San Diego selected as SBC’s newest focus city

San Diego selected as SBC’s newest focus city

SAN DIEGO — The North American Mission Board (NAMB) has named San Diego as the next Strategic Focus City — an initiative that will bring additional Southern Baptist attention, volunteers and resources in an all-out effort to share the gospel of Christ with metro San Diego’s 3 million residents.

NAMB’s Strategic Focus Cities is a 6-year-old strategy for leveraging the resources of the Southern Baptist Convention’s 16.3 million members and 43,000-plus churches to win America’s top 11 metropolitan areas for Christ. While preliminary work already has started, 2007 will be the planning year for the San Diego outreach, with full implementation in 2008–2009.

San Diego — the seventh largest city in the United States — was named as a Strategic Focus City because it is a largely unchurched missions field, said John Yarbrough, NAMB vice president for strategic initiatives. “Only 15 percent of metro San Diego’s 3 million people attend church regularly,” he said.