Imagine two mission teams in different places. Both are working among people groups in which fewer than 0.1% of the population follow Jesus. On paper, both situations are the same. But the first team has seen two generations of new churches form, local leaders trained, believers multiplying, and Christian resources produced. The second team is having its first meaningful conversations, and they have met a few believers who live hundreds of miles apart. Same statistic- fewer than .01% Jesus followers- but very different realities. Different realities have different needs as well as different opportunities.
This is the problem the global missions community has been grappling with for years: the tools used to measure gospel progress have been too flat. More details are needed to address each situation in the most effective way. That is why a coalition of leading missions organizations - Frontiers, IMB, Joshua Project, Engage Network, Vision 5:9, and Accelerate - spent a whole year developing a more complete answer. They call it the Phases of Engagement Framework.
What follows is an introduction to this framework: what it is, why it was needed, and how it is changing the way Christians around the world think about reaching the unreached.
For decades, the primary way missions researchers and field workers tracked progress among unreached and frontier people groups (UPGs and FPGs) came down to two data points:
Is the group engaged? (Yes or No)
What percentage of the population identifies as Christian or Evangelical?
These metrics are not wrong. They are just incomplete. A group can be listed as “engaged” the moment a missionary moves in - even if no one has heard the gospel yet. A group can show 2% Evangelical and be home to a vibrant, rapidly growing church-planting movement, or it can show 2% Evangelical and have a handful of isolated, struggling churches with little discipleship and almost no markers of a growing community. One column of numbers tells you little about the depth, health, or trajectory of gospel work.
Field workers knew this. Researchers knew it. But the global missions community lacked a shared, standardized way to communicate the fuller picture. This is the purpose of the Phases of Engagement Framework: to provide different perspectives and categories that are most helpful in identifying the presence or absence of ministry activities and the practicalities of gospel access. When collaboration, recruitment, and deployment of resources are needed, this is crucial to inform the prayerful planning and strategic decisions for next steps in Kingdom advancement.
The Phases of Engagement Framework provides what researchers call a “three-dimensional view” of any people group’s gospel progress. Instead of a single metric, it uses three complementary dimensions working together.
1. Phases of Engagement - Where is the group in gospel history? (8 phases, 0–7)
2. Strength of Engagement - How active and robust is the work? (5 levels)
3. Percentage Christian/Evangelical - The traditional numerical baseline
No single dimension tells the full story on its own - but together, the three reveal something much closer to the truth. That truth depends on the people closest to the work: the field workers and teams who carry firsthand knowledge and daily observations that no database can generate on its own
These phases are also flexible. While designed for people groups, the framework can be applied to geographic areas - a district, a city, or even an entire country - simply by substituting the relevant context.
The heart of the framework is a straightforward eight-phase continuum - numbered Phase 0 through Phase 7 - that describes where a people group currently stands in terms of measurable gospel progress. Each phase representsa real milestone, not just a level of effort.
Phase - 0
Waiting
No known ongoing gospel engagement. A sub-indicator (0-R) marks groups where a restart is needed after previous efforts stalled or went silent.
Phase - 1
Entry
Workers or near-culture believers are gaining access and building relational foundations - learning language, culture, and how to share Christ.
Phase - 2
Evangelism
Regular, culturally relevant gospel sharing is happening with the clear intention of planting self-sustaining churches.
Phase - 3
Discipleship
Individuals or small groups respond in faith. Early discipleship begins, grounded in obedience to Scripture.
Phase - 4
Local Church
Believers gather regularly as a functioning local church. People-group leaders are beginning to emerge.
Phase - 5
Reproducing Church
Churches are sending out their own evangelists and planters. Second-generation churches are forming.
Phase - 6
Multiplying Church
Church planting has reached at least the 4th generation. Local networks provide oversight and empowerment.
Phase - 7
Sustained Gospel Presence
Either 10%+ follow Christ in local churches, or multiple mature, self-led networks are sending workers to other people groups.
Knowing the phase tells you where a group is. Knowing the strength of engagement tells you how vigorous and sustainable the work actually is at that phase. This is assessed on a five-level scale:
Unknown - Insufficient data to make an assessment
Initial - Minimal activity relative to the population size
Growing - Activity increasing but still limited in scope
Active - Consistent, culturally connected activity across multiple dimensions
Flourishing - Robust, culturally rooted, widespread, and sustained activity
Strength is measured in two ways: through secure digital activity-tracking apps that provide real-time data, and through field survey tools designed for teams in restricted or limited-access areas. Both sources can feed into the assessment, providing a more complete and trustworthy picture.
Engagement strength is not a grade on a team’s performance. It is an indicator of how active the gospel is relative to the size and complexity of the people group. A team working faithfully among a massive, resistant population may show an “Initial” strength not because they are failing, but because the task is enormous.
This is the traditional metric — the numerical count of how much of a population identifies with Christianity or the Evangelical movement. It remains a part of the framework because it is genuinely useful, particularly when read alongside the other two dimensions.
But the framework’s designers are clear: this number is most meaningful in context. What stage are they in with their gospel access journey? Seen alongside a Phase and an Engagement Strength level, even a small percentage becomes far more interpretable. A group at 0.2% Evangelical in Phase 5 (Reproducing Church) with Active Engagement Strength is a story of breakthrough. Maybe the population is larger – hundreds of people praying together, evangelizing together. Another much smaller people group, but the same 0.2% in Phase 2 (Evangelism), with Initial Engagement Strength is a story of early seeds.
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Beyond describing where a people group currently stands, this framework also offers a practical tool for diagnosis: Twelve Engagement Accelerators. These are key areas of ministry practices that teams can examine to discover what might be missing and determine which steps will make the greatest difference.
The twelve areas are:
Prayer
Access to Scripture and Resources
Sharing a Clear Vision
Engaging in Multiple Ways (by location, by group, and online)
Mobilization and Sending
Working Together with Others
Meeting Needs and Showing Compassion
Applying Truth in Culturally Relevant Ways
Research and Understanding the Culture
Expanding and Multiplying Efforts
Training and Equipping People
Involvement in Everyday Work and Business
Each area comes with a specific question tied to the team’s current stage of work. Teams are encouraged to reflect on all twelve, then thoughtfully choose one or two where focused effort is most likely to produce meaningful progress.
The accelerators are not meant to be a rigid list of tasks to complete, nor are they a fixed set of instructions. Instead, they are designed to encourage thoughtful, prayerful planning - to bring overlooked areas to the surface, to foster cooperation between groups, and to direct energy toward actions that will genuinely bring about change.
The Phases of Engagement Framework was built collaboratively by practitioners, field researchers, and organizational leaders precisely because the old tools were generating confusion rather than clarity. Two people groups that look the same on a spreadsheet require entirely different strategies, partnerships, and prayers.
This framework gives the global missions community a shared language. When a field team in Southeast Asia, a mobilizing church in Brazil, and a researcher at a major missions organization all use the same phases, strength indicators, and accelerator questions, strategic conversations become sharper, partnerships more targeted, and prayer more specific.
It also guards against two subtle dangers in missions work: the danger of optimism (claiming more progress than is real) and the danger of discouragement (not recognizing genuine breakthrough when it comes). A clear, shared framework creates accountability and hope in equal measure.
What makes the Phases of Engagement Framework genuinely new is not its complexity. What is new is its depth. For the first time, the global missions community has a tool that can show the difference between a people group where workers just arrived and a people group on the verge of sending its own missionaries to their neighbors.
That difference matters enormously for strategy, for prayer, for funding decisions, and for the mobilization of the global church. Knowing where a group is on their journey changes everything about what we can do next. Learn more or contribute what you know:
Download the Phases of Engagement Kit Now:
Share your Data You have from the Field:
Send Feedback to The Joshua Project Research Team:
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