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Despite what some say, the United States is not a post-Christian nation. It's more half Christian and half post-Christian, trying to make up its mind. A sizeable share of Americans describe themselves as Bible-believing Christians. In many places and contexts you can still reach people simply by opening the doors and offering a worship service.

There are also places and contexts where Buddhism is better understood and more admired than Christianity. Pockets of Sonoma County, California, where I live, certainly fit the description. It's deep-blue America, defined by organic veggies, fine wines, and high tech.

"Sonoma County is a tough nut," church-planting pastor Dan Boyd of Hope Chapel told me. "America is a tough nut. We've seen it all and done it all. In America, we don't need God."

Sonoma County has many fine, well-established churches that preach the gospel and welcome any and all. By and large, though, they don't reach the post-Christian pockets. Most don't really try. They have enough to do just meeting the pastoral needs of people already in their care.

The church plants try hard to reach those pockets. In my years living here, I've seen many new churches pop up like mushrooms after a rain, and just as suddenly disappear. They meet in schools and industrial parks, struggling to get their numbers above 100. Though nobody keeps an exact tally, it seems safe to say that the majority of attempts fail. It doesn't help that available land for church buildings hardly exists, and desirable meeting places are scarce. Also, because housing is so expensive, the population isn't growing fast, least of all with the young families that typically populate growing churches. "You don't have the demographics working for you," Presbyterian church-planting pastor Jeff Johnson says. Finally, as church-planting pastor Adam Peacock told me, "People [in Sonoma County] are indifferent to the church at best, and sometimes adversarial."

That's missions. It is not easy. Many first-term missionaries give up and go home. Only the entrepreneurial, independent, and stubborn personalities who want so badly to plant churches stick with it. Nonetheless, a church that seeks to obey the Great Commission will keep sending out missionaries. And missionaries plant churches—even when they never leave home.

Tim Stafford is a CT senior writer.

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Christianity Today asked evangelical leaders about the priorities and challenges in evangelism for the next 50 years.

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September 2007, Vol. 51, No. 9