On Wednesday Night, September 17^th, we will discuss church planting in Las Vegas. Recently, some of our churchmembers have been in the Las Vegas area in their travels and were commenting about how the city lived up to it’s reputation as “Sin City.”  Las Vegas for years has been known for it’s escapism. Las Vegas is a place where they advertise that people can get away from the restraint of everyday life and do things that they would never do in their hometown – and “what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.”

With all that background, it might be surprising to know that the North American Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention has chosen Las Vegas as one of 32 Strategic Cities in North America for Evangelism and Church Planting. The need is great. Las Vegas with all it’s boast of sinful fun – has some of the highest rates of suicide, unemployment, bankruptsy, alcohol related death, divorce, and domestic violence in the United States (google & politifact.com).

There are almost 2 million people living in the city. There are only 102 Southern Baptist Churches – which is a church to population ratio of 1:19,313. Only about 8% of the people are affiliated with any evangelical church. Obviously, the need for Christian missions is there.

How do you plant and sustain churches in such an environment? With 60-70% of the jobs being either in casino’s or casino related, there’s a really good possibility that most of the people who would attend church make their living in the casino trade.

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