Looking At Las Vegas Through Southern Baptist Eyes
Las Vegas is known for its casinos, gambling and other vices. (Unsplash photo)
(ANALYSIS) Say the word “Vegas,” and most travelers think about the 30-plus casinos and resorts along the 4.2-mile stretch of Las Vegas Boulevard known as the Strip.
The Southern Baptist “City Missionary” for Las Vegas thinks about a different set of numbers — the 30 churches the denomination's Send Network has planted in this desert valley in the past decade. There are nearly 100 SBC churches in greater Las Vegas and 177 in Nevada.
“It's hard to narrow Las Vegas down into some kind of majority culture that fits the stereotypes. ... This place is multiethnic, multicultural, and we have people who are dealing with all kinds of issues and sins,” said the Rev. Heiden Ratner, 37, who leads the WALK Church, a 10-year-old congregation with about 1,100 worshippers.
“Las Vegas is pretty much pre-Christian, and what I mean by that is that there has never been a revival that has swept through this city,” said Ratner. “When I was growing up here, there wasn't a single Sunday morning that I woke up and thought, ‘Maybe I should go to church.’ Never.”
Obviously, the Strip has not vanished, and its “Sin City” label remains relevant. The Nevada Gaming Control Board reported $8.82 billion in gross gaming revenue (what operators keep after payouts) for the Strip in 2025. But the world has changed. Researchers struggle to describe online gambling today — from $100 billion global GGR in 2023 to a Gaming Compliance International estimate of $5.9 trillion in unregulated activity.
For decades, Ratner noted, Las Vegas couldn't land big-league football, baseball, basketball and hockey because of gambling. Now the city has teams in three of the four sports, and the National Basketball Association may be next. The city hosted its first Super Bowl in 2024 and the game returns in 2029.
“That kind of credibility is leading all kinds of people and corporations to take a second look at this city,” he said.
Looking at Las Vegas numbers through the eyes of the Southern Baptist Convention's Send Network, that starts churches, Ratner stressed that the valley's population has grown from nearly 750,000 in 1990 to about 2.6 million today. That should hit 3 million by 2055.
“Las Vegas is a huge, complex place, and it's growing. You can't just look at the Strip and say, ‘That's Las Vegas.’ Different kinds of people are occupying different parts of the city,” he said in a recent interview near the Strip.
“The first thing I tell outsiders — believe it or not — is this is a great place to raise a family. We have awesome parks, everywhere, for kids, for everybody, to get out and enjoy life. There's all kinds of hiking and great recreation nearby. There's art, music, museums and some of the greatest food anywhere, and that's all over this town.”
Ratner grew up in what missions experts call an “unchurched” family, but was converted through the Fellowship of Christian Athletes while playing basketball at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia. His Las Vegas friends were shocked when he came home determined to start outreach groups and churches. The WALK Church was born in 2015, and he added his City Missionary work in 2021.
Ratner cited another detail that outsiders would miss — the powerful role that bivocational workers play in Las Vegas churches and religious organizations.
“They’re all around you here,” he said. “They work in service industries — cleaning hotel rooms, valet parking cars, working in restaurants, education, tech and music. Then they work in all kinds of ministries.”
No one needs to argue that the problems that plagued Las Vegas for generations have disappeared in this era of rapid change and growth, noted the Rev. Josh Carter, a native of Southern Appalachia who is the Send Network's church-planting director for Nevada.
“There’s a lot of addiction and brokenness, and the culture within the Valley can be messy,” he said, via email. “I mean, come on, Vegas was built on, ‘What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.’ It's messy.
“But there's also a realness about this city that, when you get involved in people's lives, you experience firsthand. It's messy, but the flip side is that you get a front-row seat to watch Jesus change lives. ... It's the real thing.”
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Terry Mattingly is Senior Fellow on Communications and Culture at Saint Constantine College in Houston. He lives in Elizabethton, Tennessee, and writes Rational Sheep, a Substack newsletter on faith and mass media.