A lot of times I hear about the need for “more” data, and I often tend to think about that too. There are many groups–not just missionaries–who look for ways in which “more” data, live data, can help impact something. We talk about putting sensors in everything. For example:
- real-time sensing allows you to track where your FedEx package is, anywhere in the world
- real-time sensing allows people to predict where famines & droughts are going to occur
- real-time sensing allows us to map traffic patterns
This article in the Economist talks about smart sensors – businesses that are made “smart” by the use of sensors.
This applies to missionaries because we have often talked about things like saturation church planting, and knowing which villages/cities have churches and which don’t, etc.
But there are enormous security challenges to this. And one might ask – is it really necessary to have that significant granularity of detail? Some times the effort to gain 100% of information keeps us from taking steps we could take having only 70% or even 20% of the data that we need.
Many UPGs have very few churches indeed, and so you can estimate for any given village the answer will be “none.” Waiting to have 100% comprehensive confirmation of “none” will mean you never go.
Don’t wait to have all the details.
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