The presidents of the Southern Baptist Convention’s North American Mission Board and International Mission Board simultaneously hit buttons to launch the new North American People Groups website (www.peoplegroups.info) on Feb. 7 during a joint ceremony.
With interim NAMB president Roy Fish in Alpharetta, Ga., and IMB president Jerry Rankin in Richmond, Va., to “throw the switch,” the new interactive website – developed and funded jointly by the SBC’s two mission boards – now offers a wealth of data to Christian users and the public at large.
The new People Groups database is designed to break down people groups living in a given state, city or zip code by nationality, language spoken at home and ancestry.
“More and more, we are finding that the people groups of the world, which are the focus of our international mission efforts, are also represented among our own population in the United States,” the IMB’s Rankin said.
“Partnering with the North American Mission Board to identify and reach these ethnic-linguistic pockets at home will not only stimulate an evangelistic outreach here that might otherwise be overlooked, it has the potential of evangelizing unreached people groups overseas,” Rankin said. “We are grateful for the initiative taken by NAMB to launch this site, and for the privilege of working together to bring all the peoples of the world to a saving faith in Jesus Christ.”
The user-friendly interactive website is intended for the pastor, church staffer or church member who wants to better understand and minister in their changing communities by knowing what ethnic groups live nearby and how many people they encompass.
The database pilot project was launched in April 2006 as a jointly funded venture by NAMB’s Center for Missional Research and IMB’s Global Research Department.
“With the pressing of this button, we further erase the distinction between ‘home’ and ‘foreign’ and move one step closer to ‘global’ missions engagement,” Ed Stetzer, director for NAMB’s Center for Missional Research, said during the ceremony.
With a few clicks, website users can scroll through census data to determine the nationalities and language groups present in their state or province, city, and even down to neighborhoods.
In addition, the People Groups site enables registered users to report back on people groups in their areas – including cultural characteristics, the people groups’ degree of evangelization and ministry opportunities. Once reported in by web users in the field, this information will be accessible on the website for all users.
Stetzer said further enhancements recently added to the website include the addition of Canadian census data, a more user-friendly advanced People Groups search engine, the ability to network with people online, and a ministry resource database that will point users to websites offering Bibles, “Jesus” films and other evangelism/discipleship resources.