JFINDX

The long version

A coalition tried to buy a picture of youth faith.
It ended up building the measure and giving it away.

That sentence is the whole through-line, and it took about eighteen months of expensive discovery to earn. What follows is the record — including the parts where the plan failed, because the shape of the thing now only makes sense against what it stopped being.

Six eras

I The question nobody could answerII DraftingIII The wallIV The pivotV Who actually carries itVI From pitch to working platform

A coalition of thirty-plus organisations adopted one goal — everyone in the next generation with a real opportunity to follow Jesus by 2033. A goal that size needs a scoreboard. There wasn't one.

2033

the first milestone, not the finish line

  1. 01The framing

    What do young people believe about Jesus — and what does that tell us to do?

    The Research & Measurement work group set the leading question, and named two purposes it had to serve: progress (are we actually moving?) and funding (unlock resources against evidence, not anecdote).

  2. 02The model

    Three questions, and the 4+2 framework

    Do they follow Jesus? Do they participate in His mission? Does their world look different because of Him? Underneath the first sat the four beliefs — God exists, Jesus is the Son of God, forgiveness through Jesus, the Bible is God's word — and the two activities: pray weekly, read scripture weekly.

    What changedThe three questions have survived every subsequent revision, including a total change of business model.

  3. 03The constraint

    One question is best. Twelve can be done. Twenty is the maximum.

    Set early and defended since. A long instrument is an unfinished instrument — in a camp queue, on a borrowed phone, the length of the survey is the study's real sampling method.

The evidence that started it

Belief outruns practice.

The Dallas–Fort Worth pilot is the only data the project ran before the platform itself existed, and it did the job a pilot is supposed to do: it found a gap nobody could argue with. Near-universal assent to the beliefs. Barely a quarter reading scripture daily. And a third fewer people mentoring someone than being mentored.

That second gap — the mentorship deficit — is arithmetic with a horizon on it. A movement where fewer people reproduce than are being formed does not compound. It is also precisely why multiplication is a tier of its own rather than a footnote.

DFW pilot, Centiment panel, under-30s, 2025. Cited, not re-published as a platform figure — every score the platform itself reports comes from organisations running the Index, gated behind the same critical-mass rule as everything else on this site.

DFW pilot · under-30s identifying as followers

Fig. 04 · real data
Dallas–Fort Worth pilot results
Affirm Jesus is the Son of God
4.9
Identify as followers of Jesus
4.7
Pray daily
3.6
Being mentored by someone
2.9
Attend church weekly
2.4
Mentoring someone else
2.4
Read the Bible daily
2.0

Shown on the platform's 1–5 scale, converted from the pilot's raw percentage-affirming for comparability with every other score on this site. Navy is level. Vermillion marks the practices that fall away — colour only ever means something.

What it actually measures

Three questions × four tiers.

The three questions are what we measure. The four tiers are how deep it has gone. Every item in the instrument carries exactly one of each, which is what makes a single seven-minute survey readable through two completely different lenses.

Read across a row and you learn how far one question has travelled. Read down a column and you learn what an entire group has and has not yet reached. The narrowing between columns is the diagnosis.

This grid is rendered by the same component the live dashboard uses — with plain language in the cells instead of scores. There is no second, prettier version of the model kept for marketing.

The J12 · the model

Fig. 05
The three questions by the four tiers — what we measure, and how deep it has gone
Exposureencountered?Responseresponded?Formationbeing shaped?Multiplicationdoes it spread?
FollowDo they follow Jesus?heard of Jesusbelievesbeing shapedhelps others believe
MissionDo they participate in His mission?aware of the callconvinced it's theirspractising witnessmobilising others
WorldDoes their world look different?sees faith should matterbelieves it doeschoices reshapedchanging their spheres

The line that governs everything

We will never claim to speak for a nation.

Crowdsourced data is only responsible if you are honest about what it is. Every score on this platform carries its sample size. No benchmark appears for a country until enough people there have completed the Index.

No organisation ever sees another organisation's results. No organisation ever sees an individual response — not even its own respondents'. There are no cross-org league tables, and there will not be.

Still unsettled

Questions we have not answered.

Publishing these is deliberate. A measurement standard that hides its open problems is not a standard, it is a product. If you have a view on any of them, we want it.

  1. 01

    How do you measure multiplication without self-report inflation?

    People reliably over-report sharing their faith. Multiplication is the tier the whole strategy turns on, and it is the one most vulnerable to flattering answers.

  2. 02

    Where exactly should the critical-mass gate sit?

    No benchmark is published for a geography until enough people there have completed the Index. The working number is a placeholder, not a finding — and it decides when countries start seeing themselves.

  3. 03

    Do a 13-year-old and a 29-year-old belong on the same instrument?

    The platform is built to survive age-specific versions. The research has not settled whether it needs them.

  4. 04

    Should a skipped question count as zero, or as not-asked?

    Now that the survey adapts, Formation and Multiplication describe the people who reached those tiers rather than the whole sample. That makes the funnel honest per-item and harder to compare between organisations. Currently: not-asked.

  5. 05

    The Index starts at 13–30 — which cohort comes second?

    The nameplate was chosen so it never has to change. Editions carry the cohort; the subject never moves.

Clay to be moulded — not a vase to be baked.

Start here

What is the Index →

The short version.

Or

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A guided walk, one step at a time.

When you are ready

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For organisations and churches.