Check out this video from the North American Mission Board:

LIVING PROOF – the week we spend in San Francisco promises to be exciting and high impact as we share our witness and faith through concerts and mission projects with local churches and church planters. Begin now to pray EVERY DAY for God to arrange the trip according to His will, and for us to be prepared to go in just over THREE MONTHS!

BAY AREA INFORMATION:

The San Francisco Bay Area is a metropolitan region of nine counties with a population of 7.6 million people. Its anchor cities are San Francisco, San Jose and Oakland. San Francisco, also known as the City, is the Bay Area’s cultural and financial core. It is a leading banking and commerce center, home to more than 30 international financial institutions. San Francisco is also a world-class tourist destination, beloved for its arts, gourmet food scene and cultural savvy. More than 16 million tourists visited San Francisco in 2011.

San Jose is the largest city in the Bay Area and the 10th largest city in the United States. It is located in the heart of Silicon Valley, which is home to many of the world’s largest and most innovative technology corporations. It also hosts thousands of small start-ups and accounts for one-third of all venture capital investment in the United States. Related to the affluent technology sector, this region has the most millionaires and billionaires in the U.S. per capita.

Oakland, the Bay Area’s third largest city, is home to the Port of Oakland, one of the busiest container ports in the United States. In its own right, it is a city of art, music and social and political activism. With many first generation immigrants and refugees, Oakland is one of the most ethnically diverse large cities in the country.

The Bay Area has the highest median income of any place in the United States. Considered to be one region rather than separate cities, it also has the highest concentration of technology jobs in the country. The San Jose/Sunnyvale/Santa Clara metro has the second highest percentage of college graduates in the Unites States. It is home to prestigious educational institutes, such as Stanford and U.C. Berkeley. As a gateway to the Pacific Rim, the Bay Area is integrally connected to Asia and South Asia, where almost half the world lives.

“We are praying that the influence the Bay Area wields will be used to make Jesus known throughout the Bay Area, North America and the entire world,” says Send North America: San Francisco Send City missionary Rich Johnstone.

A place of both affluence and influence, the San Francisco Bay Area is poised to impact the future like no other place in the United States. Southern Baptists there envision not only that the Bay Area will be vibrantly transformed by Christ, but also that it will become a major global exporter of the Christian faith. Hundreds of church leaders are praying Luke 10:2, beseeching the Lord of the harvest to send laborers to their fields. Believing that the fields really are ripe for harvest, they have set their cell phone alarms for 10:02 each morning as a reminder to pray that God will raise up and send out evangelists and church planters to their fields.

The San Francisco Bay Area is a strategic, challenging and storybook lovely place to start many new churches. But can anything good really come out of San Francisco? God has not left it out of His kingdom plan. In the past several years, the Bay Area has experienced more church plants than have been started in decades.