50 Least Reached US Cities

Church planters, often with great zeal for their cities, will refer to their locations as the “least-reached,” in view of some modifier. However, not every city is the least-reached in this country. Missiologists have historically used evangelicals as the benchmark for labeling a people group as reached or unreached. While a city is not a people group, and I want to be clear such should not be conflated, it is helpful to inquire about evangelical percentages and church to population ratios when thinking strategically about least-reached areas.

During our analysis of the evangelical data, we observed 50 metropolitan areas with an evangelical percentage less-than or equal to 5%. Apart from two locations in South Texas, they form a diagonal swath from California to New England. These are included in the 35-45 degree latitude lines—the United State’s 35/45 Metro Window.

These are our least-reached cities.

For the interactive version of this map to identify the metro areas click HERE

We also wanted to know what areas were less-than or equal to 3% evangelical. Among the fifteen, seven are located in Utah, two each in Idaho and Massachusetts, one each in New Mexico, Pennsylvania, New York, and Connecticut.

At 0.4% evangelical, Provo-Orem is the least-reached metropolitan area in the country. Such was the same when I released my previous study in 2009. The evangelical percentage has decreased in the area since then.

The ten locations with the lowest evangelical church-to-population ratios are located in Utah, Idaho, and the greater Boston and New York communities. Again, Provo-Orem, with 1:19,000, is an outlier, with the other cities ranging from one church to every 4700-8700 people.

The least-reached cities are not everywhere. According to the data, these make the top 50. They should receive a prioritization in church prayer, ministry, and multiplication strategies.

But will they?