Why knowing too much can cost those who know nothing at all everything
Too little information can keep us from a decision: the fear of the unknown. This fear can be tackled through exploration, information gathering, and small experiments quickly rotated.
Too much information can keep us from a decision, too: the “Paralysis of Analysis” is the felt need to continuously gather more data, more options, analyze more, run scenarios, without ever actually making a choice. How do we break out of the too-much-information challenge? That may be the bigger one facing the church and the missions community today.
One of the answers may be to run small experiments, iterating until you find something that works “70% of the time,” then focus on that, iterating and changing until it works 90% of the time, and scaling up.
Consider the true cost of collecting data: for every day that we dither, 43,000 people who never heard of Christ, Christianity or the Gospel die and slide into a Christless eternity.
Roundup
What happened to the unreached this week?
Each Friday I send a newsletter to over 2,400 mission activists, advocates, managers, field workers, and pastors - about what happened among the unreached, and what could happen next. Each issue comes with a curated list of nearly 100 links, and note why each is important. You can get on the list for free.