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PEOPLE GROUP PROFILE

The Semawa of Indonesia

The Semawa of Indonesia, numbering approximately 470,000 people, are Engaged yet Unreached. They are described as an ethnolinguistic community of Indonesia They are an Indigenous people, with Sumbawa / Semawa as their ethnic/kinship group and are in the Bali-Sasak people cluster of the Malay Peoples. Their primary religion is Sunni Islam. They primarily speak Sumbawa.

Photo by Google. (2026). Image generated by Gemini 2.5 Flash: Semawa

Fast Facts:

Affinity Group: Malay Peoples
Country: Indonesia
People Cluster: Bali-Sasak
Primary Language(s): Sumbawa (smw)
Primary Religion(s): Sunni Islam
Population: 470,000
Strategic Progress Index (SPI): Engaged yet Unreached
Global Status of Evangelical Christianity (GSEC): Less than 2% Evangelical, No Active CP Activity
People Group ID: PG022776
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Pray for the Semawa of Indonesia

Join others around the world in praying for the lost to be saved, the gospel to advance, the global Church to grow, and for laborers to be sent out and sustained in the harvest.

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Dig Deeper (Religion):

Primary Religion: Sunni Islam
Religious Affiliation: Islam

82%
%

Dig Deeper (Language):

Primary Language: Sumbawa
Language Family: Austronesian

100%
%

Media Resources in Sumbawa:

Films:

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Provided by the Jesus Film Project

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Bible Resources in Sumbawa:

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Provided by Faith Comes by Hearing

Or check out the Sumbawa bible at Bible.com

Linked from YouVersion

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Explore Lostness and Next Steps

Unengaged and Unreached

Strategic Priority Index (SPI): Unengaged and Unreached (SPI: 1), which means there are less than 2% evangelical Christian populations among which there are no known efforts focused on establishing self-sustaining churches consistent with evangelical faith and practice.
Lostness Priority Index (LPI): Frontier Unreached People Group, (LPI: 0), < 0.1% Evangelical.
Global Status of Evangelical Christianity (GSEC): Less than 2% Evangelical, No Active CP Activity (GSEC: 1), this people group is less than 2% evangelical, some evangelical resources are available, but there has been no active church planting among them within the past two years

Next steps for the Semawa:
Begin signifcant prayer and fasting for this group
Send cross-cultural teams to discover and research this people group
Begin gospel seed sowing and church planting among this group

SPI: Unreached yet Engaged

The Semawa are Engaged yet Unreached, which means there are less than 2% evangelical Christian populations but there are sustained efforts at establishing self-sustaining churches consistent with evangelical faith and practice.

Next steps for the Semawa:
Continue prayer and fasting for this group
Continue gospel seed sowing and church planting among this group
Begin training up local leaders to lead and develop strategies to reach their own people

SPI: No longer Unreached

The Semawa are No Longer Unreached, which means there are more than 2% evangelical Christian populations and there are churches consistent with evangelical faith and practice. There is still more to be done among them.

Next steps for the Semawa:
Empower local believers to begin praying for their own people
Continue gospel seed sowing and church planting
Encourage local leaders to being leading church planting strategy and looking for Unreached and Unengaged groups nearby

Pray specifically for the Semawa of Indonesia

During those many days the king of Egypt died, and the people of Israel groaned because of their slavery and cried out for help. Their cry for rescue from slavery came up to God. And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob.
readExodus 2:23-24

As the lost among them labor, groan, and cry out under false religions and sin, pray God will have mercy on them and hear their cries, that He will be their Rescuer from the kingdom of darkness and bring them into the kingdom of light.

How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching?
readRomans 10:14

Pray that the gospel will advance among those who don’t know the good news of salvation in Jesus so that they might believe and trust in Jesus.

He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed.
read1 Peter 2:24

Pray that as people place their faith in Christ, they will remember every day that Jesus' death on the cross brings real healing and restoration to their souls and joyfully share this good news with others.

And he went away and began to proclaim in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him, and everyone marveled.
readMark 5:20

Pray that God will bring people who appear beyond hope to faith in Jesus and that they will then go and tell others of the marvelous things He has done.

Sumbawa Across Countries (ROP3 - 109602) reported in the following countries:

To download a comprehensive people group list in spreadsheet form, visit our Research Data page.

Peoplegroups.org relies on updates from the field and other organizations for much of our data, so if you have any updates, please contact us. We use various international naming standards. For a list of these standards and fields, visit our Definitions page.

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