The mystery worshipper concept is the brainchild of Steve Goddard, a former marketing executive with Walmart. Goddard was familiar with the retail giant’s use of mystery shoppers, market research staff posing as customers, to check the quality of service in its stores. In 1998, he co-founded the online Christian magazine Ship of Fools, which dubbed itself ‘the magazine of Christian unrest’. Inspired by the mystery shopper concept, he launched the Mystery Worshipper Project with the intention of promoting a critical evaluation of churches and distributing information on the Ship of Fools site. Since then, the site has posted more than 1,000 reports and recruited many volunteer mystery worshippers. On April 24th 2005, the first city-wide event was undertaken, when over 100 Greater London churches were visited on what was referred to as Mystery Worshipper Sunday.