Populations in urban areas now outnumber those in rural areas, United Nations Population Fund officials said in an announcement earlier this year. But as Seventh-day Adventist Church leaders create strategic plans, leaders say the church’s presence in urban areas remains minimal.

“When you see the raw statistics it’s frightening,” says Gary Krause, director of the world church’s Office of Adventist Mission. “We’re just not touching the cities.”

But he notes that the Adventist Church has started to fund more work in large cities than ever before.

Much of the church’s attention on big cities started in 2004 when the church collected a special offering called Hope for the Big Cities. The funds allowed the Adventist Church’s regional offices around the world to make long term plans for reaching the large cities. The Adventist Mission committee voted to put one-fifth of monies received from the world church between 2005 to 2010 toward church planting in urban areas.

“We have not yet seen a tangible difference in presence,” says Mark Finley, world church vice president for evangelism. “But there is a tangible difference in attitudes. Hope for the Big Cities has heightened profiles of cities so the church’s world regions can develop strategic plans for those cities.”

Already there is promising growth. In a report on mission at the church’s October business meetings, church leaders pointed to Lima, Peru where 1,800 new churches have been formed in that city this year. Finley points to Jakarta, Indonesia where more than 1,600 people joined the church in July after a series of small group meetings.

Krause encourages every Adventist to get involved with mission in cities. “We can’t sit here and tell people there is one way to plant churches because the way you do it in New York could be different in Dhaka, Bangladesh,” he says. But he does have some advice, “Invest in people and make it long term.”

Finley agreed. “Mission must be more personal. People are looking for relationships ... cities provide an opportunity for the church to share the warmth, love, companionship and friendship of Christ.”

Church officials announced at the October meeting that the church’s membership has grown to more than 15.4 million members, up by a million members since last year. Even though there is no significant trend of Adventist churches growing in cities, growth is happening—in rural areas and on islands.

“We’re more comfortable in rural areas,” Krause explains. “That’s the way we’ve always done it.”

Many local church administrations around the world still focus on areas people are leaving—small towns and rural areas, says Monte Sahlin, an Adventist Church researcher based in Ohio. One explanation for the church’s ubiquity in rural areas and not cities, he says, could be that “as we have grown there is a tendency to focus more internally than to focus on mission.”

Even with an increase in funding, church leaders agree the church remains small in cities mostly because the urban environment presents unique obstacles to outreach. 

Sahlin says secularization is a major roadblock to mission in cities. “We never really learned how to convey the gospel to secular people. Generally we presupposed that people were well-rooted in a religion and we would build on that.”

Also, he notes that it costs more to do mission in cities than in rural and small town areas.

“Often decisions on where to go with evangelism has to do with what’s cheap,” Sahlin says. “We go with a price tag instead of God’s will.”

Sahlin says another challenge to the Adventist Church’s mission to cities is the diversity. “There are so many different kinds of people you really can’t have a single standard brand of worship style or method of presentation.”

Finley advocates a change of mind when it comes to diversity. While the diversity in cities can be seen as an obstacle, he says “with multicultural populations in large cities you can do world mission in a local city and reach people you may never have reached in their home country.”