The San Francisco Bay Area is home to almost 8 million people. Most of these people do not know Jesus. I live in San Jose, the largest city in the Bay Area and the tenth-largest city in America, a city where only 4 percent of the population is churched.
Mark Driscoll once claimed Seattle/the Northwest as the most unchurched region in America. Fortunately, this past decade the statistics have changed in the Northwest because of how the gospel has advanced, largely through church planting. Jared Wilson and others have rightfully drawn our attention to New England/the Northeast as a region desperate for gospel advancement. I’m in agreement, New England needs help.
But because nobody else is saying it and because, best I can tell, the statistics bear witness, I want to be a loud voice proclaiming that the region in greatest need of a fresh movement of the gospel is the Bay Area.
One of the things I’m most excited about right now is a group of men who have banded together to help plant churches throughout the Bay Area. We call it the NorCal Network. Earlier this month more than 850 people turned out for a conference in San Jose sponsored by Acts 29, The Gospel Coalition: Bay Area, and the NorCal Network.
This sort of sizable event is something unheard of in the Bay Area. Church planters, pastors, Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, engineers, stay-at-home moms, students, and business leaders from all over Northern California heard from speakers D. A. Carson, Mark Driscoll, Matt Chandler, Scott Thomas, and Jeff Vanderstelt. We’re already seeing this conference play a catalytic role in stirring up passion, conviction, and relational connections for church planting in the Bay Area.
During the event we showed this video, Why Plant Churches in the Bay Area? Please watch it, share it, and pray for the Bay Area. We need, quite literally, thousands of new church plants here. Jesus is on the move, so it’s an exciting time to be living and doing ministry in the Bay Area.
http://vimeo.com/24606004
