need Jesus, they need access to Jesus!!! How will they hear without a preacher?
We are still planting churches in the United States to reach the lost 😞 in communities that still have ample Gospel witnesses. We cannot forget the secularized people of Europe where very little light shines in their darkness.
UPG = unreached people group
SPG = secularized people group