The Stratus Index...

Synthesizes reliable data from different sources to clearly display the world’s most urgent spiritual and physical needs.

Stratus equips the global church to:

  • Identify country-level needs with nuance and specificity
  • Prioritize areas of high spiritual and physical need
  • Match its resources and expertise to corresponding needs
  • Make informed missional strategies for allocating resources
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Why Stratus?

Stratus aims to address the Great Imbalance by helping the church identify the world’s most urgent needs so that it can reallocate its resources more strategically.

The vast majority of missions resources go to people and places already Reached by the Gospel, while only 3% of missionaries and 1% of missions money are deployed among the Unreached.

This is the Great Imbalance.

As a result, there are more people without access to the Gospel today than a decade ago.

Stratus seeks to equip the global church with fresh vision to accomplish the Great Commission by addressing some of the factors that perpetuate the Great Imbalance.

We hope this tool allows the church to better understand what steps will be required to overcome the barriers that prevent needs from being met, spurring informed and collaborative missions strategy.

Launch Stratus

How Stratus Works

Stratus synthesizes data from many disparate sources into one comprehensive index, filtering the holistic condition of each country through a spiritual lens.

The Stratus Index ranking comprises 5 major groups of spiritual and physical needs made up of hundreds of distinct indicators.

Categorization

Stratus Index

The combined total ranking that aggregates data from all groups, categories, and subcategories

Spiritual

Spiritual information speaks to religious expression and Gospel prevalence

Natural

Natural information speaks to the more immutable qualities that inform current conditions and environments

Political

Political information speaks to the systemic forces of governance that perpetuate current developmental and social conditions

Developmental

Developmental information speaks to the current realities of human suffering and qualities of physical well-being

Social

Social information speaks to the interpersonal realities and current social well-being of citizens

Urgent Needs

Stratus highlights urgent missional needs by displaying relative rankings of countries rather than raw scores. Rankings update according to applied filters.

Recalibrated Returns

Stratus accounts for barriers that have impeded the progress of the Gospel. This recalibrated ROI promotes a more equitable distribution of resources where needs are the highest.

Graphic Display

A visual color scale helps display this ranking, with red representing areas of high need, and green representing areas of high health.

Targeted Application

Stratus Index information is predominantly collected at a country level, and all data can be filtered and spliced according to the specific interests of the user.

Country Focus

Each country has a profile page that details its relative rank for every subcategory, where a country’s lowest performing indicators are highlighted as prayer points.

Access to Raw Data

Additional tabs allow for the display of the spiritual needs of each country at a People Group level, as well as the raw data for each country at an indicator level.

Data Sources