Why Roman Catholic Countries Should be Considered Unreached

Thankfully, the American church is becoming more aware of unreached people groups.

Generally speaking, these are defined as populations with little to no access to the Gospel. There is, however, much disagreement over what constitutes an unreached country. The IMB, for example, considers any country with less than a 2% evangelical presence as unreached.

While the Joshua project (which has been so helpful in shedding the light on the unreached and I’m very thankful for that!), on the other hand, would agree with the 2% evangelical number, but in order to consider a country unreached it would also expect a less than 5% “christian” number. The “christian” 5% would include Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Orthodox and Roman Catholics, which would make predominantly Roman Catholic and Orthodox countries reached by their standards.

In the IMB world, the Italian people would be considered unreached, but in the Joshua project world, Italy is very reached with over 90% of the people considering themselves “Christian.”

It has been and continues to be a burden of mine to seek to help the American church to have an appropriate view of Roman Catholicism. The question is, when dealing with the Roman Catholic church are we dealing with a church that, although it has many issues, can be used by God to bring people to Himself, or are we dealing with a false religion that is on par with Islam, Buddhism, and all of the major false religions on earth?

As someone who is heading to Italy as a missionary, I believe that I am heading to an unreached nation. I believe that most Italian people have never heard the Gospel, and the likelihood of them having a Gospel conversation in their lifetime is miniscule. Here are four reasons why I believe this to be true. Read More