Mission is not relocation.
Sadly, the term mission is a widely abused phrase that carries alot of baggage. My hope here is to give a clear understanding of what we call "missions," which could be better understood first as "the mission of God."
First of all we must consider the Scriptures. Christopher Wright explains in his book, The Mission of God, that...
"The Bible renders to us the story of God's mission through God's people in thier engaugement with God's world for the sake of the whole of God's creation. The Bible is the drama of this God of purpose engauged in the mission of achieving that purpose with its center, foucas, climax, and completion in Jesus Christ. Mission is not just one of a list of things that the Bible happens to talk about, Only a bit more urgently than some. Mission is, in that much-abused phrase, what it's all about." Our mission flows from and participates in the mission of God.
John Piper expalins in his book, Let the Nations be Glad, the supreamacy of God in missions...
"Missions is not the ultimate goal of the church. Worship is. Missions exists because worship doesn't. Worship is ultimate, not missions, because God is ultimate, not man. When this age is over, and the countless millions of the redeemed fall on their faces before the throne of God, missions will be no more. It is a temporary necessity. But worship abides forever. Worship, therefore, is the fuel and goal in missions. It's the goal of missions because in missions we simply aim to bring the nations into the white-hot enjoyment of God's glory. The goal of missions is the gladness of the peoples in the greatness of God." But worship is also the fuel of missions. Passion for God in worship precedes the offer of God in preaching. You can't commend what you don't cherish. Missionaries will never call out, "Let the nations be glad!", who cannot say from the heart, "I rejoice in the Lord, I will be glad and exult in thee, I will sing praises to thy name, O Most High" (Psalm 104:34; 9:2). Missions begins and ends in worship. If the pursuit of God's glory is not ordered above the pursuit of man's good in the affections of the heart and the priorities of the church, man will not be well served and God will not be duly honored. I am not pleading for a diminishing of missions but for a magnifying of God. When the flame of worship burns with the heat of God's true worth, the light of missions will shine to the most remote peoples on earth. And I long for that day to come! Where passion for God is weak, zeal for missions will be weak. Churches that are not centered on the exaltation of the majesty and beauty of God will scarcely kindle a fervent desire to "declare his glory among the nations" (Psalm 96:3). Even outsiders feel the disparity between the boldness of our claim upon the nations and the blandness of our engagement with God."
If then mission is our participation in God's mission as revealed throughout the Bible, our mission is not to simply relocate to another country (although it may include this and needs to, as I will later explain) but to accept God's invitation to join him in reaching those who do not know him and do not worship him.
What is unreached people?
An unreached or least-reached people is a people group among which there is no indigenous community of believing Christians with adequate numbers and resources to evangelize this people group. In a situation like this, unless someone from the outside comes in, "unreached people" may never hear the gospel. Besides what has been explained above as the reason for mission, this is another reason for foreign mission and a reason to relocate outside of one's own culture for the sake of introducing them to Christ.
More information on unreached people can be found at:
http://www.joshuaproject.net/definitions.php?term=25
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