Digital Mapping
Ekballo U is working hard to democratize “mapping out the Great Commission”. We are rapidly collecting public church data across the globe which is then indexed against FTT metrics (1 church per 1,000 people) inside of Disciple.tools (the open source discipleship & mapping software).
We can provide this public church data to mission organizations on a disciple.tools server. Then if desired, we can help them privately operationalize their own data on top. This gives them a strong visual understanding of where the church is publicly along with their own private data across global regions.
Our goal is to help mission organizations, denominations, and church planting teams have better visibility into where the church already is so they can go where it’s not as they work towards completing the Great Commission.
Each district level is clickable to see how many churches there are against that administrative division population. We use the FTT (Finishing the Task) metric of 1 church per 1,000 people across an administrative division. You can also drill down further to the township level with server access.
When logged in, you can see lists of all the churches within a specific administrative division. And there are many ways to filter the data (by location, church health, denominational tags, etc.). NOTE: the example church showed already lists itself publicly on Google maps.
You can write comments and notes on individual churches to share with your team. You can also track church health metrics such as practicing communion, Bible study, baptism, tithing, fellowship, etc.
Public church data records can be leveraged to grow relationships and foster collaborative mission efforts in specific regions.
You can drill into a map view to see the actual location (or you can withhold this for security reasons).
You can also see aggregated reporting on how your church health metrics are doing.
One of the more helpful features for larger teams is the ability to automatically send secure WhatsApp links to field workers to input fresh data on churches.
And there is no need for them to remember usernames, passwords, or site login URLs because all of that is baked into our secure 1-Click smart links.
These ‘smart links‘ are encrypted by default and can also be set to expire within a specified timeframe for additional security measures.
Use case examples for field teams
- Provide quick updates on the churches they are working with.
- Use as a survey tool to record new churches for specific areas.
- Get fresh data on the health of house churches monthly.
- Track underground church movements at scale.
