Research
Missions should always begin in prayer, not a feeling or even thorough research. The resources for the research section of this website should never take precedent over what you believe to be clear direction from God. Therefore, our encouragement to you is to not busy yourself with research only, but bathe your seeking in prayer. The Lord may direct your research and use it to reveal His path for you, but you need to be expectantly praying for direction to hear from Him. Furthermore, if your conviction is that the Lord has revealed a particular country to you, our hope in providing these resources to you is that you are well prepared for success for this country or market.
Each of the resources for this section of our website are based on the question of where do I go and what will I find when I get there? The centerpiece for the research section of our website is the Entrepreneurial Missions Index (EMI). You will find that much of our resources in this section are based on EMI scores.
Entrepreneurial Missions Index (EMI) Resource Map was created by Worldwide Tentmakers to measure the likelihood of success for new businesses with a missions purpose in other countries. It is made up of three other indexes that measure the competitiveness of an economy, freedom of an economy, and ease of doing business of an economy. These other indexes are drawn from a wide list of factors and measurements, and through combining them, a very accurate picture develops on the state of the economy in any single country. These indexes are also combined with the last full year of GDP percentage growth to give emerging economies greater focus because it is our belief that a growing economy is more significant to the likelihood of success than infrastructure or legal landscape. These business indexes are combined with percentage of non-Protestants in a country along with the ratio of missionaries to population to exhibit need of a community for channels to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Our belief is that through combining the three business indexes with GDP growth along with a measurement of need for mission work in an area we will give the most accurate measurement for the potential of success of a Business as Mission work. We define success as not only creating a profitable business with a long term life cycle but also businesses that will have a significant ministry among the population and see people believe on Jesus Christ. We believe that the greatest opportunity to have a significant ministry is among people that have little to no Gospel witness.
Q&A Forums provide an opportunity to discuss the issues facing Entrepreneurial Missions or Business as Missions endeavors. Whether it is profit motive, religious make up of a population, or something on our website, these Forums provide an opportunity to share and discuss. Our hope is that these Forums will serve to fill in the holes that you miss in your research of countries.
EMI Index will give the opportunity to view the countries versus their peer groups or against other countries. This table will link back to the Resource Map, but the main function of this area is to see how countries perform in EMI against other countries. Therefore, you will have an opportunity to view the top of the scale and the bottom without the loading and re-loading of a map.
Missionary Presence Map was created to get a snapshot of the places with the most need in a quick view. We rate every country with a 1 to 7 based on number of missionaries per million residents. Seven means that there are less than 11 missionaries per million residents. These ratings are based on an average number of missionaries per country from the Missions Handbook from the Billy Graham Center and Operation World. There are limits to the information from both of these sources. For instance, there is no way to get an accurate number of missionaries for places like Iran or China. Secondly, the Missions Handbook only provides numbers of missionaries from the U.S. and Canada, and their numbers only quantify Protestant Missionaries. Operation World will provide numbers of missionaries from any country going to any country so major sending countries such as South Korea are included. However, they also include missionaries from denominations that we do not consider to be under the Blood of Jesus Christ such as Mormons or Jehovah Witnesses. With their distractions, we believe these two sources give the best quantitative sources on missionaries throughout the world. Therefore, to minimize their negatives, we average both sources together. The 1 to 7 values that we assign to the countries based on missionaries per million residents are included in our EMI calculations.
