Deeper waters

8 minute 38 second read

It was during Pioneers’ international leadership meetings in October 2023 that those present sensed the Lord’s leading to embrace a fresh vision to mobilise people globally to engage more unreached people groups¹ (UPGs). They sensed the Lord calling them to a goal to double our engagement with unreached people groups over the next decade – asking the Lord for a double blessing.

International Director, Mark, puts it this way, ‘We have come to call this the “Deeper Waters Initiative” – a tangible goal that makes our call to continue to be a pioneering movement amongst the unreached specific and actionable.’²

The name was inspired by the story in Luke 5:1-7 where Jesus commands Peter to push out into the deeper water and let his nets down for a catch, despite having caught nothing overnight. As Mark says, ‘In so many ways, working amongst the toughest harvest fields in the world can be an experience of fishing all night without a “catch”. This does not mean we do not go to these people and places.’³

People groups and places

At the time no one knew how many unreached people groups Pioneers were engaged with; it was thought that it was no more than 250. Darren, the Regional Leader for Pioneers in the Middle East, explains, ‘As we did more research, we found that we are engaged with about 490 unreached people groups around the world, almost double what we had thought! And we’re asking the Lord for double that…’

The concept of unreached people groups was introduced in 1974, but urbanisation, globalisation, increased migration and some other factors have made it necessary to enlarge the language in recent years to include not only unreached people groups but also unreached places, which can be defined as, ‘geographical regions with significant populations without the gospel and insufficient numbers of vibrant local churches that can evangelise those who live there.’⁴

‘We’re asking the Lord to make a way for us to move into more territories,’ Darren adds. ‘I’m thinking about when Jesus said, “I must proclaim the good news of the kingdom of God to the other towns also, because that is why I was sent” (Luke 4:43).’

Refreshing our vision

The vision of reaching unreached people groups is not new to Pioneers, it’s one of our core values – it’s always been a goal. Here’s Darren again, ‘Sometimes we get so used to something that we need to stop and ask the Lord for a refreshing of our vision. I would say that Deeper Waters is a bit like that.

‘I’ve served for nine years as Regional Leader for the Middle East. We’ve always had four key focus areas. They are:

• Growing in Christ, encouraging the spiritual disciplines of fasting, prayer, reading scripture and many others;
• Building Teams that love and serve one another well. If they do not get along with their teammates, it can be terrible serving in cross-cultural ministry;
• Unreached People Groups, remembering that Jesus was called to other towns as referenced in Luke 4. In our context, that means that we go beyond our historical focus of ministry.
• And lastly, the focus on Church Planting. For me, it’s very important that even with the Deeper Waters Initiative, we should not forget why we are there, which is to see the Church of Christ established. Engaging a people group is one thing, discipling people, discipling groups and planting churches is another. We need to balance those aspects.’

A prayer initiative

The Deeper Waters Initiative was birthed in prayer. We often hear comments like, ‘Everything begins with prayer,’ a quote often attributed to a nineteenth century church leader called E.M. Bounds, and S.D. Gordon’s, ‘Prayer is the real work of the ministry,’ and that nothing happens without prayer. But sometimes we need guidance on how to pray into things like Deeper Waters. I asked Darren, ‘How can we pray for Deeper Waters, for unreached people groups?’

‘There are multiple ways we can pray. I think firstly we need to identify a particular people group. Our prayer supporters could adopt a people group. From our side, we can share a list of people groups which the Lord has laid on our heart that can be adopted for prayer. And then we can learn more about that people group, find out whether the Scriptures exist for that people group, discover whether there’s any work happening among them. How unreached are they? How engaged are they? What are some of the spiritual barriers? And then we can pray into them.

‘At the moment nobody wants to pray for the Houthis of the Arabian Peninsula. Nobody likes them, because they’ve been fighting a war. Why can’t we adopt them and pray for a spiritual breakthrough? Their homeland is torn apart – we tend to respond from a human or even a fear perspective, instead of from a faith one. We carried out some research and I believe that the Lord has a focus on the Houthis.

We know there is a church in the Houthi area. So how can we pray for those believers to be bold and for them to go beyond their historic communities? That’s a practical way of how we can bathe it in prayer.

‘We need information, and there are lots of projects such as Praying through the Arabian Peninsula (www.pray-ap.info) and the Joshua Project (www.joshuaproject.net) but sometimes the information is not personal to us. And that’s why we’re launching a prayer initiative.

‘In all the different places where we’ve seen the Spirit of God move, prayer went first. “’Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit,’ says the Lord Almighty,” in Zechariah 4:6. The Spirit of God needs to work amongst this people; he needs to create the hunger. And that’s why we have to pray.

‘We’ve seen a huge response in different places. People have been praying for Sudan for many years, and God is moving in the midst of that war. People have been praying for Yemen for many years, and we are seeing that fruit now as the most mature church plant in the Middle East. Despite all the hardships, despite all the brokenness God is still at work - and it starts with prayer.’

*Name changed for security.

1. The Joshua Project defines an unreached people group as ‘a people group among which there is no indigenous community of believing Christians with adequate numbers and resources to evangelise this people group without assistance.’
2. Quoted in ‘Deeper Waters,’ Reach magazine, Spring 2025.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.