Ministry Focus Areas
About Joshua Project
Joshua Project helps the global Church know where the gospel is still least accessible.
Vision: To see God glorified through an abundance of Christ followers within every people group.
Mission: To highlight peoples and places with the least access or response to the gospel so the Body of Christ can prioritize its prayer and mission efforts.
Believers want to pray. Missionaries want to go. Churches and Agencies want to send.
But before any of those things happen, they need to know where the greatest needs are. That’s exactly what Joshua Project has been doing for over thirty years. We provide accurate, accessible, and actionable data that helps the global missions community understand where the greatest needs are. With nearly 2 million users annually, today it’s become the world’s most trusted and comprehensive source of information about unreached and frontier people groups. Churches, mission agencies, seminaries, and mission networks around the world use Joshua Project to help guide prayer and ministry.
Joshua Project is on a growth trajectory. We’re on our way toward 100 staff with 80% of those set to be national field researchers. We’re beginning modernizing our platform to remove barriers preventing Global South missionaries from accessing data. We’re developing progress scales, such as the phases of engagement, and launching dissemination of deeper strategic data for decision makers. And we’re catalyzing the body of Christ to see all Frontier People Groups engaged with evangelism within the next three years. This growth trajectory is what excites me about my role!
People Group Research
Communications
Technology
Organizational Operations
Director of Operations Role
I serve as the Director of Operations. In this role, I help the ministry function well by leading the teams responsible for people group research, technology, communications, and organizational operations.
In this role, I also mobilize and catalyze toward the engagement of the remaining 3,218 Frontier People Groups – 2 billion people still having little or no opportunity to hear the gospel!
It’s a role for which I can clearly see the Lord’s hand in preparing me. As I’ve looked back over my life, I’ve been amazed at how God has woven together experiences that one wouldn’t think, at the time, should be connected. I had the blessing of growing up in a home full of research. Before becoming a Christian, I was a practicing structural engineer, a software developer, and a software company owner. Then after the Lord saved Natalie and me, He called us into ministry and missions, where we spent many years making disciples, catalyzing church planting, and serving among unreached peoples in South Asia and the Middle East. Most recently, I served as Director of Global Research at the International Mission Board until the Lord asked us to return to Texas in 2026. Looking back now, it’s clear that none of those experiences were accidental. It’s a joy using the gifts and skills the Lord has provided to serve the greater Christian community in this role at the Joshua project! While we’re convinced that the Lord has placed me in this role, we can’t do it without the help of people like you – who love Jesus and want to see His name exalted among the nations – praying for and funding this mission critical role. Would you consider partnering with us?
Joshua Project Video Endorsement
Multiplication Catalyzing & Equipping
We are also starting work to cast vision and build a multi-denominational, multi-national, and multi-agency initiative to train and equip leaders who multiply disciples and plant reproducing maturing churches at the frontier edges of lostness through the continued multiplication of leaders. This effort prayerfully seeks to see one thousand leaders multiply to one million among the world’s Frontier People Groups in cities and villages by equipping leaders from those they reach to go to the next city or village by 2045.
The Power of Multiplication
Natalie and I have experienced firsthand the power of multiplication. During our time in South Asia, we were faced with the harsh realities of ministry in the location where we lived. With growth rate of over 3,000 people a day, we realized that even if we shared the gospel 5 times a week for 52 weeks a year for 40 years, only 10,400 individuals would hear the gospel. This meant that the same number who would hear the gospel through our efforts over the course of 40 years would be born and added to the local population in a little over 3 days. We initially felt defeated but prayed and asked the Lord to show us how we could really saturate this area with the gospel and churches. He answered by pointed us to the example of Jesus Christ and His three-and-a-half-year ministry. Jesus moved from the crowd to disciples and then to those who might “come and be with him.” He spent most of his ministry time investing in the twelve. Paul later imitated Christ by following Jesus’ model, which Paul explains in 2 Timothy 2:2. After the Lord showed Natalie and I that it was possible to making lasting Kingdom impact in a single term, we developed training materials and began to work, as closely as possible, the same process modeled by Jesus.
Over a 9-year period, Wilson invested in three distinct “come and be” groups of 8 to 12 leaders and potential leaders. The training materials we developed and used were called RAD (Rapidly Advancing Disciples). In a very relational “come and be” process over one to two years, Wilson equipped these leaders using a process that involved them spending lots of time in the Word and doing lots of practice. Topics such as disciple-making, baptism, giving the Lord’s Supper, planting churches in new fields, doctrine and theology, Old and New Testament Survey, character development, marriage, parenting and others were covered. All of the topics were learned by listening to or reading Scripture and were taught in such a way that they could be passed easily to others. If you’re interested in seeing how we went about the process, you can check out our resource page to download a copy of RAD for yourself. The result in each of the three “come and be” groups was “fruit that remained.” In every group, all of the leaders being equipped over the one-to-two-year process grew as disciples. However, three out of each group seemed to be able to not only grow as leaders but also caught a vision to plant churches and then develop their own leaders and multiply the entire process to another generation of twelve. Today, by the Lord’s provision, there are tens of thousands of disciples meeting in thousands of churches across the region with well-equipped leaders. In addition, leaders, multiple generations down, who went through the “come and be” process from a previous generational leader, are still equipping leaders and multiplying into the next generation.
One Million Multipliers
As Wilson transitioned to the Joshua Project, the Lord stirred in our hearts a passion to see a “come and be with me” style process implemented among all the remaining 3,218 Frontier People Groups. We desire, not to do or direct the front-line mission work, but, as Director of Operations for Joshua Project, to cast vision for a shared initiative to mission agencies, networks and churches involved in church planting work close to the remaining Frontier People Groups. We would ask them to identify their local on-the-ground leaders or church planters from a variety of denominations and languages, who could be a part of an initial 1,000 leaders (Gen 0). This initial group would be equipped with a “come and be” style process over a one-to-two-year period. Joshua Project would provide the information about the Frontier people groups most in need of the gospel to these thousand leaders in their own languages so that these thousand would have information that’s accurate, accessible, and actionable. Each of the thousand would then be sent out by their own network or agency to multiply churches and leaders among all of the remaining Frontier People Groups within 20 years (by 2045 to 2050). As the graphic above shows, if only 3 of each generation of 12 leaders multiplies to another group of 12, and then within that next group of 12 only 3 multiply and so on, within 6 generations (18-20 years at 3 years per generation) there would be over one million church planters and leaders working among the remaining 3,218 Frontier People Groups and potentially finishing the Great Commission within our lifetime! This combination of information and implementation is one of the ways God wants us to spend our remaining time here on earth. The reality, however, is that we can’t do this without the Lord’s people like you, praying for and funding us to carry out this mission. As the Lord leads, please consider partnering with us.
Assessing & Coaching
Finally, we are beginning work to build a team of neutral coaches and assessors (without reference to a particular tool or methodology) from across the globe, who come alongside agencies, ministries, and leaders to evaluate existing systems and processes against Biblical frameworks to help spur reproducing ministry resulting in maturing and multiplying church planting.
The Value of Assessment
You’ve probably heard the expression “a mile wide and an inch deep.” This has been applied in recent days to reported church planting and disciple-making work in various places around the globe. In some cases, it might be true – the fruit might only be a rapid sharing of the gospel from one person to another without much discipleship depth or sustainability. In other cases, however, it couldn’t be further from the truth, as disciple-making, leadership development, and church planting methods work in tandem with evangelism to result in churches that take root and disciple-making fruit that remains. The only way to know for sure is assessment. Sometimes when we hear that word, we cringe as we equate assessment with judgement, but they are not remotely the same. A true assessment would be designed to work for the benefit of those being assessed and with a goal of helping fuel fruit that will remain. This was the ethos when Wilson directed Global Research at the IMB, and it’s our ministry ethos still.
As such, the Lord has also put on our hearts a desire to serve the entire missions community through assessment – not assessment designed to judge or show how one method or another is wrong or right, but rather assessment that helps a ministry know truthfully where things are going well and where things need strengthening, so that ultimately the church in any give location might be as mature and healthy as possible (See Colossians 1:28-29). Given this, as Director of Operations for Joshua Project and coupled with my experience building church planting movement assessment processes, I want to begin to offer assessments to ministries and mission agencies, so that the entire body of Christ might be presented mature or complete in Christ. This effort will need to be done with skill, neutrality and confidentiality (something Joshua Project is known for). Over time, I hope to build and train a team of neutral assessors and coaches from across the globe who can help ministries and mission agencies assess their work, so that we all can work together to leave “fruit that remains” – disciples and churches that are maturing and growing up in Christ. Just like the two other ministry focus areas above, I can’t work on these things without partners like you praying for and funding us to do this important Kingdom work. Would you prayerfully consider partnering together with us?