Skip to content
Greater Austin Mission SocietyState of the City

Census County Division · Bastrop County

Cedar Creek and Red Rock

Neighbors
40,000
Active churches
41
Residents per church
~980

2026 edition, ACS 2020-2024 · Our church database, 2026-08-30

If you pastor here, pray here, or have given your years to this place, this page is for you.

We count 41 active congregations in Cedar Creek and Red Rock today, and about 40,000 neighbors, which is roughly one church for every 980 of them. That is not a scorecard. It is a description of the ground you share, and of how much of it none of you can reach alone.

Start by praying

Before the data, before the strategy, pray. We wrote the Cedar Creek and Red Rock prayer guide to be prayed out loud with two or three others, on a rhythm, across whatever lines usually keep you apart. Bring the leaders you already know. Invite one you do not.

Open the Cedar Creek and Red Rock prayer guide

The narrative on this page is from the July 2026 edition. Its figures were fixed when it was written, so they can differ from the charts and lists around it, which rebuild monthly from the live database.

Portrait

The Cedar Creek and Red Rock Census County Division occupies the southwestern portion of Bastrop County, a large rural-to-exurban swath running along the Highway 71 corridor between Del Valle and the city of Bastrop and southward toward the community of Red Rock. It contains the communities of Cedar Creek, Red Rock, and Wyldwood, along with the river-bottom farmland, ranchland, and rapidly multiplying subdivisions that fill the space between them. The city of Bastrop itself sits in a separate CCD to the east; this division is the county's residential and rural west, and its population of 40,000 makes it a mid-sized division among the fifteen in Greater Austin.

The population is Hispanic-majority and family-centered. Hispanic or Latino residents are 55.9 percent of the division, well above the MSA figure of 32.2 percent and second only to Lockhart among the fifteen CCDs. Non-Hispanic White residents are 37.5 percent, Non-Hispanic Black residents are 3.5 percent, and Non-Hispanic Asian residents are 0.5 percent, with the remainder multiracial. Median age is 35.9, essentially even with the MSA median of 36. Foreign-born residents are 16.1 percent, just below the metro figure of 16.3 percent. This is a settled, working, family-raising population rather than a transient one.

Economically, Cedar Creek and Red Rock is an affordable, high-ownership commuter region. Median household income is $86,747, below the MSA's $100,431, and the poverty rate is 11.5 percent, up from the metro rate of 9.8 percent. The defining economic feature is the combination of homeownership and distance. Owner-occupied housing stands at 79.1 percent of occupied units, far above the MSA's 58.3 percent, and the median owner-occupied home value is $329,200, well below the metro median of $465,000. That affordability comes at the cost of the commute. Mean travel time to work is 36.5 minutes, roughly nine minutes longer than the MSA average of 27.3 and among the longest of any CCD in the region. The bachelor's degree or higher rate is 23.7 percent, less than half the metro rate of 50.9 percent, consistent with a workforce heavy in construction, trucking, warehousing, trades, and service work. All figures in this section are from the 2024 five-year ACS release.

What makes this division distinct

Among the fifteen CCDs in the Greater Austin MSA, Cedar Creek and Red Rock stands out first for its Hispanic majority. At 55.9 percent Hispanic or Latino, it sits well above the metro rate of 32.2 percent and joins Lockhart as one of only two Hispanic-majority divisions in the region. Compared with the neighboring Bastrop CCD to the east, which is 37.6 percent Hispanic and centered on the city of Bastrop, this division is more rural, more residential, and considerably more Latino. Set beside Elgin to the north, it is larger and more heavily Hispanic still.

The deltas from the MSA tell the rest of the story. Homeownership is 79.1 percent, up from the metro rate of 58.3 percent, one of the highest ownership rates of any CCD in Greater Austin. The median home value of $329,200 sits well below the metro median of $465,000, marking this as one of the region's remaining affordable footholds for homeownership. The mean commute of 36.5 minutes runs about nine minutes above the metro average, among the longest in the region. Median household income of $86,747 falls below the metro's $100,431, and bachelor's degree attainment of 23.7 percent is less than half the metro rate of 50.9 percent. The composite portrait is of a Hispanic-majority, working, high-ownership exurb whose families buy affordable homes in southwestern Bastrop County and drive long distances west to earn their living.

Underneath the new subdivisions runs a rural memory older than almost anything else in the metro. Cedar Creek United Methodist Church traces its roots to 1847, Sacred Heart Catholic Church to 1876, and Hopewell Primitive Baptist Church to 1873, and the division carries a distinctive layer of historically Black and Primitive Baptist congregations, including Union Chapel AME Church and the Shiloh and Mount Pleasant Primitive Baptist churches, alongside a large and growing cluster of Spanish-speaking fellowships. Few divisions in Greater Austin hold this particular combination of deep rural heritage and present-tense Hispanic growth in the same ground.

The people you are praying for

These are your neighbors, described as honestly as public data allows. Nothing here tells you what to do about them. It tells you who they are, so your prayers can be specific.

  • Hispanic or Latino55.9%
  • Non-Hispanic White37.5%
  • Non-Hispanic Black3.5%
  • Two or more races2.2%

Metro share, for comparison

  • Population

    Cedar Creek and Red Rock40,000
    Austin metro2,426,592

    2026 edition, ACS 2020-2024

  • Median age

    Cedar Creek and Red Rock35.9
    Austin metro36.0

    2026 edition, ACS 2020-2024

  • Median household income

    Cedar Creek and Red Rock$86,747
    Austin metro$100,431

    2026 edition, ACS 2020-2024

  • Hispanic or Latino

    Cedar Creek and Red Rock55.9%
    Austin metro32.2%

    2026 edition, ACS 2020-2024

  • Non-Hispanic White

    Cedar Creek and Red Rock37.5%
    Austin metro48.7%

    2026 edition, ACS 2020-2024

  • Active churches

    Cedar Creek and Red Rock41
    Austin metro1,151 (metro total)

    Our church database, 2026-08-30

  • Residents per church

    Cedar Creek and Red Rock~980
    Austin metro~2,060 (fifteen divisions)

    Both sources

The others who serve here

You share Cedar Creek and Red Rock with congregations across 8 denominational families. Some of them you know. Most of them you probably do not, and that is the ordinary condition of a city, not a failure. We put the list here so you can start.

Drawing the fifteen divisions

Church density and the mission need

Research on gospel saturation suggests that church density is a meaningful proxy for a region's spiritual health. In his book Center Church, Tim Keller notes that a region with one church per 10,000 people sees roughly 1 percent of residents attending regularly. At one church per 1,000 people, that figure rises to 15 to 20 percent, and at one per 500, more than 40 percent attend.

These numbers matter because of what tends to happen in populations. One rough model of this, the diffusion of innovation, describes a kind of tipping point. An idea often struggles to be accepted until somewhere around 16 percent of a population has taken it up, after which it can begin to sustain and spread on its own. The analogy to the gospel is inexact, and the human heart is not a product to be adopted, so we hold the model loosely. But the concept is worth consideration and used often in gospel movements around the world. A region where regular gospel engagement sits far below that threshold may simply lack the critical mass for a movement to take hold, while a region approaching it has the numeric reality from which one can grow. When compared with Keller's ratios, church density becomes a rough way of asking whether a region sits above or below that line, and gives us a guide to how we can pray.

Cedar Creek and Red Rock has 42 active churches serving approximately 40,000 residents, for a ratio of roughly one church per 952 residents, one of the stronger per-capita densities among the fifteen CCDs. The headline number should be read with care. Many of the 42 congregations carry too little public information to be known well, a share among the largest in the metro, and it reflects a landscape of small rural congregations, many without websites, several without formal denominational affiliation, and a large cluster of Spanish-speaking churches that have not yet been reached by the research in a way that allows a confident read. The density is real, but the missional picture is thinner than the ratio suggests, and the primary needs here are threefold. First, the historic rural congregations at Cedar Creek, Red Rock, and Wyldwood need renewal and reconnection to the wider body. Second, the growing subdivisions along Highway 71 are adding households faster than they are adding church capacity. Third, the Spanish-speaking congregations that serve the majority population of this division need strengthening, deeper relational trust with their English-speaking neighbors, and in several cases a clearer picture of their life and teaching that can only come through relationship.

41 congregations across 8 denominational families.

Serve at a congregation we have missed? Tell us, and we will review and add it.

A kingdom ecosystem

And yet the church was never meant to carry the whole work alone, and the nonprofits and church-run ministries named just above are evidence of it. A region is rarely reached by strong congregations acting in isolation. The same Tim Keller whose density research framed the mission need earlier in this guide also described, in Center Church, what he called a gospel ecosystem, the observation that lasting gospel movements grow not from isolated churches but from a whole interdependent web of gospel work in which churches and the ministries around them each supply something the others need. At the center of that ecosystem are two movements the church herself carries, the planting of new congregations and the renewal of existing ones. Around them grows a wider set of callings that no single church can hold on its own: intercession that keeps the whole work dependent on God, evangelism to those the church has not yet reached, mercy and justice among the poor and vulnerable, faith and work that sends disciples into every corner of the economy, Christian institutions like schools that form the next generation, and leadership development that raises up the pastors and planters still to come.

None of this becomes a movement, though, until the leaders carrying these callings actually know and trust one another. The connective tissue of a kingdom ecosystem is relational, pastors and ministry leaders across traditions who pray together, share what they are learning, and labor toward a common mission rather than guarding their own corner. Where that trust is real, the parts begin to feed one another, and where it is absent, even well-resourced ministries work at cross purposes. Unity here is not a program to be launched but the fruit of a shared mission held long enough for friendship to grow.

The wider Austin kingdom ecosystem

Austin does not carry the whole mission alone. Around every congregation in this CCD sits a citywide gospel ecosystem that any church here can draw on, organized below by the same Keller categories. These are metro-wide ministries whose service area is the region rather than a single division, so the names that follow are illustrative highlights rather than a full directory.

Church networks knit congregations together across the metro, among them Christ Together Greater Austin, the Austin Baptist Association, the Church Ambassador Network of Texas, and the Diocese of Austin. Intercessory ministries keep the whole work dependent on God, including the House of Intercession, HOPE Prayer Ministry, and the Lake Travis Prayer Room. Specialized evangelism is the largest category in the metro and reaches particular fields, with campus and athletic ministries like Cru City Austin, the Fellowship of Christian Athletes across every county, Campus Renewal Ministries, and Launch Global. Justice and mercy ministries carry the poor and vulnerable, among them World Relief, Habitat for Humanity Austin, Unbound Now, and Texas Alliance for Life. Faith and work ministries send disciples into the economy, including the Faith and Work Movement, Faith Driven Entrepreneurs, the National Christian Foundation Austin, and C12 Central Texas. Christian institutions steward long-term formation, such as the Texas Methodist Foundation. And leadership development raises up the next generation of pastors and planters, through the Colson Fellows Program, New Canaan Society Austin, PastorServe, Mission Increase, and the Greater Austin Mission Society.

For Cedar Creek and Red Rock, the local strength is food-security ministry, carried largely through congregations, while nearly every other sector, including Christian schooling, has little or no base within this spread-out rural division. The citywide networks named above are the nearest source of the mercy, recovery, youth, and education capacity these families otherwise drive to Austin or Bastrop to reach. The direction to pray, in the spirit of Jeremiah's letter, is that a majority-Hispanic exurb being settled in real time would seek the welfare of its own ground by tying into that wider ecosystem and, in time, growing more of it at home.

Ministries at work here

Alongside the congregations, 5 organizations serve this division: nonprofits, Christian schools, and the wider ecosystem of ministries. On the map above they are the open rings; the filled dots are churches.

Nonprofits4 organizations

Know a nonprofit we have missed? Tell us.

Ecosystem1 organization

Know an organization we have missed? Tell us.

From our database as of 2026-08-30. These records have not yet been through the full verification pass the congregations have, so where a record is marked location unverified, the coordinate on file is a placeholder several records share, and we have declined to put a pin on it rather than put it in the wrong place.

Every record we publish for this division, churches and ministries together, in one list.

If you want to go further

We are the Greater Austin Mission Society, and we exist to help leaders across this metro find one another. If something on this page is wrong, or if you want to meet the others praying for Cedar Creek and Red Rock, write info@missionatx.org. A correction and an introduction are equally welcome.

The full Census Reporter profile for Cedar Creek and Red Rock. How this data is gathered and verified.

You have seen the ground. Now stand watch over it. The Cedar Creek and Red Rock prayer guide is written to be prayed out loud with others.

Open the Cedar Creek and Red Rock prayer guide