Source: Catalyst Services, November 2019
While a number of churches are intentionally reaching out to Muslim immigrants, many have failed to recognize another huge, unreached people bloc with whom their congregation may have much greater daily contact. Who are these people hidden among us? Hindus. The US alone is home to 2.6 million Hindus, the vast majority of whom come from Indian people groups largely unpenetrated by the gospel.
The number of South Asian immigrants, most of them Hindu, has grown steadily since the 1960s. As a group, these newcomers are the wealthiest and best educated of foreign-born Americans. Ninety percent represent socially advantaged groups, the traditional upper castes that are some of India’s least-reached people groups. A similar story prevails in Canada, and other Western countries also have large Hindu immigrant populations.
When the map above surfaced recently on the internet, many Christians were shocked. Excluding Mexicans, who make up by far the largest percentage of US immigrants, the swath of bright blue on this map reveals that Indians are the second largest foreign-born group in many states, especially in the East and Midwest. In the years from 1995-2017, an average of 65,000 Indians immigrated to the US each year.
Despite these statistics, few evangelical churches have seriously considered how to reach this major people-group bloc whom God has been integrating into their neighborhoods, workplaces, and schools.
Why aren’t we reaching them?
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