By: Nathan Bate
Bio: www.CaliforniaChurchPlanting.com/team
September 21, 2011

Why California? Why Roseville?  How did you pick your location?  These are just a few of the ways we are asked this common question, and I almost always start my answer the same way.

“Well, it began with our God-given burden to plant a church…” and that is an important fact.  Since God had led us to church planting, that meant he had a location in mind.  We didn’t have to go on a great search and through a great struggle to determine the will of God.  Instead, we did some research and let God impress things upon our hearts.

As we began our research, we decided on the following criteria.  We were looking for a location that
•    had over 200,000 people
•    was growing
•    was close to a college
•    would fit our personalities and backgrounds
•    was not inner city
•    was a part of an area with very few gospel preaching churches
•    had a need for several churches to be planted

By the time our research was done, we had looked at over 60 metropolitan areas.  The census bureau calls these MSAs or Metropolitan Statistical Areas (see link in footnote for a list) (1).  We then used the ARDA (2)  and the census bureau (3)  to find out population and religious statistics for the areas (these footnotes show religious and population stats for the Roseville, CA area).  We compiled all this data into a chart.

During our research, God was burdening us to focus on states that contained several areas that met our criteria, but Texas and California seemed to us like the neediest of those states.  As we talked about this as a team, we decided that we weren’t Texas people and began looking at California.  This wasn’t a spiritual decision.  It was just a practical one.  

California seemed like a crazy idea to us.  It was so far and so expensive to live there.  Matt and Amy had been there, but Katrina and I had not.  None of us really understood much about California.  Since Matt had spent a summer there doing a church internship, he at least had some sample of it.  

As we talked it over as a team, we were all hesitant, yet Matt and I were driven by the burden that God had placed on our hearts.  So, we began to look at Stockton, CA.  It was one of the dozens of places in California that met our criteria.  

We read everything we could find about Stockton.  We looked at the city website, read history articles, and spent hours looking at satellite images.  We looked at housing prices, searched for churches, emailed a city official, prayed, discussed it as a team, and much more.  At this point, we were committed to California, and we were settling on Stockton.  Matt and I joked that perhaps God would send us a Macedonian call and redirect us to another place.

As a final effort to learn Stockton, we emailed around a dozen Pastors in that general area of California and asked them what they thought.  We enjoyed getting their responses.  A few of them suggested that we look at other areas, some were curious why we would look at Stockton, and most did agree that Stockton had a need.  But God used the response of one Pastor to get our attention.  In the end, we did receive a Macedonian call of sorts.  God clearly used Pastor Ron Perry of Faith Baptist Church in Folsom to redirect us to Roseville, CA.

Roseville would not have shown up in our original research because it only had a population of 115,000 at the time, but Roseville was also a part of the 2.5 million people of the Sacramento metro area. God began to confirm in our hearts that Roseville was the place we were to start the church.   It just fit.  It had grown 150% in the last 20 years, only 13% of people in the county were evangelical, and at that time, we couldn’t find another independent Baptist church.  Unbelievable!

God has continued to confirm in our hearts that he wants us in Roseville over the last year and a half.  We trust that seeing how God led our team will be a blessing and encouragement to you as you seek to serve God with your life.  I would encourage you to also read the material on our “Why California” page as well (www.CaliforniaChurchPlanting.com/why-california).

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1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_of_United_States_Metropolitan_Statistical_Areas
2 http://www.thearda.com/mapsReports/reports/counties/06061_2000.asp
3 http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/SAFFPopulation?_event=Search&geo_id=01000US&_geoContext=&_street=&_county=roseville&_cityTown=roseville&_state=04000US06&_zip=&_lang=en&_sse=on&ActiveGeoDiv=geoSelect&_useEV=&pctxt=fph&pgsl=010&_submenuId=population_