The case for a Bible-teaching church in San Francisco

Is it really so unthinkable?

“A lecture series in San Francisco completely sold out.” Perhaps the subject was something tech-related, like artificial intelligence? Or political, focused on a new progressive cause?

But it was actually about Christianity. Peter Thiel gave his views on the man of lawlessness, otherwise known as the Antichrist.

It’s not an isolated event. There have been other lecture-style gatherings too, like Code & Cosmos, a 2024 event featuring Dr. Francis Collins. And this interest appears to be cashing out at least partly in some churches: St Dominic’s Church (Catholic) reportedly saw eighty converts this past Easter, a one day record in its 152 year history.

There’s a quiet revival going on among young people in Britain. Elsewhere on the Californian coast, there’s a distinctly biblical flavour to the hardtech hub of El Segundo. Is it too much to imagine that San Francisco could see growth in Christianity?

Cracks in the progressive edifice

There are wider sociological reasons to think that there’s a gap in the spiritual market in San Francisco.

If San Francisco is the apogee of progressivism, then behold what it has wrought: a hollowed out downtown, drug addicts on the streets, sky high house prices, and crime so severe that you’re better off leaving your car unlocked so that thieves don’t smash your windows to see what’s inside. Is it any wonder that some of the voices questioning progressive narratives are the ones who’ve been most exposed to the logical outworkings of progressive politics?

Change might seem unlikely in San Francisco, but consider Tim Keller’s account of his plan to start a church in New York:

In the late 1980s, my wife, Kathy, and I moved to Manhattan with our three young sons to begin a new church for a largely non-churchgoing population. During the research phase I was told by almost everyone that it was a fool’s errand. Church meant moderate or conservative; the city was liberal and edgy. Church meant families; New York City was filled with young singles and “nontraditional” households. Church, most of all meant belief, but Manhattan was the land of skeptics, critics, and cynics. The middle class, the conventional market for a church, was fleeing the city because of crime and rising costs. That left the sophisticated and hip, the wealthy and the poor. Most of these people just laugh at the idea of church, I was told. Congregations in the city were dwindling, most struggling to even maintain their buildings.

I reject a view of Christianity that is purely instrumental. And I don’t buy a model of church where it exists to solve social problems. But the positive social effects of Christianity strike me as evidence of its truth.

A healthy church in San Francisco would produce strong families, unity across races, people who help others in need even when it’s costly to do so. No government can solve these problems on its own, and few cities highlight that as clearly as San Francisco does.

San Francisco’s potential

There are positive reasons to regard San Francisco as a prime location for a church too.

First, it is a city blessed with human capital. Many of the smartest and most ambitious people in the world are drawn to the Bay Area. They work for and create the world’s most productive companies.

The ability to do Christian work doesn’t completely correlate with talents in the secular workplace – after all, God chose what is foolish in the world (a man on a cross) to shame the wise (1 Corinthians 1:27). We should expect Christians to look weak and silly. God is concerned with people’s heart, not their stature or status (1 Samuel 16:7).

However, I think there is reason to expect that people who are talented and entrepreneurial in their professional lives can turn those talents to Christian work. And arguably it’s ambition, the willingness to take on grand projects and dedicate one’s life to them, that’s hardest to teach. Imagine the ambition of the Bay Area applied to reaching those around the world who have never heard the gospel.

Second, San Francisco is a city of financial capital. This isn’t supposed to be cynical – the point of any church is to proclaim the gospel to everyone – but great work is done in other places by the wealthy using their resources, both today and in the earliest days of the church. For instance, Phoebe is described as the apostle Paul’s patron or benefactor in Romans 16:1-2. Today, Gospel Patrons is just one expression of how many Christians give generously to the work of the gospel.

The gospel shouldn’t be prioritised or preserved for the rich and influential. But it shouldn’t be withheld from them either.

Consider how San Francisco’s wealth and talent can complement each other. Talented young people, converted to Christianity, can be trained as the next generation of ministers and missionaries. The training and sending of these workers will require funding, and who better to do so than their Christians brothers and sisters in San Francisco?

Lastly, San Francisco is a culturally influential place. Along with the wider Bay Area, it has an increasingly strong case to be the most important place in the world. Their role was already significant in the tech bubble of the late 1990s, grew stronger in the 2000s and 2010s as the social media companies reshaped the way we all interact. This decade, Bay Area AI companies are building the next Manhattan Project, industrial revolution, or something even more significant.

I don’t fully buy the view that you can change culture by setting out to do so, or that that is the church’s job (it’s a natural side effect of many conversions, of course). But why wouldn’t we want more Christians working on AI, when it’s going to be so important to how we think, work, and live?

If you want anything other than the values of progressive, hyper-liberal San Francisco to be involved in the development of the world’s most important new technology – and whatever other technologies might follow AI – you should consider the influence a church could have, for the better. If you think that historic Christianity has some ethical value, then you should want a healthy, Bible-teaching church in this city.

Of course, the fundamental reason for a church in San Francisco for any Christian is that people there need to hear the message of the gospel: desperately-needed salvation freely available to all in Jesus Christ. There are 800,000 souls in San Francisco; over 7.5 million across the whole Bay Area. God promises that he has people in where you least expect Him to (Acts 18:10) – why not there too?

There just isn’t that much Christian presence in the city right now, barely a handful of evangelical churches. I’m looking for a church with a strong emphasis on reaching the local population with the gospel, building them up, then sending them out to do gospel work. A church in the manner of a St Helen’s Bishopsgate, a Capitol Hill Baptist, or a Redeemer New York. It might look different in some ways, just as there is variation between those churches, but what unites them is more important.

There are many other churches in the area which hold to other confessions and theologies, and they don’t take the Bible to be the ultimate authority. There should be churches which don’t make compromises with the world around them on issues of sexuality and gender. There should be theologically distinctive and confessional options other than a Catholic church.

One reason there isn’t such a church here already is that planting one would be a risk for any pastor. Why go to San Francisco rather than suburban Dallas, or northern Virginia? Living costs will be higher, and personal safety may well be lower.

Many of the same things could have been said to a pastor moving to New York, however, but Tim Keller did it anyway. There are people all over the world who need to hear the gospel – is San Francisco really the hardest place to move to?

Spiritual gold rush

California has always been filled with seekers, from its earliest history to today. They often turn to the occult, to Oriental spirituality. It’s the place where the counterculture started. What could be more counter-cultural today than finding fundamental, objective truth in a traditional religion – and following it?

What they’re looking for can be found in the Bible – they just need churches and Christians to proclaim it to them.

If you’re interested in talking to me about this, reply to this email, leave a comment, or send me a message here or on Twitter.