In 2014, The Austin Stone Community Church began asking God for a greater vision for the unreached. At the same time, God was also giving Redeemer Church in Lubbock and The Village Church in Dallas/Ft. Worth an even deeper desire to see Jesus known among unreached people groups.
Three different churches. Three different cities. One vision. One desire.
Through much prayer and discernment, these churches linked arms with Frontiers, Launch Global, and Reliant Mission to form the 100 UPG Cooperative. Together, our vision is to catalyze church planting movements among 100 unreached people groups.
Members of a people group share a common history, language, cultural identity, and worldview. It’s the largest ethnic grouping of people within which the Gospel can flow without barriers to understanding.
A people group is unreached if it has no indigenous community of believing Christians with adequate numbers and resources to engage its people with the Gospel. Unreached people groups have less than 2% evangelical Christians and less than 5% professing Christians.
A church planting movement is the multiplication of churches planting churches—and disciples making disciples—within a given people group or population.
Please see this paper for our perspective on Church Planting Movements.
A group becomes a church when they meet the following requirements:
The 100 UPG Cooperative fosters a culture of perseverance through suffering and overcoming obstacles together. Through extensive training and coaching, goers are equipped for faithfulness and fruitfulness for the long term.
The 100 UPG Cooperative also ensures that goers engage in ongoing peer and mentor coaching to help them persevere in ministry. Care and coaching are provided by fellow goers in locations that are geographically close to unreached regions. Some goers are members of missions organizations that offer additional pastoral coaching.
The 100 UPG Cooperative model partners with three different types of hubs:
Most goers raise their own financial support. For this reason, Phase 1 Hubs are designed to foster a culture of sending within the church. This culture of sending infuses local churches with networks of support that will help fund and sustain goers for the long term. In this way, the entire body of believers is engaged in the task of the Great Commission.
The 100 UPG Cooperative is a global ecosystem of ministries, leaders, teams, and churches. There is no one centralized headquarters for the Cooperative. The sending churches are located in the USA and the International Field Offices are located in Western Europe and Southeast Asia.
The 100 UPG Cooperative pursues greater cooperation between churches and ministries to leverage each other’s strengths in working toward the Great Commission. Instead of having churches navigate the complex world of missions on their own, the 100 UPG Cooperative helps by actively and strategically placing goers on church planting teams among unreached people groups.
By revising the traditional model of missions, the 100 UPG Cooperative seeks greater efficiency, less overlap, and stronger synchronization between necessary mission services, systems, and entities.
The 100 UPG Cooperative works with carefully selected sending agencies. The partnership between the 100 UPG Cooperative and these preferred agencies is nurtured through relationships between individuals and the organizations themselves. To learn more, please contact Trevor Joy at trevor@100UPG.org.
Whether you feel called to be a goer or a sender, you have a part in the 100 UPG Cooperative. The whole body of Christ is needed in the work of the Great Commission. Launching and sustaining long-term goers and teams requires a broad network of senders, including financial donors and people committed to praying for and serving goers.
To inquire about your role—either financially, in prayer, or in another capacity—please contact Trevor Joy at trevor@100UPG.org.