All Posts

2024

07 Jan 2024
All times are now
08 Jan 2024
My email solution
09 Jan 2024
Numerators and Denominators
10 Jan 2024
Cities over 10 million
11 Jan 2024
Covid, again
12 Jan 2024
Women as Global Leaders
16 Jan 2024
Drought and Climate
17 Jan 2024
Power Encounters
18 Jan 2024
Metrics
19 Jan 2024
Crossing the chasm
21 Jan 2024
Identity Battles
01 Feb 2024
Languages
02 Feb 2024
Africa bandwidth
09 Feb 2024
Quantifying Confidence: a method for critiquing my thinking
17 Feb 2024
Shifting Center
18 Feb 2024
Fruitful Farms
05 Mar 2024
Protection is not necessarily a sign of the hand of God
06 Mar 2024
Digital Users 2024
07 Mar 2024
AI Generation Scenarios
11 Mar 2024
Changes come in three wavelengths
12 Mar 2024
Insensible
13 Mar 2024
Cities over 10 million
14 Mar 2024
iPhones, hanging out less, rising Nones, few/no movements
15 Mar 2024
The complex Body of Christ cannot be measured in real-time
16 Mar 2024
Open-air prisons
19 Mar 2024
What happens when the unevangelized die
25 Mar 2024
Torches and Legacy
26 Mar 2024
Why the unreached are unreached: not just because people don't care
29 Mar 2024
Death of the Dream
30 Mar 2024
One Way Door Decisions
09 Apr 2024
Money Transfers
16 Apr 2024
Language Loss
26 Apr 2024
Unreached vs. Nominal
01 May 2024
A masterclass in ice-breaking
07 May 2024
From
21 Jul 2024
Free will: means vs ends
22 Jul 2024
Bangladesh student protests
23 Jul 2024
Declining church membership in the USA
24 Jul 2024
Church
09 Aug 2024
Simplified Mapping
12 Aug 2024
Nature, Awe, Scale
15 Aug 2024
TIL Do No Business With
17 Aug 2024
Closure Missiology
28 Aug 2024
Unreached: we haven't finished, and mostly haven't gotten started
29 Aug 2024
All souls equally valuable
30 Aug 2024
Not everyone should prioritize the unreached
10 Sep 2024
House churches vs. Buildings: when a loss is counted as a loss
15 Sep 2024
Dangers of list-making
23 Sep 2024
Potatoes changing history
24 Oct 2024
I can do all things

2023

07 Jan 2023
The definition of closure determines the task
08 Jan 2023
Don't rush closure
09 Jan 2023
On measuring the evangelized
10 Jan 2023
Affiliation: measuring those who become members
11 Jan 2023
Measuring nominal believers
14 Jan 2023
The problem of closure
21 Jan 2023
A task is a tax
24 Jan 2023
Identity battles
04 Feb 2023
If the effort won’t scale, the task can’t be finished
12 Feb 2023
Missionary dollars tend to go where the church is
19 Feb 2023
Finishing the Task means everyone will be able to hear
23 Feb 2023
The ‘heresy’ or ‘wrong knowledge’ objection to movements
15 Mar 2023
World population throughout time
16 Mar 2023
Your list of 10 people
18 Mar 2023
Closure is not a biblical term
25 Mar 2023
Sustainable closure
29 Mar 2023
Fishers, fishing, and analogies
30 Mar 2023
Doubling
01 Apr 2023
Population size affects difficulty of entry
04 Apr 2023
Jesus Commissions Doubters
16 Apr 2023
Filtering vs Sharing in cultural conflict
18 Apr 2023
Decentralized church
24 Apr 2023
From everywhere, to everywhere
01 May 2023
Can I be a missionary?
14 May 2023
Measuring
24 Jun 2023
In the long run
09 Jul 2023
Doubling Times
14 Jul 2023
4,141 provinces
22 Jul 2023
Three kinds of givers
02 Aug 2023
A balance of processes
03 Aug 2023
Rapid expansion doesn't mean shallow expansion
04 Aug 2023
Serving movements
06 Aug 2023
Failing forward
07 Aug 2023
Center of Christianity
08 Aug 2023
It's not always insane: more is different
09 Aug 2023
Is praying Maranatha against His will?
10 Aug 2023
Less Visible Movement Martyrs
11 Aug 2023
The fruit of the cost
12 Aug 2023
More
15 Aug 2023
Seeds
16 Aug 2023
We don't know why
17 Aug 2023
More than fruit
19 Aug 2023
Global Population growth is slow and steady
01 Sep 2023
The OODA loop plus 1 decision
02 Sep 2023
Sudan
04 Sep 2023
Eschatology on Mission
21 Sep 2023
Megaparishes
22 Sep 2023
Promises and Perils
23 Sep 2023
South Korea's Subway Riders
24 Sep 2023
Nones and Dones
25 Sep 2023
Different Roads
26 Sep 2023
Leaving the Great for the Good
27 Sep 2023
Disconnecting from Global Access
28 Sep 2023
Taking the Time
29 Sep 2023
Drugs
30 Sep 2023
Population Forecast, 95% confidence
02 Oct 2023
Africa vs. India and China
03 Oct 2023
Focus on the Few to Scale to the Many
04 Oct 2023
Long Run
08 Oct 2023
Winter
09 Oct 2023
Random is
10 Oct 2023
People Group Lists as a prophetic challenge, rather than a directive checklist
11 Oct 2023
Taking Sides
12 Oct 2023
an increasingly religious world
13 Oct 2023
Defining, measuring urbanization
15 Oct 2023
Is God using us as an example to demons?
16 Oct 2023
Visualizing Gaza
17 Oct 2023
What is the role of Westerners
18 Oct 2023
Africa Food Insecurity in Africa, Mapped
19 Oct 2023
Spiritual warfare
20 Oct 2023
Doc or XLS
21 Oct 2023
The courage to move on
24 Oct 2023
Mistakes
25 Oct 2023
Goals, Paces, Years
26 Oct 2023
In 10 years
27 Oct 2023
Wars and Rumors of Wars by 2050
29 Oct 2023
Halloween Pet Costumes
31 Oct 2023
Chance and Luck
03 Nov 2023
Where to send people
06 Nov 2023
Few vs. mostly Christian countries
07 Nov 2023
Mainliners
13 Nov 2023
Simple or Simplistic
08 Dec 2023
Money for Missions to the Unreached
09 Dec 2023
Islam is growing faster than Christianity, but...

2020

03 Jun 2020
Counting Missionaries

2015

06 Jan 2015
Margin
07 Jan 2015
70% solutions
08 Jan 2015
Disengagement
13 Jan 2015
All
21 Jan 2015
Defining movements
10 Feb 2015
Q. how many missionaries from Latin America are currently serving as missionaries in other countries? (esp. in the Muslim world)
11 Feb 2015
What is the best place to source data on nominal Christianity?
12 Feb 2015
How many short-term missionaries are sent from the USA?
13 Feb 2015
Three key ideas for churches to achieve closure
07 Mar 2015
More time
09 Mar 2015
You don't need the little blue dot
11 Mar 2015
Why hugely successful annual events can be very, very bad for the long-term goal
16 Mar 2015
Are diaspora in (whatever place) reached or unreached?
23 Mar 2015
The world as percentages
24 Mar 2015
Why the differences in unevangelized and unreached population numbers
26 Mar 2015
Single males in mission
27 Mar 2015
Why discipleship without reproduction is not Biblical discipleship
28 Mar 2015
If at any given time in our life we are not making disciples, are we disobeying?
29 Mar 2015
Households of faith
31 Mar 2015
Defectors
02 Apr 2015
Jesus wants the whole pie
06 Apr 2015
What I think we must do to count the task finished
08 Apr 2015
Are Muslims the fastest growing religion, and why?
09 Apr 2015
17 doubles
16 Apr 2015
Rule of 72
21 Apr 2015
When we have to tear apart the boxes we are standing on
22 Apr 2015
An ekklesia for every person
23 Apr 2015
The importance of a vision and mission
24 Apr 2015
The biggest problem with our failures
25 Apr 2015
Success
26 Apr 2015
What do you mean by “plant churches”?
28 Apr 2015
Counts of missionaries by city or country
29 Apr 2015
Picking a church by where you can best serve
30 Apr 2015
Christianity is not declining
03 May 2015
Evangelists, Developers, Entrepreneurs, Leaders–business terms, or church terms?
04 May 2015
The fine print on Pew Research numbers–no converts projected in China, India
05 May 2015
How should Christians interact with Muslims?
06 May 2015
Pride goeth before a fall
07 May 2015
Why knowing too much can cost those who know nothing at all everything
08 May 2015
What kind of person are you recruiting?
09 May 2015
Is the very best missionary not a missionary at all?
10 May 2015
Acting like a missionary does not make you one, but not all missionaries are good ones.
11 May 2015
Are there enough workers in the harvest?
12 May 2015
those pesky Pew Research numbers on declining Christianity in America
13 May 2015
27 Doubles
14 May 2015
Had it not been for
15 May 2015
Limitless can be limiting
16 May 2015
Simple vs. Complex Culture Crossing; or, we are not all missionaries
17 May 2015
Graduations
18 May 2015
Exit ramps and extinction events
19 May 2015
Green grass and tornado chasers
22 May 2015
Misunderstood, unappreciated
23 May 2015
When we disagree about church (or anything)
24 May 2015
Not every disciple will make disciples
25 May 2015
Max Group Size, Max Movement Size, Leaving Soon
26 May 2015
People of Peace are not just the spiritually open
27 May 2015
Focusing in on a specific problem
28 May 2015
Of emergent systems and transformation
29 May 2015
If I tweet with the tongues of men or of angels
30 May 2015
Philippians 4:13 doesn’t mean I can do anything I want
31 May 2015
Believers, non-believers, sex, marriage, cohabiting, and how we engage with the world
01 Jun 2015
Moving out, or moving in? The price to be paid to be a blessing
02 Jun 2015
Antifragile
03 Jun 2015
Four stories the world tells about death, and one hellishly simple rationalization
04 Jun 2015
Reach the first place to reach all the places
05 Jun 2015
Your part
07 Jun 2015
Preparing for non-Christian religions is more critical than preparing for agnostics/atheists
08 Jun 2015
Quantity of workers is a vanity metric
09 Jun 2015
In 4 years
10 Jun 2015
The final 2,000 people groups?
11 Jun 2015
Why God gives us money
12 Jun 2015
Kinds of futures–should vs will
13 Jun 2015
Converts vs Disciples
14 Jun 2015
A church is not a random sampling of the place it is in
15 Jun 2015
What others mean by closure
16 Jun 2015
Closure, 2
17 Jun 2015
The bigger they are
19 Jun 2015
Avoiding the twin idols of long-term presence, short-term engagement
20 Jun 2015
The temptation to too easy closure
21 Jun 2015
Purity and holiness maintained vs Gospel messiness
22 Jun 2015
Seasons of Transition
23 Jun 2015
What gets measured
24 Jun 2015
To reach all, find one person
26 Jun 2015
Current trends don’t have to continue.
27 Jun 2015
Platform, Proclamation, Planting are not the same thing
28 Jun 2015
How fast are Iranians worldwide coming to Christ?
29 Jun 2015
Fluid dynamics; or, water as a symbol of the spirit and the church
30 Jun 2015
Stop trying to persuade everyone to be a missionary
01 Jul 2015
Understanding someone requires conversation, not polls
02 Jul 2015
The Time Sink of Social Media
03 Jul 2015
Practically and technically getting stories from the field
04 Jul 2015
America
05 Jul 2015
We don’t need better people group lists
06 Jul 2015
Marriage and divorce in the USA, graphed, over 144 years
07 Jul 2015
Foreign vs Indigenous Missions
08 Jul 2015
Knoxian Champions
09 Jul 2015
A team of 1
10 Jul 2015
Why should missionaries be sent to Europe?
12 Jul 2015
How 10% can shape a broader community
13 Jul 2015
Islam has the largest number of under-30 believers in China?
14 Jul 2015
Church, defined
15 Jul 2015
Frequently posed complaints over people group theory
16 Jul 2015
Worldview differences between generations of immigrants
17 Jul 2015
All of the people
18 Jul 2015
Should we stop all immigration of Muslims to the United States?
19 Jul 2015
What doesn’t make you stronger might just kill you
20 Jul 2015
Movements = Growth
21 Jul 2015
Three Challenges for Finances and Fundraising
22 Jul 2015
The average attention span of a human?
23 Jul 2015
What is the population of unreached people and the number of people groups in India?
24 Jul 2015
Dunbar’s Number and networks, movements, mobilization
25 Jul 2015
Making a difference through social media
26 Jul 2015
Good, Bad, Non, Anti Christians and missions
27 Jul 2015
Closure is not a Biblical term
28 Jul 2015
Closure Conundrums
29 Jul 2015
Why are missionary numbers going down?
30 Jul 2015
Respect the calling
01 Aug 2015
The question we don’t ask about discipleship
02 Aug 2015
How to change paradigms of church and discipleship
03 Aug 2015
Finishing the Task does not mean everyone will believe
04 Aug 2015
How do you get current information on progress in a particular UPG?
06 Aug 2015
How do you count the number of UPGs?
07 Aug 2015
Accuracy of unreached peoples numbers
08 Aug 2015
Church as
10 Aug 2015
We will NOT have reached closure when everyone has heard the Gospel message.
11 Aug 2015
How to choose a place and people to engage
12 Aug 2015
Why we should reduce qualification requirements to build a quality movement
13 Aug 2015
How does climate (weather) and placement of a cross-cultural worker relate?
14 Aug 2015
Answering 5 questions we’d rather not answer
15 Aug 2015
More about agencies, churches, and when a church is a church
16 Aug 2015
Does discipling the nations mean each individual nation or all the nations, generally?
17 Aug 2015
Don’t fling seed without a thought for harvesting
18 Aug 2015
Too many mission agencies?
19 Aug 2015
Mobilizing is getting into someone’s head
20 Aug 2015
Should Beyond exist?
24 Aug 2015
Finishing the task will not bring Jesus back
25 Aug 2015
More about agencies, churches, and when a church is a church
26 Aug 2015
The task requires discipleship, which requires time
29 Aug 2015
Without mobilization, we fail
30 Aug 2015
After the task is finished, Jesus will return
01 Sep 2015
Christianity is
04 Sep 2015
Time to double leads to long times to reach
08 Sep 2015
It's not that we have failed to finish the task
09 Sep 2015
Now and not yet
10 Sep 2015
When the church is a building
14 Sep 2015
Limiters on the spread of the Gospel
17 Sep 2015
Just because the end is coming
18 Sep 2015
Relationships and blessings
20 Sep 2015
Matchmakers and church growth
21 Sep 2015
Mapping the City
22 Sep 2015
Do you have to reach them all?
24 Sep 2015
Money and people
25 Sep 2015
If the world will not end this year, then
26 Sep 2015
Two lists of Five types of people necessary for movements
28 Sep 2015
Estimating movement size
29 Sep 2015
Teaching everything commanded vs teaching to obey
30 Sep 2015
Urbanization and the least-reached
01 Oct 2015
The hardest parts about beginning
02 Oct 2015
That will never happen
03 Oct 2015
Love vs in love
05 Oct 2015
Funding missions
06 Oct 2015
Churn vs Disbursement
07 Oct 2015
Decrease
08 Oct 2015
Sometimes it doesn’t pay to share
09 Oct 2015
Festivals
10 Oct 2015
God, glory, fame
11 Oct 2015
Freedom
12 Oct 2015
It is too small a thing
13 Oct 2015
Coffins vs Exit Strategies
14 Oct 2015
Short term trips and the nations in our backyard
15 Oct 2015
Jetlag; or, the prices we pay
16 Oct 2015
Not wanting the end.
18 Oct 2015
Is the USA in a better position to finance missionaries than ever before?
21 Oct 2015
What is 'more open'?
23 Oct 2015
Predicting the (religious) future
27 Oct 2015
To change the world
28 Oct 2015
Fundraising
29 Oct 2015
You go to Italy.
02 Nov 2015
Should churches send only to the unreached?
09 Nov 2015
Clusters vs Peoples
11 Nov 2015
Boldness vs Danger–when risk is a bad thing
12 Nov 2015
Belief is not Knowledge is not Obedience
16 Nov 2015
You can’t plant churches any more.
17 Nov 2015
No Syrian refugees allowed in.
18 Nov 2015
Where persecution is worst
23 Nov 2015
How do I find People of Peace?
24 Nov 2015
Missional accounting
30 Nov 2015
How do I create lean experiments?
01 Dec 2015
What speed of growth for a movement is too slow?
02 Dec 2015
Worshipping as though we were in jail
03 Dec 2015
Lean experiments leave prayer out of the equation?
08 Dec 2015
More simple tactics for mapping cities
10 Dec 2015
Why the unreached are unreached: access is a challenge
11 Dec 2015
I agree with Eddie on who can be a missionary

2014

23 Jan 2014
Westerners have many expectations mostly culture about a new church
24 Jan 2014
The small islands
30 Jan 2014
Statistics and soulmates
12 Feb 2014
On setting objectives and key results
13 Feb 2014
Competing traditions
14 Feb 2014
Is a generational sea change in India possible
15 Feb 2014
People with difficult questions
23 Feb 2014
Leadership defined
09 Mar 2014
Ratios show us the task is doable but can tempt us to oversimplify
10 Mar 2014
The blessing of a Christian family
12 Mar 2014
If you are paying someone to plant churches
14 Mar 2014
The problem
27 Mar 2014
If you claim the title of missionary, then
28 Mar 2014
Why swarms and structures are important
02 Apr 2014
Plausible Promise, defined
24 Apr 2014
Global Diagram 1: The impact of Christianity on corruption
29 Apr 2014
The role of information and information-seeking in mobilization
30 Apr 2014
Global Diagram 3: Growth in population and Christianity, AD 1910-2010
11 May 2014
The demonic vs the resurrected
26 Jun 2014
Measuring levels of persecution, 2
27 Jun 2014
Faith, fellowship, and Dunbar’s law
07 Jul 2014
Measuring success: quantity vs quality
10 Jul 2014
Recognizing who to watch and learn from
21 Jul 2014
The nations are coming to us
21 Oct 2014
Adopters
01 Nov 2014
Vanity Metrics
03 Nov 2014
Relationships are more difficult than presentations
05 Nov 2014
Growth
07 Nov 2014
Powers, wrestled with
08 Nov 2014
Shifts
10 Nov 2014
Disconnects
11 Nov 2014
Should
12 Nov 2014
Passing over
17 Nov 2014
Can we use Allah?
26 Nov 2014
Be an exponent
27 Nov 2014
Thankful
29 Nov 2014
Questions to ask about your area

2013

06 Mar 2013
Different kinds of mission structures
09 Mar 2013
Are hearts quickly knit, or are some just better at honoring guests?
15 Mar 2013
Those outlier conversion stories
16 Mar 2013
Significance precedes momentum
08 Apr 2013
Qualification
09 Apr 2013
The blessing and curse of Internet evangelism mixed with social media
10 Apr 2013
Culture shock in the Bible
22 Apr 2013
Computing the odds of finding a Person of Peace in the United States
16 Jun 2013
Single Men in Missions, 1
17 Jun 2013
Single Men in Missions, 2: big orgs do better?
18 Jun 2013
Single Men in Missions, 3
19 Jun 2013
Single Men in Missions, 4: Will short term have a higher % male?
20 Jun 2013
How big is a square kilometer?
21 Jun 2013
Urbanization index
22 Jun 2013
Transportation hubs key to the flow of the Gospel
23 Jun 2013
Transportation hubs, 2
24 Jun 2013
Single men in missions, 5
12 Jul 2013
Urbanization index, updated
15 Jul 2013
8 Miles
16 Jul 2013
Ministry vs Work: hours for money given vs hours for money earned
17 Jul 2013
The Wall, The Dungeon, The Dragon
18 Jul 2013
Strategic considerations: factors in planning
25 Aug 2013
Movements needed to go places missionaries can't
06 Sep 2013
A simple safety index based on the idea of par
07 Oct 2013
Not everyone is a missionary: what we look for
10 Oct 2013
Does persecution make me more Christian?
12 Oct 2013
I'm preferring the term disciple making movement
13 Oct 2013
The danger in thinking only a few are missionaries is
14 Oct 2013
I can be
15 Oct 2013
Disengagement: the fly in the wine of the UUPG list
17 Oct 2013
Pioneers and pastoralists: both are needed to finish the task
21 Oct 2013
The worst thing about CPMs and DMMs
23 Oct 2013
Does the spectacular growth of Christianity in Africa and Asia mean the Western world has a lot to learn from them?
25 Oct 2013
The mobilizing power of food
31 Oct 2013
The 4/14 Window: are adults more resistant, or just have less opportunities
05 Nov 2013
A "personal relationship with Jesus" may be a poor choice of words
06 Nov 2013
Measuring levels of persecution
15 Nov 2013
What if we didn't take candidate applications at all?
27 Nov 2013
The important questions for mobilizers to pose
11 Dec 2013
The challenge of building new mission structures
12 Dec 2013
Let's think about clusters, not peoples
17 Dec 2013
Believability
18 Dec 2013
Single men in missions, 6
21 Dec 2013
The long-term prospects of the nonreligious

2010

2005

07 Jan 2005
Phases of time after a major event
17 Jan 2005
Aceh

2004

2001

2000

20 Aug 2000
The DNA of the church