Of 8.12 billion people on earth, 3.39 billion have almost no access to the gospel.
A field guide to where the world stands today — population, people groups, money, and manpower — compiled from Joshua Project, Gordon Conwell, and Wycliffe data.
17,281
People groups worldwide
7,246
Still unreached
15,000
Missionaries among them
World Population
Where the people are
The ten most populous countries account for well over half of humanity. Global median age is 30; life expectancy is 67 years.
India
1.43 B
China
1.42 B
United States
341 M
Indonesia
279 M
Pakistan
243 M
Nigeria
227 M
Brazil
217 M
Bangladesh
173 M
Russia
144 M
Mexico
129 M
30 yrs
Median age, global
67 yrs
Life expectancy
87%
Global literacy rate
People Groups
Reached, unevangelized, unreached
Of 17,281 distinct people groups on earth, less than half have meaningful access to the gospel.
17,281
groups
Reached — 7,129 groups
3.8B people · 46.9% of world population
Unevangelized — 2,906 groups
799.7M people · 9.9% of world population
Unreached — 7,246 groups
3.39B people · 41.8% of world population
Geography
The 10/40 Window
Stretching from West Africa across Asia, between 10° and 40° north latitude, this band holds the overwhelming majority of the world's unreached.
96.6% of unreached peoples live inside this narrow band
5.33 B
Total population in the window
8,731
People groups in the window
6,013
Unreached groups (3.28B people)
60% of unreached people groups live in countries closed to missionaries from North America. Just over 1,000 unreached groups — 82 million people — live outside the Window entirely.
Belief
Major world religions
Share of world population by major religious bloc, with people groups and how many of those remain unreached.
Christian
31.2%
Islam
24.8%
China
17.7%
Hinduism
15.1%
Animism
9.2%
Buddhism
6.3%
"China" is tracked separately by Joshua Project as an ethnic/national bloc rather than a single religion, so bars are not mutually exclusive additive shares.
Christian
2.5 billion adherents
7,146 people groups
Islam
1.98 billion adherents
4,031 groups · 3,462 unreached
China
1.8 billion individuals
545 groups · 441 unreached
Hinduism
1.2 billion adherents
2,395 groups · 2,203 unreached
Animism
738 million adherents
2,625 groups · 923 unreached
Buddhism
505.4 million adherents
666 groups · 511 unreached
Christianity & Language
Growing, but unevenly translated
Christianity is growing slightly faster than world population, yet Bible access still lags in thousands of languages.
2.63 B
Christians worldwide, 2024
1.08%
Christian growth rate, vs 0.87% pop. growth
625 M
Protestants
413 M
Evangelical Christians
Languages spoken worldwide
7,394
Languages with the full Bible — 5.6B people, 80% of the world
736
Languages with the New Testament only — 824M people
1,658
Languages with some Scripture — 97.4% of the world reached in some portion
3,658
Languages with no Scripture portion at all
3,736
Languages with active translation work underway — 1.15B people, 15% of the world
3,283
Stewardship
Money and missions
Tracking a dollar from what Christians earn to what actually reaches the unreached.
Annual income of all church members worldwide
$70.0 T
Tithed to any Christian cause (1.86%)
$1.3 T
Reaching Unreached Peoples specifically (1.7% of missions giving)
$1.32 B
How that $1.3T tithe is actually used:
82%
12%
6%
Home ministries — $1.0THome evangelism — $156BGeneral missions — $78B (of which 1.7% — $1.32B — reaches the unreached)
For every $100,000 Christians earn worldwide, roughly $1.83 reaches the unreached.
"If you were in a ballroom with a fifty-foot ceiling representing what Christians earn, you could stand two dollar bills end to end, twelve inches off the floor, to represent the tithe. But to show what reaches the unreached, you'd have to lay both bills flat — about half a millimeter."— Claude Hickman
Manpower
Missionaries and workers
445,000 foreign missionaries serve worldwide. Almost all of them work where the church already exists — each dot below represents roughly 1% of all missionaries.
30:1
Roughly thirty missionaries go to already-reached peoples for every one who goes to an unreached people group. — R.W. Lewis
Christians who go as a missionary to the unreached
1 in 174,463
Protestants who go as a missionary to the unreached
1 in 41,707
The Bottom Line
This isn't a resources problem.
The global church holds roughly 14,000 times the money and 36,000 times the people needed to reach every remaining unreached people group. Sending ten workers to each of the 7,246 unreached groups, at $70,000 a year, would take just 0.007% of Christian income worldwide — about $5 billion.
"Reaching the world with the gospel is not a resource problem, it is a mobilization problem."— Claude Hickman, The Traveling Team