A World Without Chick-fil-A

Can you imagine?

I remember when the only place you could get a delicious Chick-fil-A #1 meal was in a mall food court. Near the cardboard-pizza-by-the-slice and sub-par orange chicken dealers was the long line waiting for delicious chicken sandwiches, waffle fries, and Georgia sweet tea. Occasionally, I felt bad for the bored workers at all the other “restaurants.” When we began to hear that the owner of that amazing chicken joint was a committed Christian, we would go out of our way to get more! (Except on Sunday!)

Soon we started to see stand-alone stores with blazing fast drive-throughs and indoor playgrounds. It was life changing for moms of preschoolers! To the chagrin of frazzled parents after church, those brick and mortar stores were still closed on Sundays so the employees could go to church if they wanted to.

Now we got your attention. The Chick-fil-A #1.

How do people in small towns who must drive hours for Chick-fil-A survive? Are there still areas in the United States who are untouched by the Chick-fil-A #1 meal? Probably! (An old friend just opened up a store in a West Texas town. Big day for the Texans out in the plains!)

It is an inconvenient bummer that there are billions of people worldwide who have no access to Chick-fil-A sandwiches. However, it is a real tragedy that, according to the Joshua Project, there are at least three billion people who also have little to no access to the good news of Jesus! These people live in what are known as Unreached People Groups (UPG) and Frontier People Groups.

What is an Unreached People Group (UPG)?

(Video from Global Frontier Missions).

A people group is a population who share linguistic, cultural, and even geographical barriers that prevent the free exchange of information to another group. Unreached People Groups lack enough followers of Christ and resources to evangelize their own people. Approximately 42 percent of the global population live in areas with virtually no access to a gospel movement, let alone a functional gospel-centered church.

Can you imagine living your whole life in a country and never bumping into a follower of Jesus in the marketplace?

This is the hard reality of the global missions task. The apostle Paul told us to put on the shoes of readiness to share the gospel (Ephesians 6:15). Those are not dancing shoes but “going” shoes. The call of Jesus to go to all of the ethnic people groups in the world still stands! So let’s grab a chicken sandwich, turn our eyes to the unfinished task, and ask God to lead us out!

“But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” - Acts 1:8 (ESV)