Have you heard of the 10/40 window? It is the section of the world where 90 percent of the unreached people groups live, yet only 1 out of 99 missionaries go there.
Angi Pratt and I recently wrote a book about how to use social media to reach and influence the world for Christ. The day of the book launch, we put on a college student retreat focused on the need to go to the 10/40 window. The Lord used the combination of the book release and the world-focused retreat to get me thinking of more ways social media can be used to get the gospel to these unreached groups, so I decided to experiment.
I placed an ad on Facebook for two days that pointed solely to the cities in India where the Ansari people live, a group of more than 10 million people where there is not one known believer. Since India’s people have more mobile phones with access to the Internet than they do toilets, what an opportunity to reach them.
The ad was in Urdu, their language, and directed them to GotQuestions.org, an evangelistic website. The article the ad took people to explained who Jesus was and shared the gospel. In two days, 90 (most likely Ansari) people clicked on the ad and got to read the gospel for the very first time in their language. The most shocking thing is that the cost to reach 90 Ansari people with the gospel was not the cost of a few thousand-dollar plane tickets and time spent learning the language. It was a total of 20 to 30 minutes of time and $12, our cap, which enabled the ad to run for two days.
Imagine how many unreached people groups you could reach with a few hundred dollars! Imagine if even just a handful of women regularly took steps of faith to steward their resources, including Facebook, to reach the world for Christ. The opportunity to see the world reached for Jesus in our lifetime is at hand, friends.
Do you want to try reaching an unreached people group through Facebook? Here’s how:
1. Pray and ask God to lead you through this whole process.
2. Pick an unreached people group you want to reach by going to JoshuaProject.net.
3. Find out what language they speak.
4. Find a evangelistic website or tool in their language. You can do this couple different ways:
a. Click on the language directly underneath the language tab from the unreached people group you picked on JoshuaProject.net, and then click on the different tabs and explore available resources in that language.
b. Google evangelistic websites in the language you are looking for. A good thing to keep in mind when picking a site is that if there is enough information on the site to allow for them to keep discovering about Jesus if they are interested. And keep in mind you want a site that clearly shares the gospel and offers some sort of discipleship material if they do surrender their life to Jesus.
5. Once you found the specific article, video or website you want to make an ad out of, copy the URL and head over to facebook.com/advertising and click “Create an Ad” and sign in.
6. Paste your URL where it says “Choose a Facebook Destination or Enter URL” and hit “enter.”
7. Click “Suggest an Ad.”
8. Click “Upload an Image.” Pick an eye-catching photo, even if it isn’t really related. You can save a Google image of trendy trees or something.
9. On the Facebook ads page, scroll down, and you’ll see where it says “Choose Your Audience.” This is the most important part. Go back to the Joshua Project website to the unreached people group you picked, and look at a map of what city the majority of them live in. You might have to open google.com/maps to help you identify the exact city. Once you’ve identified the city (or cities), click “City” under “Location,” and then type those cities into the “Choose Your Audience” section.
10. Scroll down to where it says “Campaign, Pricing and Schedule.” Give the campaign a name (whatever you’d like).
11. Pick your campaign budget. What is your final cost you are willing to pay?
12. Click the button where it says “Cost per Thousand Impressions.”
13. Look at the suggested bid on the right of your screen, and put the minimum amount in the “Cost per Thousand Impressions” box.
14. Click “Place Order.”
Facebook will then keep you updated on the reach and how many people saw the ad and clicked on the ad.
Laura Krokos, the creator and host of Missional Women, is married and has three kids, two of whom are adopted. Laura and her husband have been missionaries to college students for 11 years, serving with Master Plan Ministries. Laura is the staff women’s development coordinator and has discipled more than 150 girls, led more than 30 Bible studies and speaks 10 to 20 times a year. She is an award-winning author of a 12-week Bible study on 1 Samuel, as well as Beholding Him, Becoming Missional, the recently released Reach: How to Use Your Social Media Influence for the Glory of God and A Devotional Journey through Judges, a devotional to accompany the free online Bible study at TheBookofJudges.com.
Janet Perez Eckles 
Shawn Akers 
Abby Trivett 
