Global Mission Database

The Global Mission Database is an international, inter-agency collaborative research effort to track the progress of the evangelical Church in every ethnic group and language in the world. Over 4,000 ethnic groups and 7,000 languages are included in the research. The database is maintained by the Frontier Mission Alliance. The GMD defines an ethnic group as "a group of individuals united together through a shared heritage, language, culture and genetic relationship, often preserved through the restriction of marriage and the regulation of interaction with others outside their group." An ethnic group may speak more than one language, such as the Zapotec ethnic group which represents over one hundred "languages" or "dialects that are so different from one another the speakers of one dialect cannot communicate well with another." The GMD documents that evangelicals are represented in over 3,500 ethnic groups and 6,000 languages.