Updates

Quarterly updates are not only opportunities to introduce completely new features or fields or modules to the Database, as is often the case, but every update inherently includes the results of a further three months of research.

Changes are made almost daily to the underlying research database from the scores of sources that become available every day. But it is every three months that all these changes are freshly reconciled with each other to create the comprehensive and internally consistent picture published quarterly in the World Christian Database.

With 7 billion people growing and changing and moving every day, the population of each People group relative to others, the percentage of each religion in each People and hence in each country, the size of each denomination, and of each city and province, is constantly, and often subtly, changing.

Every day new information becomes available as to which of those subtle shifts have bubbled to the surface to become apparent and noticeable. Every day forecasts and estimates of one statistic or another are refined by researchers across the world.

The change in one statistic invariably effects others. If a denomination has turned out to be growing twice as fast as expected, it is not enough to just change that one statistic--depending on where the growth came from, other denominations or other religions will have declined, and the religious percentages of the People groups effected will also change accordingly.

A change in today's statistic may also effect estimates of past years, and will of course effect future projections.

Each quarter the picture will change because each day things are changing, but the quarterly updates should always be internally consistent and based on the latest reliable globally reconciled data.

The status of Christianity in Mongolia, India, and South Korea was investigated in November 2018 when World Christian Database editor Todd Johnson, took a three-week trip to India, Mongolia, and South Korea to meet with church and mission leaders, scholars, and pastors. Along the way, he gained valuable insight to help update the demographic estimates in WCD and provide clearer portraits of these countries for the World Christian Encyclopedia , 3rd edition (due 2020).
(See photos from the research trip).