When Jesus sent his followers out, he told them to “go and make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:19). The Greek word translated “nations” is ethnē, the word behind our English word “ethnic.” It points to peoples more than to countries with borders and flags. That is why mission researchers count the world by people groups and not only by countries, and why a single country can hold hundreds or even thousands of them.
India is a striking example. Here is what an unreached people group is, what the current figures for India show, and how believers in the United States can respond.
What a people group is
Joshua Project, which tracks the world’s people groups, defines a people group as a large group of people who see themselves as having something in common: a shared language, religion, ethnicity, place of residence, class or caste, or a combination of these. For the purpose of sharing the gospel, a people group is the largest group within which the gospel can spread as a church-planting movement without running into barriers of understanding or acceptance.
That is why one country can hold many people groups side by side. Two neighbors can share a language and still belong to communities that rarely mix, so the gospel can spread freely within one community and stop at the edge of the next.
What makes a people group unreached
Joshua Project calls a people group unreached, or least-reached, when 5% or fewer of its people are Christian adherents and 2% or fewer are evangelical. In plain terms, there is no local community of believers with enough people and resources to share the gospel with the rest of the group without outside help.
Some groups are further from the gospel still. Joshua Project calls them frontier people groups: unreached groups with virtually no followers of Jesus and no known movements to Jesus. It approximates them as groups with 0.1% or fewer Christian adherents and no confirmed, sustained movement.
“Unreached” does not mean that no one in the group has ever heard the name of Jesus. It means the church inside that community is missing, or too small to reach the rest on its own.
You may also hear the term UUPG. UUPGs are unengaged, unreached people groups. One of the topics in our training is outreach to distant UUPGs, and you can see the full list of topics on our training page.
What the numbers show for India
These are Joshua Project’s figures for India, as its India page showed them on October 20, 2026:
- People groups: 2,263
- Unreached people groups: 2,033, or 89.8% of the total
- Frontier people groups: 1,701, or 75.2%
- Population: 1,466,463,000
- Population in unreached people groups: 1,405,670,000, or 95.9%
- Population in frontier people groups: 1,099,468,000, or 75.0%
- Christian adherents: 2.0% of the population
Put simply, about nineteen of every twenty people in India belong to a people group that Joshua Project counts as unreached. About three of every four belong to a frontier people group, where followers of Jesus are almost unknown.
These figures come with a caution that Joshua Project gives itself. Its data comes from sources such as the official census, mission agencies, and local research, and those sources can differ a great deal. Joshua Project says it aims for a conservative, balanced estimate. The counts also change as research is updated, so treat them as a snapshot, not the final word.
India has believers and churches. What the figures show is that most of India’s people groups have too few believers among them, by Joshua Project’s measure, to reach the rest of their own community.
Why unreached people groups matter
The Bible’s picture of the end is not a church drawn from a few peoples. John saw “a multitude too large to count, from every nation and tribe and people and tongue, standing before the throne and before the Lamb” (Revelation 7:9). Our vision comes from that verse. We envision the people groups we work with among the great multitude standing before the throne and worshiping God.
Paul felt the weight of peoples who had never heard. He asked, “how can they believe in the One of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone to preach?” (Romans 10:14). His own aim was “to preach the gospel where Christ was not known” (Romans 15:20).
Many communities in India are still waiting to hear the gospel for the first time. Each of the groups in those figures is made up of families, neighbors, and friends whom God loves.
Reaching people groups from within
The people best placed to reach an unreached group are usually believers who share its language and culture, or who live nearby and already have friendships across the community line. Joshua Project notes that in frontier people groups, pioneer workers generally have to start with people who don’t yet believe, while in other unreached groups it is often possible to partner with same-culture believers.
That is why we focus on equipping local believers. We train believers across India to reach the unreached through a continuous cycle of discipleship and multiplication. Our Great Commission Training covers discipleship, outreach, church formation, church health, and generational growth, and our training is taught in Tamil, Hindi, English, and Bengali. The aim is ordinary believers who share the gospel, make disciples, and train others to do the same.
How to pray for unreached people groups
Jesus told his disciples what to do when the need is great and the workers are few: “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into His harvest” (Matthew 9:37–38). Here are a few ways to pray.
- For workers. Pray for workers from inside each community, and from believers who live nearby, who can share the gospel in a language and a manner people understand.
- For open homes. When Jesus sent out the seventy-two, he told them to look for a household where “a man of peace” would welcome them (Luke 10:6). Pray for households that will welcome the gospel and share it with their relatives and neighbors.
- For Scripture to take root. Pray that new believers would read God’s Word together, obey it, and pass it on.
- For local leaders. Pray that leaders would be faithful, available, and teachable, and that they would train others.
If you would like to pray for one people group at a time, Joshua Project publishes a daily Unreached of the Day prayer focus.
Would you pray with us for the unreached people groups of India? Ask the Lord of the harvest to raise up workers from within these communities, and pray for the believers we train as they take the gospel to people who have not yet heard it. If you would like to hear more about the work, write to us.