Welcome to the forgotten land of Laos!

By Paul Hattaway

Welcome to the forgotten land of Laos! We hope as you read about the numerous needy people groups of Laos, and see the faces of the unreached, not only will your knowledge be expanded but your heart enlarged for the precious people within Southeast Asia’s least-known nation.

Laos is a land-locked nation of about 5.2 million people. Surrounded by high, rugged mountains to the north, east and south, and by the mighty Mekong River along its western borders, it has managed to develop at a much slower pace than its neighbors. Today, many Westerners still cannot locate Laos on a map of the world. In this age of instant information and the Internet, few places in the world remain as remote and unexplored as Laos. Ethnographic and anthropological materials on Laos are also scarce. Little record of missionary activity in Laos has been written, partly because the bulk of mission work took place in the narrow window from 1954-75, when all foreigners were expelled from the country as the advent of communism.

The ‘Disgrace’ of Ethnic Diversity
The Lao people today somehow see the diversity within their own country as the result of a failure on their part. One Lao stated, "I painfully acknowledge that is the fate of our country that she falls so low for the last 200 years that other ethnic groups residing in Laos came to think of themselves differently."

This attitude frequently emerges in conversations with Lao people. They believe if Laos had been a unified and stronger country in the past, that the numerous tribal people would have willingly come into the fold and eagerly adopted Lao language, culture, and religion.

How Many People Groups Are There?
...We have profiled 138 groups that we believe to be separate ethno-linguistic entities in Laos. These groups are "communities with an ethno-linguistic situation...judged by itself so different from other groups that people from this community wish to live separated by village or by quarter in the village."

In some areas of Laos ethnicity has become decidedly blurred. Fusion has taken place to such a degree that sometimes the people themselves do not know the ethnic group to which they belong. This is particularly true among the Mon-Khmer-speaking tribes in the southern part of the country. Patrick Thornbury has described fusion as "the process whereby two or more cultures combine to produce another, that is significantly different from the parent cultures."

Barriers to the Gospel
...Indeed, self-identity (how a people group views itself and its neighbors) is one of the most important factors to take into consideration when researching people groups. In 1982, mission leaders from around the world defined a People Group as, "A significantly large ethnic or sociological grouping of individuals who perceive themselves to have a common affinity for one another because of shared language, ethnicity, residence, occupation, class, caste, situation, etc. or combinations of these. For evangelistic purposes, it is the largest group within which the gospel can spread as a church-planting movement without encountering barriers of understanding or acceptance."

Missiologist Lawrence Radcliffe has poignantly stated, "Ethnic identity is not so much in the blood as it is in the head (or heart) of the subject, or the observer." From a Christian viewpoint, it is vital to understand the linguistic, cultural and ethnic barriers that exist between peoples. These barriers often stop the flow of the gospel from one group to another.

In 1900, very few Christians could be found in the entire nation of South Korea. Today, at least 30-35 percent of the population follow Jesus Christ. Part of the reason for this phenomenal growth is because South Korea is a completely mono-ethnic and mono- linguistic nation. There are no tribal people whatsoever within its borders. Because of this, the gospel was able to spread easily and quickly within the Korean culture. There were no communication barriers to deal with, and no inter-racial prejudice.

In Laos, however, Christianity has gained widespread acceptance among a mere handful of the 138 ethnic groups, including the Khmu, Lahu, and Bru. The gospel has not spread easily across ethnic and linguistic lines. At present, the total number of believers (of all persuasions) in the country is believed to number about 100,000, or less than two percent of the population.

Many mission agencies have looked at the relatively small population of Laos and decided there are other more needy nations. From a people group perspective, however, Laos qualifies as one of the most needy and neglected countries in the entire world.

Is Laos a Buddhist Nation?
In Laos, Buddhism is commonly viewed as the dominant religion of the people. But animism plays an equally important daily role in the lives of people in Laos, particularly among the rural and tribal peoples. Even those who are professing Buddhists mix their faith with many rituals and ceremonies from pre-Buddhist spirit worship. The central image at the Si Muang Temple in Vientiane for example is not a Buddha, as might be presumed, but the lak muang (city pillar), in which the guardian spirit for the city is believed to reside. Many local residents make daily offerings.

Theraveda Buddhism has mainly taken hold among the ethnic Lao majority and several other Tai-speaking groups. The That Luang (‘Grand Stupa’) is housed in Vientiane. Marcel Zago wrote, "The That Luang contains the spirit...of the Lao nation, and the barometer of the nation’s fortune, and simultaneously the cause of its prosperity. Every monarchy has its That, just as it has its protective palladium and statue... The That is considered the receptacle of power, while the divinities who reside in the Lak Muang are considered as the center of the city."

The AD 2000 Movement has defined the difference between "reached" and "unreached" by saying a group may be considered statistically reached if it contains more than five percent adherents to any form of Christianity, including two percent adherents to evangelical Christianity. Using this guideline, of the 138 groups we have profiled, nine could be considered reached, while 129 are unreached, of which 36 contain at least some known believers.

It is for the glory of God among these long-neglected and unevangelized groups that we have written this book.

Two thousand years after Jesus Christ died for their sins, the people of Laos are still waiting to hear the gospel for the first time. We hope that Christians all over the world will be motivated to pray for Laos and seek God for what they might do to see all peoples in Laos worshipping Him who said, "I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. No man comes to the Father except through Me."

Paul Hattaway is the director of Asia Minorities Outreach, a mission organization that does research on the people groups of East Asia. Email address: amo@xc.org Web Site: www.antioch.com.sg/mission/asianmo/ "Assisting in the salvation of Asia’s ethnic minorities who are the most unreached and the least helped." Faces of the Unreached in Laos: Southeast Asia's Forgotten Nation For centuries land-locked Laos has been the forgotten nation of Southeast Asia: forgotten by politicians, explorers and missionaries alike. Asian Minorities Outreach presents "Faces of the Unreached in Laos: Southeast Asia’s Forgotten Nation" to Christians around the world, in a bid to raise prayer, awareness, and outreach to the needy 138 people groups in Laos. This is the first known book, secular or Christian, to profile all the peoples of Laos, who one day will be numbered among the multitude of worshippers around the throne of Jesus Christ. ISBN# 974-85302-7-2 Price: US $15 (Postage Paid) Asian Minorities Outreach PO Box 901 Palestine, TX 75802