Reaching the Unreached: Making Progress but Falling Short of 2025 Goal 

Justin Long with 24:14 Coalition optimistic that Christianity will continue to grow exponentially.

“Engag[ing] every unreached people and place with an effective kingdom movement strategy by December 31, 2025” was the ambitious goal set by the 24:14 Coalition after it was formed in 2017.

Hong Kong / Photo by Jimmy Chan / Creative Commons

However, according to Justin Long, the research team leader for 24:14 Coalition, they’ll likely not reach that goal.

“Based on the compilation of that data, it appears that having teams engaging every language in every province by 2025 isn’t likely,” he wrote in an article in January 2023. “However, while I am mildly pessimistic about reaching that goal by 2025, I am very optimistic about seeing it reached within my lifetime.”

He maintains the same opinion at the end of 2024, based on an interview with MinistryWatch.

He emphasized that the 2025 goal was not to reach all the unreached people groups, but to have an equipped team in place with a strategy. “God starts movements, but we can work to get teams in place,” he said.

Long has been engaged in research for over 30 years, and he is careful in evaluating the credibility of the data he reports on the 24:14 dashboard.

He collects data from the 38 groups that are part of 24:1. Long recognizes that other groups are engaged in similar efforts to reach unreached people groups in the world, but that data is not included in the dashboard reports.

24:14 is a group of churches, networks, denominations, agencies, and movements that collaborate together to reach unreached people groups, but it doesn’t publish a list of all of the organizations who collaborate as part of 24:14.

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The last dashboard update was in 2022, and Long said he expects the next update to be in 2025. He envisions it will show some increases in the number of groups reached, but that the goal will not have been reached 100%.

Wars, natural disasters, and persecution have interrupted progress in certain areas of the world, Long said.

In 1995, Long said data supports 10,000 disciples in church planting movements around the world, but nearly 30 years later, that number has grown to 114 million. Based on that growth rate, Long extrapolates that by 2040, there may be 4.2 billion disciples in these focused movements around the world.

According to Long’s research, there are at least 5,479 disciple-making movements in the world today. Some are just at beginning stages, while others have grown to begin engaging even more people groups.

While movements take time to get started, once they take root, he says the growth in churches is exponential.

Asia has the most disciple-making movements, with 267 in South Asia—that includes Iran, Nepal, and India, and accounts for about 50 million Christian disciples.

Africa also has a large number, with 213 in East Africa. However, the number of Christian disciples in that region is only about 5 million.

Some of the movements are large, Long says, with a handful having over one million disciples. The average size of a movement is about 56,000.

Long is careful about reporting on specific countries for security reasons and speaks mainly of regions; however, he noted that 190 out of 240 countries in the world are considered engaged. There are 43 countries with a very small—less than 8%—Christian population. Of those, only three are unengaged.

On the “Dare to Multiply” podcast with Cynthia Anderson, Long explained why he thinks tracking the data is so important. “Part of it is to give witness to the wonderful thing that God is doing,” Long said.

It is also a tool for groups to identify where the gaps are and places that still need to be reached.

Long also believes the collaboration required in sharing data and working together in the 24:14 Coalition is a spiritual discipline that builds the body of Christ. While he says it can be messy and difficult, it also requires those involved to practice patience and charity and be welcoming of others.

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