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Definitions and FAQs

What is a people group?

People group is a man-made term, but it is the church’s best attempt to interpret what Scripture says about the variety of peoples in the world and God’s desires and plans for them. IMB’s current definition of a people group is the largest group through which the gospel can flow, and churches can form, without encountering significant barriers of understanding and acceptance.

People groups can evolve over time. One or more of the following factors may define or assist in the identification of a particular people group: ethnicity, language, culture, religion, citizenship, geography, caste, clan, tribe, self-identity.

A key question in people group research is whether disciples can be made of a people of a particular attribute combination (nation, tribe, people, language) by a people of another attribute combination without barriers of understanding or acceptance. If not, the Great Commission demands that the saved from the one people group accommodate and intentionally cross barriers to make disciples of the other people group.

What is a place?

IMB defines a place as a geographic concentration of one or more people groups. In Scripture, places are named to identify the peoples within them.

What is an Unreached People Group (UPG)?

Unreached peoples are defined as people groups with less than 2% evangelical Christian populations. People groups come off and on this list as populations change, previous generations of Christians go to be with the Lord, or people come to saving faith. The list is designed to highlight, at any given point in time, possible priority people groups needing missionary effort.

What is an unengaged people group?

An unengaged people group is one where there are no known efforts focused on establishing self-sustaining churches consistent with evangelical faith and practice. A people group becomes engaged when there are the following:

Sustained commitment to sharing Christ and making disciples
Work occurring in culturally appropriate and locally relevant ways
Efforts focused on establishing self-sustaining churches

What is an Unengaged Unreached People Group (UUPG)?

When both terms, Unengaged and Unreached, apply to people groups (called UUPGs), they are tracked in a separate list to highlight the overwhelming need to see disciples made and churches started among them.

Sometimes lists of UUPGs published by various organizations differ. This is to be expected, as this term is man-defined, and organizations may view different activities within the missionary task as engagement. For example, some organizations view attempted evangelism or human needs ministries as engagement. IMB has chosen not to count a group as engaged until there are workers on the ground focused on establishing self-sustaining churches.

What is the Strategic Progress Index (SPI)?

The Strategic Progress Index, also called Engagement Progress, is the primary way PeopleGroups.org shows the status of a people group. It combines information about evangelical Christian presence and recent church planting activity to indicate where a people group is on its journey toward a sustainable gospel witness.

Unengaged and Unreached: less than 2% evangelical Christians and no reported church planting activity in the past two years.
Engaged yet Unreached: less than 2% evangelical Christians and reported church planting activity in the past two years.
No Longer Unreached: 2% or more evangelical Christians.

What is a Frontier people group?

Frontier peoples are defined as people groups with less than 0.1% evangelical Christian populations. The list is designed to highlight, at any given point in time, priority people groups needing missionary effort.

What is a Pioneer people group?

Pioneer peoples are defined as people groups with 0.1% to less than 0.5% evangelical Christian populations. Like the Frontier and Unreached People Group lists, the Pioneer list is designed to highlight, at any given point in time, possible priority people groups needing missionary effort.

PPLR: People, Place, Language, Religion

PPLR (pronounced “Peopler”) is the International Mission Board’s people group database. It contains over 9,000 kinship groups (peoples), 242 countries (places), over 7,800 languages and dialects, and over 40 religious divisions. The database allows for over 600 billion possible combinations of people, place, language, and religion and can calculate the impact and engagement of various people group combinations across the globe.

What is a PGID or PEID?

A People Group ID (PGID) or a Population Entity ID (PEID) refers to a unique identifying number assigned to each people group.

What is GAPP?

Gospel to All Peoples and Places (GAPP) is a Kingdom impact tracking tool distributed by Ta Ethni, LLC that allows ministries, networks, mission agencies, churches, and individuals to record and track their progress in a variety of Kingdom activities. PeopleGroups.org partners with GAPP to provide people group information and research within the application. For more information, visit taethni.com/gapp.

What is GSEC?

GSEC stands for the Global Status of Evangelical Christianity. IMB maintains the GSEC scale. This scale from 0 to 6 combines the state of the Church (the presence of Christians and churches within a people group) and the availability of Scripture resources with that group’s current status of engagement (unengaged or engaged) and evangelical percentage of the total population. It helps the Great Commission community identify people groups that currently have the least possibility of having disciples made and churches planted among them. IMB Global Research produces annual GSEC maps, which are distributed freely on the maps page.

What is weighted GSEC?

The weighted Global Status of Evangelical Christianity gives another way to look at how “lost” a country is spiritually. The weighted GSEC score for a country is found by taking each people group’s GSEC score, multiplying it by that group’s population, adding up those numbers for all the groups in the country, and then dividing by the country’s total population. This gives an average score that reflects both the spiritual status and the size of each group.

What is a GCC?

GCC stands for Great Commission Christian: a term used to designate potential partners anywhere in the world who work for the fulfillment of the Great Commission (Matthew 28:18–20) and share evangelical alignment.

HIS: Harvest Information Standards

The Harvest Information Standards are a cooperative effort of several organizations who share a desire to facilitate the task of taking the gospel of Jesus Christ to all the peoples of the world. HIS assists mission sending groups in fulfilling their portion of the task by improving the sharing of information through standardized categories and codes (hisregistries.org).

ROP: Registry of Peoples

The Registry of Peoples (ROP) provides a comprehensive set of codes for linking information from various major people group lists, including those found on PeopleGroups.org. The ROP is an essential tool for exchanging, comparing, and evaluating people group information from different sources. We urge organizations to code their own people group information to ROP codes.

Where does this site’s information come from?

The Global Research Department (GRD) of the International Mission Board, SBC, gathers and analyzes information collected through a global network of researchers. These researchers obtain information from missionaries, evangelical partners, mission agencies, and local networks. Much of the information comes directly from primary sources, although in some instances secondary sources are used.

What other data standards does this site use?

In addition to the Harvest Information Standards for people groups, religions, and languages, the site uses international standards: ISO 3166 for countries, ISO 639-3 for languages, and the UN M49 standard for regions.

I don’t see a people group I know exists. What should I do?

First, the people group might be listed under an alternate name, so try searching. If you still can’t find it, email info@peoplegroups.org or use our people group research tools. Please provide as much information as you can, along with links or copies of your sources. One or more researchers will review the information you submit, evaluate it in consultation with other researchers, and modify the people group data as appropriate. In some cases, someone may contact you for additional information or clarification.

What do you mean by an evangelical Christian or church?

An evangelical Christian is a person who believes that Jesus Christ is the sole source of salvation through faith in Him, has personal faith and conversion with regeneration by the Holy Spirit, recognizes the inspired Word of God as the only basis for faith and Christian living, and is committed to biblical preaching and evangelism that brings others to faith in Jesus Christ. A church that is considered evangelical is characterized by these same beliefs and principles. Some churches that are not considered evangelical in faith and practice may contain members who are evangelical.

How do I download the people group data?

Filter the people groups of the world and use Download CSV to get exactly the groups you filtered.
Download the complete, unfiltered list from the research data page.
Developers can use the free API.