Numbers vs Mission

In Wednesday 7:15BC (Breakfast Club/Bible Class) Steve M. had a quiz about St. Paul with the question about how many members existed in the first European Church in Phillipi and marveled about the number of Christians in the World now.  Naturally, I pointed out the mathematics of my blog of compound annual growth rate of only 1.08% (see Jesus the Mathematician).  Steve M. correctly countered - "But what is the compounded annual growth rate of the human population".   Exactly the proper context to put 1.08% growth rate into perspective!   

Gemini to the rescue!  I loaded my blog analysis into Gemini Pro and presto - the answer with little necessary research:

"Over those two millennia, the global human population grew at a CAGR of just 0.16%. Due to high infant mortality, plagues, and limited agricultural capacity prior to the Industrial Revolution, human population growth was incredibly slow.

So, while a 1.08% growth rate sounds modest by modern financial standards, Christianity actually grew nearly 7 times faster than the human race over that same 2,000-year span."

But as I have found, the proper use of AI is to ask the contrarian view - and deeper analysis into the slippery slope of using numbers and statistics to justify your arguments (similar to my revised post and self fact checking - Confounding Compounding).  Gemini rightly pointed out that using the financial lens of growth rate of a modest 1.08% creates an artificial measure of highly volatile periods of hight growth and statistical missing elements of birth and death rates. 

Bottom line - a more strategic analysis and complete picture is required (stay tuned for an updated blog post on that).  

In my confessional email attempt at humility to my fellow Wed. 7:15BC members, I forwarded Gemini's analysis only to see the real punch line response from Glenn B. with the following story:

Steve, Garen - this is great work, very interesting.  At my wife's aunt's church in Columbus, IN when you drive out of the parking lot of the church from any exit you see the sign: "You Are Now Entering the Mission Field".   Maybe we all should take that sentiment to heart! - Glenn 

Forget the numbers - focus on the mission!