Multiplication,
not addition.
An intelligent back office for world missions, so the field can grow without the office growing with it.
Open source · Runs where you say · Never holds funds · Takes no cut of the gift
Tim is an intelligent back office for world missions: software that does the administrative work of a sending organization, for the missionary and for headquarters, and speaks with people in plain language. Not a person, and not a portal. A colleague who never sleeps and never forgets.
He keeps the books, receipts, reports, filings, and policies current on his own, and brings each person one short brief with the one decision for today.
A missionary's hours go to the field. The sender's hours go to sending more workers.
"Be the missionary's helper: carry the practical work faithfully, so the missionary is free to preach the good news, to pray, and to steward the money well."Tim's charge
One third of a career is the floor.
Nobody in missions measures time on task, so these are the anchors that exist: agency data, the retention studies, and the missionaries' own accounts.
a month of administration on the field: receipts, currency, reports, forms, renewals, claims. A quarter to nearly half of a working month.
spent raising the budget on a four-years-on, one-off cycle. On itineration the administration is the job: 40 to 70 hours a month booking services, up to 260 for an independent family.
leave the field, and 71% of that is preventable. Two thirds of returning missionaries name discomfort raising money; half name low support.
of the world's people have no access to the gospel. 202 million of them belong to 2,085 people groups with no church, no missionary, and no known believer.
Sources: ReMAP I (World Evangelical Alliance, 453 agencies); the 2017 survey of 745 former missionaries (Sears, 2023); Wycliffe and agency itineration guides; the 2026 Gospel Access Summit. Hour ranges are agency data, three independent anchors.
Ministry scales. The office does not.
What changed
- Genius-level intelligence is now on staff. Reading, drafting, checking, and explaining, at the cost of a utility, for every missionary family and every desk.
- Routine work now runs as a system. Books, receipts, filings, renewals, and reminders run end to end every night, and a person is asked only when a decision is needed.
- Put together, ministry scales and the office does not. The same small team at headquarters can carry ten missionary families or four thousand.
The arithmetic
- Addition. Every worker sent adds a worker's paperwork. Headquarters grows with the field, and the field waits on headquarters.
- Multiplication. Every worker sent adds a worker, and nothing else. Tim carries the office, so a thousand new workers arrive without a thousand new back offices.
- The measure. Hours given back to the field, deadlines never missed, and how fast a new missionary family is fully running.
For the missionary, and for the people who send them.
For the missionary
- Books and receipts. Every gift, expense, and reimbursement recorded and reconciled, in any currency.
- Reports and forms. Quarterlies, requests, and renewals filled from the ledger. The missionary reviews and signs.
- Deadlines, paperwork already gathered. Visas, ID papers, tax filings, health coverage enrollments and claims, weeks early.
- Church communication. Itinerating missionaries first, supported next, no church inundated.
- One brief. What changed, what is due, and the one thing to decide today.
For the sender
- Compliance at four levels. Federal, state, host country, and local field, checked nightly against a calendar of obligations, evidence attached.
- Policies that stay current. Tim reads rule changes and meeting decisions, drafts the policy update, and a person approves it.
- A back office that does not grow with the count. Ten missionary families or four thousand, the same nightly run.
- A nightly audit of his own work, every finding written down for a person to read.
Two layers, one voice.
- Running today. The engine under Tim runs a real company's back office: books, receipts, approvals, a sealed monthly close, and a nightly audit, unattended since summer 2026.
- An engine underneath, Tim on top. The accounting engine does the arithmetic and never invents a number. Tim reads from it, explains, and answers when asked. Any capable model can sit in his seat; none of them touch the books.
- Runs where you say. On a server the missionary runs, or one the sending organization owns. A missionary's family finances stay with the missionary, and the same Tim can keep the mission's books beside them, never mixed.
- Careful by design. Whoever runs Tim owns every record. Nothing given to Tim trains anyone's model, sensitive locations live in a list the organization keeps, and the sealed room is never read by one.
- Nothing is replaced. Tim reads from the systems you already have.
- Open and shared. The code is public at github.com/project-timothy, free to run and free to improve. Zero percent of any gift, ever.
How people can help
Iron sharpens iron. The best ideas win, whoever brings them.
The listening tour is step one. An hour describing a real month is the most valuable contribution there is.
Hosting. A church with one technically minded member can run Timothy for the missionaries it sends.
A module, an adapter to a system we have not met yet, a translation, tests against the synthetic missionary family.
A pilot: blank copies of the forms filed most often, thirty minutes with whoever answers finance questions, ten missionary families for one quarter, and we measure the hours given back to the field.
