The number of UPCI churches in counties with more than one million residents has increased over the past two decades from 1,064 to 1,653, a 55 percent jump. (This reflects an annual growth rate of just over two percent).
This increase in the number of churches in larger metropolitan areas is at least partly the result of Metro Missions, an initiative of North American Missions that works to help church planters overcome the often-daunting hurdles of establishing congregations in North America’s largest and most congested cities.
Since the program was founded in 1988, 40 Metro Missionaries appointed and supported by the UPCI have successfully planted 55 churches in metropolitan areas, including Vancouver, British Columbia; Portland, Oregon; El Paso, Texas; Washington, D.C.; and New York City. Several of those Metro Missionaries, including Jerald Staten (Washington, D.C.), Ric Gonzalez (Chicago), and Scott Grant (Montreal), have established multiple congregations to minister to various demographics and language groups in their cities.
“We cannot say we are serious about reaching North America with the gospel if we fail to strategize to reach her major cities,” said former Metro Missionary and current North American Missions Director Scott Sistrunk.
Sistrunk and his wife, Karla, spent 30 years in the Detroit, Michigan, metropolitan area, where they planted seven churches. As director of North American Missions, Sistrunk has been given a platform to share his passion for church planting and to train ministers who feel called to preach the gospel in the metropolitan centers of North America.
Former North American Missions Director Jack Yonts, a lifelong church planter, founded Metro Missions to meet the need for more UPCI churches in North America’s rapidly growing cities. At age 65, Yonts and his wife, JoAnn, moved to the Chicago metropolitan area to establish a new church. That congregation, now led by Pastor Robert Boettcher, has planted four additional churches in the Chicago area.
Despite these successes, there is still much work to be done. In North America, 53 percent of the population (193 million people) lives in a metropolitan area with at least one million residents, but only 34 percent (1,653) of UPCI churches are in those communities. That breaks down to one UPCI church per 117,000 metro residents. (The ratio for the inner cities of these same metropolitan areas is one UPCI church for every 138,000 residents). For comparison, the overall ratio for the U.S. and Canada is one UPCI church per 74,000 residents.
Several metropolitan areas in North America desperately need additional UPCI churches. Quebec City, Quebec, with a metro population of 800,000, has just one UPCI church. Miami-Dade County is home to 2.7 million Floridians but only four UPCI churches, or roughly one church per 675,000 residents. Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania, has 1.5 million residents but only two UPCI churches. San Francisco County and neighboring Alameda County (the San Francisco Bay area) are home to 2.5 million people but have only four self-governing UPCI churches. North American Missions is actively recruiting church planters to establish UPCI congregations in these and other metropolitan areas.
More information about Metro Missions is available at MetroMissions.faith. The site also includes a donation portal for those who would like to financially support North American church planters.
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