The Assemblies of God World Missions (AGWM) has announced what leaders are calling its largest initiative in greater than seven many years, pledging to expand missionary efforts to succeed in the world’s unengaged and unreached people groups.
The plan was unveiled through the 2025 Assemblies of God General Council, held Aug. 4–8 in Orlando, Florida. Leaders described it as a renewed global commitment to “answer an urgent, worldwide hunger for God” by specializing in populations with little or no access to the gospel.
AGWM Executive Director John Easter said the vision represents probably the most significant mobilization because the organization’s founding. “This initiative represents what we imagine will usher in the best spiritual harvest our generation has seen,” Easter said in a Sept. 5 media announcement.
According to AGWM, 42% of the world’s 8.2 billion people remain unreached by the gospel, including 500 million inside Europe alone. Within this population, greater than 202 million belong to 2,085 unengaged unreached people groups (UUPGs) that don’t have any churches, missionaries or known believers. “They haven’t rejected the gospel; they simply don’t have any access to it,” AGWM said.
Easter said he felt the burden of this challenge when he assumed leadership in 2023, in search of God’s direction on address the 42% statistic that has endured for twenty years. The conviction grew during a gathering of tons of of superintendents and missions directors in Nairobi, Kenya, in October 2024.
“This frustration just emerged in my heart,” Easter said. “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, also vice chairman of the World Assemblies of God Fellowship, joined Easter in prayer on the Nairobi event. He said he also sensed a prophetic call to renewed urgency in evangelism.
“It’s not only an AGWM thing. It’s not only 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 lift up little kids to go to those places where there is just not an adequate presentation of Jesus,” Clay said.
“We discerned that the Spirit of God was saying that is where He is already redemptively moving,” Easter added. “The issue is whether or not we’ll follow.”
Easter shared the vision with AGWM leadership teams, who agreed that decreasing the variety of unreached required a big shift of focus and resources.
According to the media release, AGWM has set a goal to extend its missionary force from 2,569 to 4,000 by 2033. “With the gospel access vision in mind, AGWM will intentionally direct its missionary efforts toward the populations with the best spiritual need, closing the gospel access gap and establishing the church amongst probably the most spiritually desolate,” the statement said.
“All AGWM global staff, irrespective of how or where they serve, will carry God’s heart for the unengaged and embody this organizational shift in focus,” the discharge added.
The 42% figure, AGWM leaders said, will decrease with each latest national church partnership, church plant, small group and individual conversion. “We pray for the best generational response to the decision of God that we’ve got seen within the history of our Movement,” Easter stated.
AGWM NextGen Strategist Jacob Jester emphasized that Generation Z must play a central role in fulfilling the mission. He said local churches must raise up the following generation of missionaries to succeed in those that have never heard of Jesus, from distant Amazon tribes to Muslim families within the Arab world to Buddhist communities across Asia.
“Gen Z is the most important generation in history,” Jester said. “We imagine that if we are able to begin to walk with this generation from the purpose of the calling to the place of the calling, we’re going to see this mobilization force that begins to enter those places that no person’s ever gone before.”
The AGWM release acknowledged the efforts of previous generations of missionaries but noted the dimensions of the present vision could seem daunting. Still, leaders on the Orlando launch said the sense of unity and enthusiasm gave them confidence.
Sarah Jump, AGWM’s mobilization and development director, said the event inspired hope: “The sense within the room was: This is just not inconceivable. This is completely something we are able to get behind and we are able to do. This is something that we hope to do for our generation.”
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