The International Mission Board has launched an emphasis called EMBRACE.  The IMB is inviting Southern Baptists to embrace the remaining 3,800 unengaged, unreached people groups around the globe.  The embrace challenge is different than “adopting” a people group.  The IMB explains, “It is a more focused emphasis that challenges churches to make a lifetime commitment to an unengaged, unreached people group."

A people group is a group of people who have the same language, culture, history, customs and family/clan identities.  It is the largest group through which the gospel can flow without encountering significant barriers of understanding and acceptance.

The IMB has a map on the Global Status of Evangelical Christianity.  They identify the location of concentrations of unreached people groups around the world.  They define an unreached people group as less than 2% evangelical. You can look at this map online at http://public.imb.org/globalresearch/Pages/Map.aspx .

On this map, a red dot marks the location of an unreached people group.  It may surprise you to observe that there are red dots in several places in Texas.  One of the largest concentrations of red dots is in Dallas.  In our research of our mission field, we have identified over 167 language groups.  People groups from all over the world are now present in Dallas and some of them are less than 2% evangelical.  What a tremendous opportunity the Lord has brought to our doorstep!

I am excited about the EMBRACE emphasis because Dallas, like other major cities in the United States, has become a global mission field.  I am also excited that one of the EMBRACE equipping conferences will be in one of our churches.  Hillcrest Baptist Church in Cedar Hill will host an EMBRACE conference on October 27.  Let’s embrace the unreached people groups of our mission field.