Church Planting Initiative in Bay Area

San Francisco Bay Area, is an extensive, mostly urbanized region that primarily surrounds the San Francisco and San Pablo estuaries in Northern California with about 7.5 million people. It is home to many well-known cities and landmarks with San Francisco being the cultural and financial center of the area. It is internationally famous for its unique landmarks, steep hills, and history. It is also home to the Silicon Valley, the premier high technology region of the world which ranges from Redwood City in the north to San Jose in the south where many of the industry leaders in technology, including Google, Yahoo!, Cisco, Apple, Oracle, and Hewlett-Packard make their home. A group of missionaries and church planting strategists have developed an initiative of starting churches called 10-10-10 that will kick off a series of events in the Bay Area to launch a California-wide initiative with a goal of 40 new church starts. They are starting churches based on four models. The 'Antioch' priority, which is starting strong, strategically located, reproducing churches. The 'Athens' priority, planting churches among the least reached people groups, the 'Acts 2' priority which is starting small, reproducing indigenous churches that are usually bi-vocationally led and  'Amos' strategy which is aimed at starting churches around ministries of justice and community service. You can read about it at Baptist Press. 
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Mark Hobafcovich - Church Planting Consultant, North American Mission Board, SBC. 

Reaching the foreign born in the United States-Almost 70 million people are first or second generation

The U.S. Census Bureau reports that 36.7 million of the nation's population (12 percent) were foreign-born, and another 33 million (11 percent) were native-born with at least one foreign-born parent in 2009, making one in five people either first or second generation U.S. residents to a total of almost 70 million people. What are the implications for sharing the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ with the foreign born as well as their children and planting contextual communities of faith that will foster discipleship and mission mobilization remains the discussion of many mission groups. It's obvious that the foreign born population has different world view(s) that mainstream America and they need to be reached with contextual strategies. Befriend one person and share the gospel in a sensitive way expecting the Holy Spirit to do a miracle in their life. Read the original Census Bureau press release. 
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Mark Hobafcovich - Church Planting Consultant, North American Mission Board, SBC. 

Planting churches to reach the Haitian people in the United States and Canada

Together with my co-laborer and friend Leroy Fountain, I've visited with leaders in New York City working with Haitian Mission Network, a network of Haitian Baptist Pastors in the United States and Canada with a goal of 400 churches by 2020. Message to existing churches: "Each One plant One". The leaders gathered at the North American Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention in Atlanta on March of 2010 in the wake of the earthquake in Haiti to: Discover what individual churches and ministries are already doing in assisting Haitian recovery; Prepare for new ministry opportunities among the newly arrived Haitian people in the United States and Canada and; Respond with a contextual approach of intra-cultural and cross-cultural mission activities focusing on church planting. As a followup to Atlanta meeting, on September 26, Haitian pastors and leaders from forty churches and thirteen states were part of an event at French Speaking Baptist Church in Brooklyn NYC to give thanks and celebrate the advancement of the Kingdom of God focusing on planting churches in the United States and Canada. The host church pastor, brother Jean-Baptiste Thomas was instrumental in the planting of over 40 churches in the last few decades and is a great advocate of church planting in North America. To advance the vision of church planting, a similar event is scheduled to be held on October 24 at French Speaking Baptist Church in Stamford, Connecticut (Pastor Emmanuel St Juste) where the vision of church planting in North America will be shared with other pastors and leaders. Check the blog here. 
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Mark Hobafcovich - Church Planting Consultant, North American Mission Board, SBC.

Reaching People Groups in North America

Reaching People Groups in North America--I have participated in a 15-minute roundtable discussion at the Southern Baptist Convention North American Mission Board's exhibit in the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Florida at the SBC annual meeting in 2010. The topic was focussing on challenges and priorities of reaching North America’s 587 people groups with the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. Among other things mentioned, this is a quote “I also believe we need to reach out to Jewish people in a manner that is sensitive. We need to give them the Gospel of the Lord Jesus – not at the expense of other nations or peoples but as a priority.” Listen to the podcast (mp3).
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Mark Hobafcovich - Church Planting Consultant, North American Mission Board, SBC.