At the 2025 Assemblies of God General Council, Assemblies of God World Missions (AGWM) announced its new vision to answer an urgent, worldwide hunger for God: advancing gospel access to unengaged people groups.

This initiative represents what AGWM Executive Director John Easter describes as “the largest initiative we have done in 72 years” — ushering in the greatest spiritual harvest our generation has seen.

The Need

Of the world’s 8.2 billion people, 42% remain unreached by the gospel. In addition, within greater Europe’s people groups, 500 million are unreached. However, within this 42% another population is even further isolated: the unengaged.

There are currently 2,085 unengaged unreached people groups (UUPGs) in the world, representing more than 202 million people. These people live with zero access to the gospel. They have no churches, no missionaries, and no or few known believers. They have not rejected the gospel; they simply have no access to it.

Without external intervention, they will never hear Jesus’ name.

Easter felt God urging him toward this issue when he was first elected in 2023. He began asking, Lord, what is it that You truly want to do in our generation?

Over the next two years, God answered this question with an unmistakable burden for the unengaged.

🔗 Watch the Gospel Access Launch (39:53; external link)

The Call

In October of 2024, hundreds of Assemblies of God superintendents and missions directors gathered in Nairobi, Kenya. There, God’s movement toward the world’s unengaged culminated in Easter’s mind.

“This frustration just emerged in my heart,” Easter says. “I said to everyone, ‘Forty-two percent. We’ve heard this for 20 years. When are we going to take the 42% and step out, commit ourselves, and make it 41%? What if we took the 42% and made it 40%, 39%, 38%?’”

Assemblies of God General Superintendent Doug Clay was also in attendance. After spending time in prayer and discussion with Easter, Clay felt a prophetic word from the Lord, recounted in part here:

I have and am calling My people to the unreached people groups of the world, to places where My Name is not yet known, but My Spirit is already there. Time is now to step into this space, and I’m stirring a passion for the lost and the forgotten and the tribes and the tongues that are hidden from the world, but not hidden from Me. Rise up, Assemblies of God, for I’ll go before you. … As you go, My Spirit will rest upon you with power, wisdom and audacious courage. You will speak words of life to those who dwell in darkness, and they will see My light.

Clay, who also serves as the vice chairman of the World Assemblies of God Fellowship, states, “It’s not just an AGWM thing. It’s not just a World Assemblies of God thing. It’s an Assemblies of God USA thing — a Bible engaged, Spirit empowered, missions participation Church that’s going to raise up sons and daughters to go to these places where there is not an adequate presentation of Jesus.”

Easter explains further, “We discerned that the Spirit of God was saying this is where He is already redemptively moving. The issue is whether we will follow.”

As Easter continued sharing this vision to reach the unengaged with AGWM leadership teams, their response signaled yet again that doors were opening, and God’s people were ready to walk through them.

But to begin decreasing the 42%, even just one percent at a time, would take an intentional repositioning and shifting of AGWM’s focus and resources.

The Vision

By 2033, AGWM plans to grow its number of missionaries from 2,569 to 4,000, an increase of more than 1,400 over eight years.

With the gospel access vision in mind, AGWM will intentionally direct its missionary efforts toward the populations with the greatest spiritual need, closing the gospel access gap and establishing the Church among the most spiritually desolate. While this will involve sending workers directly to unengaged people, it will also be reflected across all AGWM ministries, contexts, and countries.

All AGWM global workers, no matter how or where they serve, will carry God’s heart for the unengaged and embody this organizational shift in focus.

With each new national church partnership, each new church plant, each new small group, and each new salvation, the 42% will decrease and greater gospel access will sweep across the world.

“We pray for the greatest generational response to the call of God that we have seen in the history of our movement,” Easter states.

Our Future

AGWM’s future, and the future of the world’s most spiritually lost people, lies in the hands of the local church. The salvation of the world — from the most remote tribes in the Amazon rainforest to the generations of Muslim families in the Arab World to the temples filled with Buddhists across Asia — is connected to the faithfulness of God’s children to hear and respond to His call.

To reach the unengaged, the Church must raise up and send out its spiritual sons and daughters — the next generation of missions.

AGWM NextGen Strategist Jacob Jester believes this missionary force will come, primarily, from Generation Z. He explains, “Gen Z is the largest generation in history. … We believe that if we can begin to walk with this generation from the point of the calling to the place of the calling, we’re going to see this mobilization force that begins to go into those places that nobody’s ever gone before.”

These spiritual sons and daughters stand on the shoulders of those who have come before — the missionaries who paved the way and prepared the field for what comes next. Now, because of their faithfulness, AGWM is posed on the cusp of harvest.

What’s Your Number?

The spiritual need in the world is tremendous, and the mountain that AGWM has set out to climb in the next eight years might seem insurmountable. Can it be done?

Seeing pastors and leaders come together to support this vision at its launch, Sarah Jump, AGWM mobilization and development director, said, “The sense in the room was: This is not impossible. This is absolutely something we can get behind and we can do. This is something that we hope to do for our generation.”

The number of AGWM global workers has risen steadily since AGWM’s inception. While other Protestant missions organizations have been forced to close their doors, AGWM has risen to become the fourth largest sending organization in the world. But there is so much more to do.

“While we celebrate those numbers,” Easter says, “are we satisfied with this? And the more important question is, Is God satisfied?”

Churches across the world are already responding to this new vision to reach the unengaged, each choosing the number of sons and daughters that God is calling them to set aside for His mission.

Easter’s question resounds: “Are we really going to be the first generation where we just allow our numbers to plateau? Or are we going to look at the world, knowing that God has positioned us as one of the few remaining evangelical houses to say, ‘God, give us this mountain, and we’ll take it.’”

The decades of work that AGWM has put into fulfilling God’s mission are now culminating, positioning the organization to walk into a season of harvest entirely inspired and set in motion by God. But the task remains great, and the 2,085 unengaged people groups will only be reached if the Church’s sons and daughters participate in His mission.

This is the challenge Easter posed to leaders that night. What is the number of sons and daughters that you will help send to those around the world that do not know Him. What’s your number?

by Joy Myers