New York City
12 unreached groups, one metro
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12 unreached groups, one metro
Take the 7 train to the end of the line. Step off at Flushing–Main Street and you’re standing in the most linguistically diverse square mile on earth.
Walk south on Roosevelt Avenue. Within four blocks you’ll pass Bangladeshi grocery stores with stacked bags of Toor dal, Pakistani restaurants serving biryani and nihari, Afghan kebab shops with naan baking in tandoor ovens, and a Bukharan Jewish bakery selling lepyoshka bread.
This is not a food tour. This is a map of who lives here — and who nobody is reaching.
South Asian grocery, Jackson Heights
New York’s diaspora is not one community — it’s dozens. The Korean population built Flushing into a second Seoul. Indian families established Jackson Heights as Little India. Chinese communities span from Chinatown to Sunset Park. Pakistani and Bangladeshi families fill the apartment blocks along Hillside Avenue in Queens.
Each community has its own restaurants, grocery stores, cultural centers, and places of worship. Each has its own language, its own holidays, its own networks. And each has a different relationship to the gospel.
Queens, New York
| People Group | US Population | Religion | Evangelical |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hindi-speaking | 1,204,000 | Hinduism | 1.0% |
| Gujarati | 621,000 | Hinduism | 0.6% |
| Urdu-speaking | 545,000 | Islam | 0.0% |
| Bengali-speaking | 387,000 | Islam | 0.0% |
| Gujar (Hindu) | 269,000 | Hinduism | 0.0% |
| Shaikh (Bengali) | 211,000 | Islam | 0.5% |
| Turk | 207,000 | Islam | 0.5% |
These are not abstract statistics. These are the owners of the grocery store on Roosevelt Avenue. The parents picking up their kids from PS 20. The grad students in the Columbia engineering lab. They live in your borough. They’ve never been inside a church.
The Korean community has roughly one church per 2,000 people. The Urdu-speaking community has zero churches for 545,000 people.
New York City
Most Will Never Be Invited Home.
New York ranks #2 in the US for international students. China sends 36.7% of them — the dominant origin by far.
Most international students in the US will never be invited into an American home during their entire degree. They arrive from countries where the gospel is restricted or unknown. They study for 2–6 years, often lonely, often open to new relationships and ideas. Then they go home.
A student reached today is a church planter sent home tomorrow.
“Hindu students rarely consider the gospel apart from personal Christian relationships. The relational bridge is not optional — it is the mechanism.”— Reaching Internationals, “Building Bridges to South Asians” (2023)
“International students function as ‘knowledge diasporas’ — agents of capital circulation between home and host countries. Their conversion has multiplicative potential.”— Brooks & Waters, “International Students and Alternative Visions of Diaspora” (2021)
“You can go to the mission field without leaving your city — and millions are going to the city without entering the mission field.”
— Tim Keller
“After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne.”
Revelation 7:9
The nations didn’t wait. They took the 7 train.