Many of you have asked about a specific location for the next church plant. While we don’t have a specific answer right now, we are quite certain that we will be heading north into the “Inland Empire.” This is a huge area with very few fundamental churches. How many? Definitions of “fundamental” vary and of course we don’t know about all of the churches, but to give you a general idea, as of right now we know of about 5 fundamental churches in the entire Inland Empire (a broader list we saw recently listed about 20). Check out the unofficial population numbers below, and you should be able to quickly see why this is an area in great need of church plants! Thirteen cities with more than 50,000 people, and a total population near 2,000,000. Let’s go north!
| Inland Empire Cities | 2007 Population | This makes the I.E. similar in size or larger than the entire metro areas of: | |
| Mentone* | 7,803 | San Antonio | |
| Grand Terrace | 12,543 | Sacramento | |
| Mira Loma* | 17,617 | Kansas City | |
| Bloomington* | 19,318 | Portland | |
| Loma Linda | 22,632 | Fort Worth /Arlington | |
| Norco | 27,255 | Orlando | |
| Yucaipa | 51,784 | San Francisco | |
| Colton | 51,918 | Virginia Beach | |
| Highland | 52,503 | Indianapolis | |
| Redlands | 71,807 | Milwaukee | |
| Upland | 75,137 | Las Vegas | |
| Rialto | 99,767 | Charlotte | |
| Corona | 147,428 | New Orleans | |
| Ontario | 173,690 | Austin | |
| Rancho Cucamonga | 174,308 | Memphis | |
| Moreno Valley | 183,860 | Louisville | |
| Fontana | 188,498 | Jacksonville | |
| San Bernardino | 205,493 | Richmond, VA | |
| Riverside | 296,842 | Salt Lake City | |
1,880,203 |
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| These stats are largely based on the California Department of Finance 2007 stats except the * cities which are unincorporated and so I could only find 2000 census numbers. The Metropolitan Statistical Area list in the right column is drawn from the 2000 census. | |||
