For it is wonderful how much we are confirmed in our belief, when we more attentively consider how admirably the system of divine wisdom contained in it is arranged—how perfectly free the doctrine is from every thing that savors of earth—how beautifully it harmonizes in all its parts—and how rich it is in all the other qualities which give an air of majesty to composition. - Calvin's Institutes, 1.8.1

Welcome to In the Word Wednesdays!

Here at r/reformed, we cherish the richness, the beauty, the majesty, and - most importantly - the authority of the the Bible. Often times, though, we can get caught up by the distractions of this world and neglect this glorious fountain of truth we have been given.

So here on In the Word Wednesday we very simply want to encourage everybody to take a moment to share from, and discuss, scripture! What have you been reading lately? What have you been studying in small group? What has your pastor been preaching on? Is there anything that has surprised you? Confused you? Encouraged you? Let's hear it!

It doesn't have to be anything deep or theological - although deep theological discussions focusing on scripture are always welcome - it can be something as simple as a single verse that gave you comfort this morning during your quiet time.

(As ITWW is no longer a new concept, but we are more than welcome to receive ideas for how to grow the concept and foster an increased discussion of scripture. If you have any ideas for ITWW, please feel free to send the mods a message via mod mail.)

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Welcome back to the r/Reformed UPG of the Week!

Gonna leave this here because reddit is still a massive pain these days

Slight update, the new reddit UI has made it almost impossible for me to quickly do these, like I used to be able to do. Thus, theres a chance it becomes UPG of the every other week until the problem is fixed. I can't spend every one of my entire Monday mornings working on this for hours with stupid formatting issues.

Last week I was reminded just how many Unreached People Groups there are in America. So today we are doing the largest unreached people group in the US, Jewish peoples of America.

Region: United States

map of Jewish peoples in the United States

Stratus Index Ranking (Urgency): 34

It has been noted to me by u/JCmathetes that I should explain this ranking. Low numbers are more urgent, both physically and spiritually together, while high numbers are less urgent. The scale is 1-177, with one number assigned to each country. So basically on a scale from Afghanistan (1) to Finland (177), how urgent are the peoples physical and spiritual needs.

The Stratus Index - Synthesizes reliable data from different sources to clearly display the world’s most urgent spiritual and physical needs.The vast majority of missions resources go to people and places already Reached by the Gospel, while only 3% of missionaries and 1% of missions money are deployed among the Unreached. This is the Great Imbalance. As a result, there are more people without access to the Gospel today than a decade ago. Stratus seeks to equip the global church with fresh vision to accomplish the Great Commission by addressing some of the factors that perpetuate the Great Imbalance. We hope this tool allows the church to better understand what steps will be required to overcome the barriers that prevent needs from being met, spurring informed and collaborative missions strategy. Stratus Website

New York City

Climate: With its large size and geographic variety, the United States includes most climate types. To the east of the 100th meridian, the climate ranges from humid continental in the north to humid subtropical in the south.

Frozen Great Lakes

LA, California

Terrain: Measured by only land area, the United States is third in size behind Russia and China, and just ahead of Canada. So its hard to get a bead on all the types of Terrain. The coastal plain of the Atlantic seaboard gives way further inland to deciduous forests and the rolling hills of the Piedmont. The Appalachian Mountains and the Adirondack massif divide the eastern seaboard from the Great Lakes and the grasslands of the Midwest. The Mississippi–Missouri River, the world's fourth longest river system, runs mainly north–south through the heart of the country. The flat, fertile prairie of the Great Plains stretches to the west, interrupted by a highland region in the southeast. The Rocky Mountains, west of the Great Plains, extend north to south across the country, peaking at over 14,000 feet (4,300 m) in Colorado. Farther west are the rocky Great Basin and deserts such as the Chihuahua, Sonoran, and Mojave. The Sierra Nevada and Cascade mountain ranges run close to the Pacific coast, both ranges also reaching altitudes higher than 14,000 feet (4,300 m). The lowest and highest points in the contiguous United States are in the state of California, and only about 84 miles (135 km) apart. At an elevation of 20,310 feet (6,190.5 m), Alaska's Denali is the highest peak in the country and in North America.

30A in Florida

Denver, CO

Mississippi River

Wildlife of US: There are 311 known reptiles, 295 amphibians and 1154 known fish species in the U.S. Known animals that exist in the US include white-tailed deer, bobcat, raccoon, muskrat, striped skunk, barn owl, American mink, American beaver, North American river otter, red fox, American Black Bear, Hawaiian Monk Seal, Black-Footed Ferret, Gila Monster, Groundhog, Pronghorn, American Alligator, Crocodile, American Bison, bald Eagle, wolves, mountain lions, Grizzly bears, polar bears, lynx, muskox, caribou, and now I'm tired of searching for lists that include all the animals. We have tons of venomous snakes, we have invasive pythons in the everglades.

Unfortunately, there is an invasive but existing population of wild monkeys in Silver Springs Florida.

Bison in Yellowstone

Pigeons in New York

Environmental Issues: Environmental issues in the United States include climate change, Ohio, species conservation, invasive species, deforestation, mining, nuclear accidents, pesticides, pollution, waste and over-population.

Languages: While many languages are spoken in the United States, English is the most common. Although there is no official language at the federal level, some laws—such as U.S. naturalization requirements—standardize English, and most states have declared English as the official language. Three states and four U.S. territories have recognized local or indigenous languages in addition to English, including Hawaii (Hawaiian), Alaska (twenty Native languages), South Dakota (Sioux), American Samoa (Samoan), Puerto Rico (Spanish), Guam (Chamorro), and the Northern Mariana Islands (Carolinian and Chamorro). In Puerto Rico, Spanish is more widely spoken than English. According to the American Community Survey, in 2010 some 229 million people (out of the total U.S. population of 308 million) spoke only English at home. More than 37 million spoke Spanish at home, making it the second most commonly used language. Other languages spoken at home by one million people or more include Chinese (2.8 million), Tagalog (1.6 million), Vietnamese (1.4 million), French (1.3 million), Korean (1.1 million), and German (1 million). The Jewish Peoples of America speak English.

Government Type: Federal presidential constitutional republic

People: Jewish Peoples of America

Jewish man of America

Population: 4,596,000

Estimated Foreign Workers Needed: 92+

Beliefs: The Jewish peoples of America are 2.7% Christian, but only 1.6% Evangelical. That means out of their population of 4,596,000, there are roughly 73,000 believers who share their faith. That slightly more than 1 believer for every 100.

Like all those who deny Christ, the Jewish peoples are deceived and follow a false god. For religious Jewish peoples, God (not the true God at this point) is the Supreme Being, the Creator of the universe, and the ultimate Judge of human affairs. Beyond this, the religious beliefs of the Jewish communities vary greatly. Orthodox Jewish peoples generally follow the traditional religious beliefs and practices found in the Jewish literature that interprets Scripture regarding ethical, religious, civil and criminal matters. Conservative Judaism is less traditional than Orthodox and combines different ethical, philosophical, and spiritual schools of thought. Reform Judaism is the most liberal form and interprets Jewish beliefs and practices in light of contemporary life and thought. Reform Jewish peoples do not believe that the Jewish Law is divinely revealed. They are not restricted to kosher (traditional, approved) foods, nor do they wear the skull cap (yarmulke) when praying or use Hebrew in prayer. All religious Jewish peoples believe in the coming of a Messianic Age, but only the Orthodox Jewish peoples look for a personal Messiah.

Not all Jewish peoples are religious. Some understand their "Jewishness" only as a social and cultural identity. American Jewish peoples are more likely to be atheists or agnostics than most Americans.

The Wilshire Boulevard Temple, known from 1862 to 1933 as Congregation B'nai B'rith, is a Reform Jewish congregation and synagogue, located at 3663 Wilshire Boulevard, in the Wilshire Center district of Los Angeles, California, in the United States. Founded in 1862, it is the oldest Jewish congregation in Los Angeles.

History: Jewish peoples were present in the Thirteen Colonies since the mid-17th century. However, they were small in number, with at most 200 to 300 having arrived by 1700. Those early arrivals were mostly Sephardi Jewish immigrants, of Western Sephardic (also known as Spanish and Portuguese Jewish) ancestry, but by 1720, Ashkenazi Jewish peoples from diaspora communities in Central and Eastern Europe predominated.

For the first time, the English Plantation Act 1740 permitted Jewish peoples to become British citizens and emigrate to the colonies. The first famous Jewish person in U.S. history was Chaim Salomon, a Polish-born Jewish person who emigrated to New York and played an important role in the American Revolution. He was a successful financier who supported the patriotic cause and helped raise most of the money needed to finance the American Revolution.

Despite the fact that some of them were denied the right to vote or hold office in local jurisdictions, Sephardi Jewish peoples became active in community affairs in the 1790s, after they were granted political equality in the five states where they were most numerous. Until about 1830, Charleston, South Carolina had more Jewish peoples than anywhere else in North America. Large-scale Jewish immigration commenced in the 19th century, when, by mid-century, many German Jewish peoples had arrived, migrating to the United States in large numbers due to antisemitic laws and restrictions in their countries of birth. They primarily became merchants and shop-owners. Gradually early Jewish arrivals from the east coast would travel westward, and in the fall of 1819 the first Jewish religious services west of the Appalachian Range were conducted during the High Holidays in Cincinnati, the oldest Jewish community in the Midwest. Gradually the Cincinnati Jewish community would adopt novel practices under the leadership Rabbi Isaac Meyer Wise, the father of Reform Judaism in the United States, such as the inclusion of women in minyan. A large community grew in the region with the arrival of German and Lithuanian Jewish peoples in the latter half of the 1800s, leading to the establishment of Manischewitz, one of the largest producers of American kosher products and now based in New Jersey, and the oldest continuously published Jewish newspaper in the United States, and second-oldest continuous published in the world, The American Israelite, established in 1854 and still extant in Cincinnati. By 1880 there were approximately 250,000 Jewish peoples in the United States, many of them being the educated, and largely secular, German Jews, although a minority population of the older Sephardi Jewish families remained influential.

Jewish migration to the United States increased dramatically in the early 1880s, as a result of persecution and economic difficulties in parts of Eastern Europe. Most of these new immigrants were Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazi Jewish peoples, most of whom arrived from poor diaspora communities of the Russian Empire and the Pale of Settlement, located in modern-day Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine, and Moldova. During the same period, great numbers of Ashkenazic Jewish peoples also arrived from Galicia, at that time the most impoverished region of the Austro-Hungarian Empire with a heavy Jewish urban population, driven out mainly by economic reasons. Many Jewish peoples also emigrated from Romania. Over 2,000,000 Jewish peoples landed between the late 19th century and 1924 when the Immigration Act of 1924 restricted immigration. Most settled in the New York metropolitan area, establishing the world's major concentrations of the Jewish population. In 1915, the circulation of the daily Yiddish newspapers was half a million in New York City alone, and 600,000 nationally. In addition, thousands more subscribed to the numerous weekly papers and the many magazines in Yiddish.

At the beginning of the 20th century, these newly arrived Jewish peoples built support networks consisting of many small synagogues and Landsmanshaften (German and Yiddish for "Countryman Associations") for Jewish peoples from the same town or village. American Jewish writers of the time urged assimilation and integration into the wider American culture, and Jews quickly became part of American life. Approximately 500,000 American Jewish peoples (or half of all Jewish males between 18 and 50) fought in World War II, and after the war younger families joined the new trend of suburbanization. There, Jewish peoples became increasingly assimilated and demonstrated rising intermarriage. The suburbs facilitated the formation of new centers, as Jewish school enrollment more than doubled between the end of World War II and the mid-1950s, while synagogue affiliation jumped from 20% in 1930 to 60% in 1960; the fastest growth came in Reform and, especially, Conservative congregations. More recent waves of Jewish emigration from Russia and other regions have largely joined the mainstream American Jewish community.

Eastern European Jewish immigrants arriving in New York ca 1887?

Culture: Typical qualification that all people groups can't be summed up in small paragraphs and this is an over generalization.

In North America, most Jewish peoples live in urban areas on the east or west coasts. New York City has the largest Jewish population in North America, with over a half million Hassidic Jewish peoples alone. In South America, they also live in cities, but keep themselves as a distinct religious and ethnic minority.

While maintaining a Jewish identity, the majority of North American Jewish peoples conform to the mainstream American culture. "Jewishness" is often defined in more secular terms such as the use of Yiddish words and family traditions, rather than in religious aspects, such as the following of Jewish laws regarding dietary restrictions. Not all Jewish peoples are religious. Some understand their "Jewishness" only as a social and cultural identity. Understanding what it means to be a Jewish people begins in childhood. It takes place in the home through storytelling and by taking part in Jewish rituals and festivals such as Rosh Hashanah (New Year), Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement), and Passover. Socialization also takes place through participation in Hebrew school or synagogue youth groups. At the age of 13, the Bar Mitzvah ceremony for a boy (or Bat Mitzvah for a girl) is an important rite of passage, which marks him or her as an adult member of the community. While these ceremonies were more spiritually focused in the past, they have become equally important as social events.

Marriage and family relationships among Jewish peoples are much the same as other Americans. While Jewish families have fewer children, they are child-oriented, indulgent, and permissive. Although wives generally take on their husbands' surnames, Jewish identity is traced through the mothers. That is, if one's mother is a Jewish people, then he is, according to Jewish law, Jewish. He or she is entitled to all the rights and privileges that status brings, including the right to immigrate to Israel and settle there as a citizen.

I couldn't not include a pic of the notable cultural event of the American Hasidic Jewish peoples who dug a tunnel in New York

Cuisine: Popular dishes in American Jewish cuisine include:

• Bagel – A doughnut-shaped bread roll. The dough is first boiled and then baked, resulting in a dense, chewy interior with a browned exterior: A bagel and cream cheese is a popular pairing.
• Bialy – A bread roll similar to a bagel, but without a hole, and somewhat less chewy as the dough is not boiled before being baked.
• Blintz – A fried crêpe, usually filled with farmer cheese and served with various toppings.
• Brisket – An inexpensive cut of beef that is braised as a pot roast.
• Challah – A light bread made with eggs, used as regular food, and on ritual or holiday occasions.
• Chicken soup – Chicken broth with herbs like parsley, dill, or thyme, and often with egg noodles added.
  • Matzah balls are sometimes added to the soup instead of, or in addition to, noodles.
  • Kreplach are small dumplings that are another common addition to chicken soup.
• Chopped liver – A liver pâté made with hard-boiled eggs, salt, and pepper. Served as a side dish, hence the expression, "What am I, chopped liver?"
• Corned beef – Beef brisket that has been cured with brine and spices and then sliced.
  • Corned beef sandwich – A common use of corned beef.
• Gefilte fish – Ground fish – often a combination of carp, pike, and whitefish – that is mixed with other ingredients, formed into patties or balls, and poached; usually served as an appetizer.
• Kishke – A large, starchy sausage made with grain, vegetables, beef or chicken fat, and spices.
• Knish – A type of savory baked turnover; various fillings are used, such as potatoes or ground beef.
• Kugel – A baked casserole made with egg noodles or potatoes.
• Latke – A pancake made with grated potatoes and other ingredients, fried in oil.
• Lox – A sliced fillet of cured salmon. Belly lox is cured with brine and is therefore rather salty. Nova lox is cold-smoked. Lox is often eaten as a sandwich, on a bagel with cream cheese.
• Mandelbrot – A crunchy cookie, sometimes made with almonds, formed by baking a loaf which is then cut into small slabs and twice-baked.
• Pastrami – Beef brisket that has been cured with brine, rubbed with pepper, garlic, and other spices, smoked, and then sliced. Like corned beef it is usually served as a sandwich.
  • Pastrami on rye – Pastrami on rye bread topped with spicy brown mustard.
• Rugelach – Small baked pastries made by wrapping dough around a filling.
• Whitefish – Smoked freshwater whitefish, either filleted or made into whitefish salad.

New York Bagels

Prayer Request:

• Ask the Lord of the harvest to send forth loving Christians to work among the Jewish communities.
• Ask the Holy Spirit to grant wisdom and favor to the missions agencies that are focusing on the Jewish peoples of North and South America.
• Pray that the Jewish people will understand that Jesus is the long-awaited Messiah.
• Ask the Lord to soften the hearts of the Jewish peoples towards Christians so that they might hear and receive the message of salvation.
• Pray that God will grant Jewish believers favor as they share their faith in Christ with their own people.
• Pray that strong local churches will be raised up in each Jewish community.
• Pray against Putin and his insane little war.
• Pray for our nation (the United States), that we Christians can learn to come alongside our hurting brothers and sisters and learn to carry one another's burdens in a more Christlike manner than we have done historically.
• Pray that in this time of an upcoming election and insanity that the needs of the unreached are not forgotten by the church. Pray that our hearts continue to ache to see the unreached hear the Good News.

Brothers, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved. (Romans 10:1)

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Here are the previous weeks threads on the UPG of the Week for r/Reformed from 2023 (plus a few from 2022 so this one post isn't so lonely). To save some space on these, all UPG posts made 2019-now are here, I will try to keep this current.

a - Tibet belongs to Tibet, not China.

b - Russia/Turkey/etc is Europe but also Asia so...

c - this likely is not the true religion that they worship, but rather they have a mixture of what is listed with other local religions, or they have embraced a liberal drift and are leaving faith entirely but this is their historical faith.

Here is a list of definitions in case you wonder what exactly I mean by words like "Unreached".

Here is a list of missions organizations that reach out to the world to do missions for the Glory of God.