Missioinformatics

How Information Technology Contribute to Mission Study

Introduction
About me:

1984 - 2003: Born and raised in tech & teacher family with Buddhism & Shintoism culture

2003: Suggested by pro-Christian mother to enroll at International Christian University

2004 Feb: Encountered a missionary from a denomination later called Olivet Assembly

2004 July 1st: Studied bible, received Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and saviour, became
Christian at Tokyo Sophia Church, joined street & campus evangelism with missionaries

2005: Changed major to computer science for mission, reporter at Christian Today Japan

2006: Pioneering mission discontinued, church closed down, moved to Tokyo Baptist Church

2007 - 2019: Move to US, earned M.A IT at Olivet Institute of Technology, serve at Gospel & IT
Joel H. Ide
Editor in Chief 2019 - Present: Move to Japan, appointed as Editor in Chief at Christian Today Japan, started
Christian Today Japan Christian Data Journalism, Ph.D student of Global Theological Studies at Olivet University
History of World Mission Statistics
1974 Lausanne conference:
Unreached People Group concept developed by Ralph D. Winter

1983 - 2017:
Global Mapping International plotted unreached people in the maps

1995 - Present:
Joshua Project statistics of UPG in all nations, races and languages

2004 - Present:
Olivet Institute of Technology trains Great Commission Engineers

2011 - Present:
Global Community of Mission Information Workers formed to cowork Ralph D. Winter
(1924-2009)
2018 - Present: The Missiologist
Global Data Initiative surveys demand of data for strategic decisions

2009-06-17 Photo by U.S. Center for World Mission now renamed to Frontier Ventures https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_D._Winter
Mission Information Worker
“We call one rank in the corps of missions work around the world Christian
information workers. They make the maps and graphics of data, create the
atlases, do interviews to obtain cultural and linguistic insights, type responses into
spreadsheets, maintain files, and respond to requests for information for
strategic decision making. You don’t usually see these folks preaching at big
festivals, but without their input, festival evangelism would be far less effective
than it is. The same goes for discipling activities, church planting, and mercy
ministries.”

(2013, Larry Kraft)

Church & Station: National Map Visualizing Unreached Area

Launched by Christian Today Japan,

May 2021
Reception, 200 days after launch:
Served 13,696 pv for 1,436 users
From 20 countries and 264 cities
Average user spent 13m, max 7h
All users spent 209 hours in total
 Ex) Yakusa St
6-7k Passengers per day
Reached / Unreached Area
consideration already done,
Church planters can start
building mission strategy
thinking where to pioneer new
church immediately anywhere.

Aichi Institute of Technology as

possible spot for campus
evangelism

Near Post Office, where

people gather

Rent or buy resident or land

Road side for visibility
Church & Station Project

As a Form of Data Journalism

and
As a 3rd Framework for Mission
C&S as a Form of Data Journalism
Steps of a Data Journalism Project:

1. Forming Data Team of

Employer/Leader, Journalist, Engineer
2. Finding Data from
Government, Internet, Human etc
3. Understanding Data with
Tools, Programming, Database
4. Delivering Data by
Stories, Apps, Visualizations

2021-12-06 The poster by Lulu Pinney http://lulupinney.co.uk/2014/06/data-journalism/

1. The Team
Employer/Leader:

My Boss, CEO of Christian Today Japan

(CTJ), invested and waited me

Journalist:

Me, Covering Christianity of Japan and the

world from 2005 at CTJ, Editor in Chief at
CTJ since 2019

Engineer:

Me, Earned Master of Arts in Information

Technology at Olivet Institute of
Technology, A Software Engineer
2.1 Station Data
Why?
Conversation with a pastor: I:“Why not pioneer new
church?”, P:”Some neighbour pastors tend to dislike
new church starting nearby afraiding loss of member
and offering”, I:“Then I’ll show you where nobody did!”

A news on world busiest stations: #1 is Shinjuku st.

3.5 million passengers a day, top 23 stations are in
Japan then Nord st. Paris 24th, Taipei st, 25th.
Populated areas in Japan are all covered by railways.

Open Data Movement: It is popular. Then there must

be station data with passengers and coordinates!

How?
Google Search: Keywords “open data station list
passenger count” in Japanese. Took 1 minute.
2021-12-06 The poster by Lulu Pinney https://www.flickr.com/photos/jwyg/7021428461/sizes/o/in/photostream/
2.2 Church Data
Why?
10 years absence from Japan
Needed knowledge updates
As a hobby in free time
How?
Travel & mark in online map
Websites of denominations
Took one year to gather all

2020-01-05 Screenshot of Churches around Osaka Bay in Google Maps by Joel H. Ide
 3.1 Walking Distance is Key
Why?
Seekers: google search “church”, click “direction”

Distance between churches and stations affects

reachability

Cars popular in countryside but weaker people

(poor/young/elderly/sick/disabled) still needs trains
and reach churches from stations

Rich healthy car owners are reachable anywhere

How?
Make Pairs of All Churches and Stations

Measure distance within each pairs

Groupe them by different walking distances (WD)

Percentage of people who answered to the question
“How far do you think you can walk in your daily life?”
Define WD ranges from Government Survey
2009-07 Graph by Chart 5 in Survey of Minister's Secretariat, Cabinet Office,
Government Of Japan https://survey.gov-online.go.jp/h21/h21-aruite/2-2.html
3.2 Choose Technology with Life & Death Seriousness
Why?
To avoid XY Problem
To avoid reinventing the wheel
To avoid discouragement
To avoid skill-tool mismatch
To avoid solution-tool mismatch
To avoid wasting vast amount of time
To avoid project failure by wrong choice
To go beyond spreadsheet
How?
Tell broader view & detail of issue
Search and list all existing tools
Use existing > Modify > Invent
Check if I would enjoy using it
Check if I’m skilled enough to use it
If not, check steepness of learning curve
Check if it lacks any feature needed
Try to Know your problem and yourself
2021-12-06 The poster by Lulu Pinney https://www.flickr.com/photos/jwyg/7021428461/sizes/o/in/photostream/
3.2 Analogy: Compared to Cooking
Roles and Characteristics:

Programmer Recipe Writer Instruct, Wait Result, Rewrite if Fail

Programming Code Future Recipes Instructions to be Invented

Programming Library Existing Recipes to Copy or Modify Instructions Already Made

Programming Language Knife, Bowl, Blender, Parts, Hands, etc Detail Control, Assembling Needed

Database Storage, Refrigerator, Oven, etc Blackbox to Keep and/or Mutate

Computer Cook Does Actual Work

Data Ingredients, Meal Things taken in & served out

3.2 Tool to Analyze Data: Neo4j

Disclaimer *MySQL is the most popular open source Relational Database*

What is it?
A Graph Database Management System
Graph as in Graph Theory of Mathematics (not graphs like bar chart)
Use an intuitive query language called “Cypher” to instruct

Why I chose Neo4j:

Data Journalism’s Historic milestone “Panama Papers” which I admire used it
SQL’s JOIN clause of N:N relationship is NOT intuitive to me to solve issue
It is a successor of Object Database that helped my M.A thesis
It is built by Java Language & has access from Java, which is my most proficient one
I promote technical philosophy of Open Source software, and Neo4j does too
Secure capability to use Neo4j only features for future research
My enthusiasm and desire to try new toy, not old ones
Cypher Ex) Routes to Churches in 1000m from a Station
MATCH (s:Station {id: 'cv10087'})-[r:ROUTE]->(c:Church)
WHERE r.distance < 1000
RETURN s.name, r.distance, c.name

2021-01-10 Code by Joel H. Ide https://github.com/nehemiaharchives/cpsd/blob/master/src/main/resources/church-station.cql

3.2 Tool to Manipulate Data: Kotlin

Disclaimer *Python is the most popular data manipulation language*

What is it?
A general purpose programming language

Why I chose Kotlin:

No realistic problem impossible using Kotlin but only possible by Python.
My academic & professional career is based on Java Language, Kotlin’s brother.
Android app is built by Kotlin/Java, I built Bible App with it, using it for years.
I enjoy using Kotlin more than Python.
Kotlin Ex) Distance of 2 Locations Using Coordinates
fun distanceOf(
lat1: Double, lat2: Double, lng1: Double,
lng2: Double, el1: Double, el2: Double
): Double {
val R = 6371 // Radius of the earth
val latDistance = Math.toRadians(lat2 - lat1)
val lonDistance = Math.toRadians(lng2 - lng1)
val a = (sin(latDistance / 2) * sin(latDistance / 2)
+ (cos(Math.toRadians(lat1)) * cos(Math.toRadians(lat2))
* sin(lonDistance / 2) * sin(lonDistance / 2)))
val c = 2 * atan2(sqrt(a), sqrt(1 - a))
var distance = R * c * 1000 // convert to meters
val height = el1 - el2
distance = distance.pow(2.0) + height.pow(2.0)
return sqrt(distance)
}
2021-01-13 Code by Joel H. Ide https://github.com/nehemiaharchives/cpsd/blob/master/src/main/kotlin/org/gnit/cpsd/GeoCalculation.kt
3.2 Cooking Data Part 1 (for Understanding)
What I had:
CSV files with longitude and latitude. List of Churches and Stations with passengers count.

What I instructed:
From CSV file to database, import churches and stations,
Create & import relationship and distance of pairs.
Extract stations with churches within 500m from database using Cypher language
Remove all extracted ones from total list, the result will be unreached stations using Kotlin language

How? (in Kotlin language):

val stationsWithChurchRecord = session.run(
"""
MATCH (s:Station)-[r:ROUTE]->(c:Church)
WHERE 0 < r.distance AND r.distance < 500 AND s.passengers > 1000
RETURN DISTINCT s;
""".trimIndent()
).list()
stationsRecord.removeAll(stationsWithChurchRecord)

2021-05-18 Code by Joel H. Ide https://github.com/nehemiaharchives/cpsd/blob/master/src/main/kotlin/org/gnit/cpsd/StationWithoutChurch.kt

 4. Technology to Show
Why?
Look at the first version of C&S.
The data was visualized like:
Stations Stations
Walking
with without
distance
churches churches

500 2074 2233

1000 3271 1036

How can it be an newspaper article? What can our readers learn
new? I had NO idea how to show 10,433 stations, 9,474 1500 3667 640

churches, and 241,642 routes. 2000 3874 433

It’s just too many to show at once. 2500 3986 321

I needed some technology to show data in meaningful format. 3000 4064 243

2021-12-06 The poster by Lulu Pinney https://www.flickr.com/photos/jwyg/7021428461/sizes/o/in/photostream/

4.1 Visualization Planing
What is it?
3 phases of reaches from church to station
0m - 500m, 500m - 1000m, 1000m - 1500m
S1 S2 means stations, C1 C2 means churches
The reach increases in number from phase 1 to 3
Height of the bars represents passenger count

Why I considered it:

I can’t explain. I prayed seeking His Kingdom first.
God answered me with inspirations.
So praise God!

Why I did not throw it away:

It was the most intuitive visualization.

What I did next:

Find tools to make this thing real 2021-12-07 Drawing by Joel H. Ide
4.2 Tool to Show Data: WebGL Globe (1st candidate)

What is it?
An experiment by Google

Why I considered it:

WebGL technology fits our browser use case
Beautiful and I saw it and remembered
Misestimated how much effort needed for
modify

Why I throw it away:

The programming code was not for reuse
Too much work needed to modify for C&S

What I did next:

Keep only the idea of 3D bar chart on map
Find another similar solution which fits

2021-12-07 Screenshot from Google http://globe.chromeexperiments.com/

4.2 Tool to Show Data: Mapbox Studio (2nd candidate)
What is it?
A software as a service with GUI to create custom map
Background map data is served by the Mapbox company, no need to prepare

Why I chose Mapbox Studio:

Easy and fast development cycle, no need to write programming code, and it’s free

Why I throw it away:

Not flexible
Realistically impossible to create gimmick to provide users to choose and switch different
walking distances to see how reached/unreached ratio changes

What I did next:

Keep data representing method and map customization options
Hunt for similar but flexible tool
4.2 Tool to Show Data: Mapbox GL JS (chosen one)
What is it?
A general Javascript API to create custom map
Background map data is served by the Mapbox company, no need to prepare

Why I chose Mapbox GL JS:

Bothersome yet flexible development cycle
Detailed manual
Easy to use
Free

But...
4.3 Visualization Problem
What is it?
Base end surface of the bar did not become
square but rectangle.
Resulting in odd shaped cuboid not
representing the bar chart

Why it happened?:
Did not know 1 degree length of latitude and
longitude are almost similar only near equator
The near the Arctic pole, the more it strained

What I did next:

Wrote programming code to determine 4
coordinates on each corner of precise square
around the coordinate of a station
2021-12-07 Drawing by Joel H. Ide
4.3 Technology to Fix Problem: Square Base for bar chart
fun squareOf(lat: Double, lng: Double, side: Double): Array<Array<Double>>{

val dLat = side / (111 * 1000) // Latitudinal or north-south distance in degrees

val dLng = dLat / cos(Math.toRadians(lat)) // Longitudinal or east-west distance in degrees

val nLat = dLat / 2

val nLng = dLng / 2

val lat1 = lat - nLat

val lng1 = lng - nLng

val lat2 = lat - nLat

val lng2 = lng + nLng

val lat3 = lat + nLat

val lng3 = lng + nLng

val lat4 = lat + nLat

val lng4 = lng - nLng

return arrayOf(
arrayOf(lng1, lat1),
arrayOf(lng2, lat2),
arrayOf(lng3, lat3),
arrayOf(lng4, lat4),
arrayOf(lng1, lat1)
)
}

2021-01-13 Code by Joel H. Ide https://github.com/nehemiaharchives/cpsd/blob/master/src/main/kotlin/org/gnit/cpsd/GeoCalculation.kt

4.4 User Interface Design Consideration
What is it?
Widgets to control the Map

Left: Logo, Application Name, Walking Distance

Adjustment, Language Switcher, Social Share
Button, Half transparent to see through map

Right: Zoom in and out, compass to show north,

full screen button

Bottom: Mapbox Logo, Copyrights with popup,

user cooperation request

What did you consider?:

Leave maximum map area for user
Keep it as simple and narrow as possible

How did you do?:

By HTML, CSS and Javascript

2021-01-13 Code by Joel H. Ide https://github.com/nehemiaharchives/church-station

Big Data - What it is and How it’s used in C&S
Definition: too big to process with average computer, terabytes to petabytes in size

1 petabytes = 1000 computers with 1 terabyte HDD

= 20 million four-drawer filing cabinets filled with text

= the same as 13.3 years of HD-TV video

Small Data needs to be extracted from Big Data when it’s presented in front of a end user with a computer

In Church & Station,

Background map data is Small Data extracted from Big Data at OSM and NASA via Mapbox

Churches data is Small Data extracted from Big Data at Internet via Google and/or Yahoo

Stations data is Small Data extracted from Big Data at Government of Japan via MLIT
Big Data and Tech Trends

2021-12-04 Google Trends

Church & Station as a 3rd Framework for Mission
The Task: “Go and make disciples of all nations” (Jesus Christ, Matt 28:19-20)

1st framework: Identify Unreached Nations and go

Limitation: only certain people groups reached among a nation

2nd framework: Identify Unreached People Groups Among a Nation and go

Limitation: but only certain areas or professions reached among a people group

*We are here, we also got Technology, so let me suggest following*

3rd framework: Identify Unreached Areas Among a People Group and go

Identify Unreached Professions Among a People Group and go
Reaching Unreached with Geographical Precision
Unreached Areas is
- a concept or framework developed for mission strategists to identify and
distinguish relatively unreached geographic area from already reached ones among
a unreached people group with relatively larger population in wider location,
- often visualized thanks to the advancement, democratization, and application of
computer science, data science, geoinformatics, open source software and open
data movement
- by raising skilled Christian researchers and engineers who have enough faith and
passion for great commission to joyfully abandon secular high-paying stable most
demanded tech job opportunities
- and either for-profit or nonprofit business-as-mission entrepreneurs who share the
same faith, vision, passion and stable income to employ them.
(Joel H. Ide, 2021)
Japan Mission and Unreached Area
Japanese people in Japan are unreached people group

with relatively larger population:

2nd largest in Joshua Project, 125 million in number
1% or 1 million christians, 9500 churches

in relatively wider location, 4 main islands and 3000+ smaller ones in:

Area 378,000 km2 145,946 sq mi

Length 2,000 km 1242 mi
Width 300 km 186 mi
 Long Tail and Big Head in Frontier People Groups

Number
of
Total
People
Population
Groups

Population Range Population Range

Population Range 10^2 10^3 10^4 10^5 10^6 10^7 10^8

Number of People Groups 38 446 1536 1760 935 236 33

Total Population 3,200 268,000 6,317,800 70,958,000 295,429,000 695,226,000 912,832,000

2021-12-06 https://github.com/nehemiaharchives/churches/blob/master/frontier_people.ipynb
Wait, Where is the Charts Came From?
import numpy as np
import pandas as pd
csv = pd.read_csv("data/frontier_peoples.csv").sort_values('Population')
df = csv[csv.Population.notnull()]
people_by_population = df.groupby("Population")["ID"].count()
people_by_population.plot(y="People Group Count", x="Population", logx=True)

Again, it’s result of computer work according

to the instructions written in programming
code.

This time, in the most popular Data Science

Programming Language called “Python”

2021-12-06 https://github.com/nehemiaharchives/churches/blob/master/frontier_people.ipynb
Quick Start: Learning Data Science for Mission Study

1. Read and practice “A Whirlwind Tour of Python”

2. Read and practice “Python Data Science Handbook”
3. Work on data from Joshua Project and/or World Bank
What if I Do Not Have Practice Time to Gain Skill?
Possible options to Get Tech Skills for your Mission Study:

Timeline Budget Vision and Passion

Hiring Secular Short Term Mid Budget Not Required

Programmer Ex) Online Freelancers

Volunteer Christian Mid Term Low Budget Required to be Shared

Ex) Social Media Announcement

Raise Tech-Savvy Long Term High Budget, Big Project Required to be Shared
Missiologist from Ex) Set Up School, Curriculum, Hire Strongly
Student Teachers, get Government Approval

There should be more options. Let’s have brainstorming!

But How Come You Do both Mission Study and Tech?
Olivet Institute of Technology
The school I graduated, I was trained, was the
very school designed, founded on 2004, solely
for the purpose of raising and educating
Tech-Savvy Mission-Focused professionals,
leaders, and scholars.
Graduates like me were expected fruit of the
founders of the school, an American
theologian David J. Jang and his mentor
missiologist Ralph D. Winter who advised him
to build the school.
Why Missioinformatics?

2021-09-03 https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6839238949429395457/
Bio-x is Famous in Academic World

● Top 6 world’s most cited academic papers

published from 1900 to 2014 was about
Biotechnology. (Richard Van Noorden,
Brendan Maher & Regina Nuzzo, 2014)

● Among top 100 papers from 1900 to 2014,

39% was about biotechnology and 6% was
bioinformatics.

● Over the past two decades, 34% of the most

cited papers in science were bioinformatics
papers. (Jonathan D. Wren, 2016)

2014-10-29 Photo by Kyle Bean; Design by Wesley Fernandes/nature https://www.nature.com/news/the-top-100-papers-1.16224#/mountain

 “What you do” and “What you study”

A Kind of Work An Academic Discipline

Plumbing Work Civil Engineering

Farming Work Agricultural Science

Mission Information Work What is this?

How can we call it without a name? If you study it, why not give it a name as a full-fledged academic
discipline? Then you can start setting up a major or a department in your seminary or university with its
name. Published papers and books will have a fitting category with its name.

The name I think is better to be Missioinformatics.

Fields powered by Information Technology
Geoinformatics / GIS = Geography x IT (Roger Tomlinson, 1963)

Bioinformatics = Biology x IT (Paulien Hogeweg and Ben Hesper, 1970)

Urban Informatics = Urban Sociology x IT (Mark E. Hepworth, 1987)

Digital Anthropology (Samuel M. Wilson and Leighton C. Peterson, 2002)

Behavior Informatics = Behavioural Science x IT (Longbing Cao, 2009)

 Thank you.

May God’s Blessings of Technology be upon

Everyone who Study Mission!