Research

What is a People Group?

What is a people group?  According to the 1982 Lausanne Committee Chicago meeting, a people group is “the largest group through which the gospel can flow without encountering significant barriers of understanding and acceptance.”  Learn more from Joshua Project, the Strategy Leader Resource Kit, Orville Jenkins and PeopleGroups.org.People Groups

DAWN Research Handbook

DAWN (Discipling a Whole Nation) has a well written handbook for their field researchers.  It explains the philosophy behind DAWN’s methods and their research and then gives a practical how-to guide to field research.  This 130 page guide is good training material for anyone involved in church or missions research.  It includes sample questionnaires for churches and denominations.  Download the handbook. Additional resources from DAWN.

Globalization and Christianity

globe-2How does globalization affect the church and missionary work?  Here are links to help you quickly gather the ideas from four key books.  These may help you better understand and discuss  globalization and the world in which we live.

  • Jihad vs. McWorld, the original article from the Atlantic magazine, which later was further developed as a book by Benjamin Barber.  Barber defines and contrasts the opposing forces of tribalism and globalization and how they affect our world.
  • The Clash of Civilizations,  the original article from Foreign Affairs magazine, which later was further developed as a book by Samuel P. Huntington.  Huntington describes that future conflicts and alliances will be forged between the major civilizations of the world.  See Bruce Ashford’s review of the book.
  • The World is Flat, Bruce Ashford’s review of the book by Thomas Friedman.  Friedman describes how the world has become a more equal playing field to many of its people and the resulting implications.
  • The Next Christendom, an article (author interview) related to the book by Philip Jenkins.  Jenkins describes the shift of the center of Christianity from the West to the Global South by documenting its growth in Latin America and Africa and makes predictions based on this shift.  See Jonathan Parsons’ review of the book.

People Group and Country Research on the Web

Are you looking for information on the web about a country or people group?  There is a lot of secondary research citing the same basic sources, usually the CIA World Factbook, Peoplegroups, and the Ethnologue.  The sites I have found most useful are Wikipedia, Joshua Project, and the World Atlas Project.  They provide an overview and links to the relevant pages on other sites.

Wikipedia is a great place to begin your online research of a people group.  Most people group articles will include information about the language, history, and culture of the people as well as links and sources.   Joshua Project provides a graphical outline diagram that illustrates the affinity block, language, religion, and geographic links.  A profile of the people group is given along with prayer requests and a picture of the people.  Data related to their response to the gospel and current ministry among the people group is provided along with link to other useful websites.  See also Peoplegroups for similar information and the Ethnologue for information regarding languages.  The World Atlas Project provides many useful missions maps as well as country profiles that include missions implications.  The CIA World Factbook provides useful information for each country in areas such as government, economy, technology, population, and more.  It is useful to rank countries in areas such as infant mortality, GDP, and AIDS prevalence.  Nation Master is a similar site that compares country information from the World Factbook and other sources.