New York City (NYC) and the other large metropolitan areas of the East remain major missionary challenges for the Seventh-day Adventist Church. There are more unreached people in the Boston-to-Washington urban corridor than in 205 of the 229 countries listed in the General Conference Statistical Report. The NYC metropolitan area is the centerpiece of this megalopolis. It stretches over parts of three states and in the 2000 census had a total of 21.2 million residents.

Adventist work in this region is administered by five conferences and two unions. During the 1900s, the denomination tried a variety of approaches to evangelizing NYC. The church purchased a six-story hotel in the Times Square area and converted it into an evangelistic center. (This building was sold in 1979.) The denomination sponsored major evangelistic meetings, including one at Carnegie Hall. There have been restaurants, clinics, TV and radio programs. In 1999 the NAD sponsored "Net NY" a satellite-linked evangelistic campaign from midtown Manhattan featuring Doug Batchelor, the director of the Amazing Facts media ministry who grew up in NYC. It was a huge effort with an enormous budget that resulted in a hundred-plus baptisms and a small church plant in midtown.

In spite of all this effort the Adventist church has almost no presence among native-born New Yorkers. In view of the challenge presented by NYC, in 1999 the denomination created a Metro Ministries Commission. This commission spent two years studying the church