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Greater Austin Mission SocietyState of the City

Census County Division · Hays County

Dripping Springs and Wimberley

Neighbors
58,887
Active churches
33
Residents per church
~1,780

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 33 active congregations in Dripping Springs and Wimberley today, and about 58,887 neighbors, which is roughly one church for every 1,780 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 Dripping Springs and Wimberley 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 Dripping Springs and Wimberley 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 Dripping Springs and Wimberley Census County Division occupies the Hill Country edge of Hays County, stretching west and south from the Austin city limits along US-290 and Ranch Road 12 into the cedar and live oak terrain of the Edwards Plateau. Its two anchor communities give the CCD its name: Dripping Springs, a fast-growing exurban city on the US-290 corridor roughly 25 miles west of downtown Austin, and Wimberley, a smaller artists' community and outdoor destination on Cypress Creek and the Blanco River, about 45 miles southwest. Between and around them lie the small communities of Driftwood, Henly, and Woodcreek, along with ranchland and hill country landscapes that have made this corridor one of the most sought-after addresses in Greater Austin. The CCD's population is 58,887, placing it among the smaller of the metro's CCDs though larger than rural divisions like Jarrell, Lockhart, and Elgin, and it covers a wide geographic footprint with low population density.

The population is older, more established, and markedly more affluent than most of the metro. Median age is 42.9, among the highest of all fifteen CCDs in the Greater Austin MSA, second only to Northwest Travis, and well above the MSA median of 36. Median household income is $135,475, second only to Northwest Travis among the fifteen CCDs and meaningfully above the MSA's $100,431. These numbers tell the story of a region that has attracted retirees, empty nesters, and affluent families from across Greater Austin and beyond, alongside a growing wave of remote workers and executives who can trade a downtown commute for a Ranch Road 12 address and a view of the cedar ridges.

The racial and ethnic composition of Dripping Springs and Wimberley is among the least diverse of the fifteen CCDs. Approximately 75 percent of residents are Non-Hispanic White (75.4 percent), compared with 48.7 percent at the MSA level. Hispanic or Latino residents are 16.4 percent of the population, well below the MSA share of 32.2 percent. The foreign-born share and the Spanish-speaking household count are both notably smaller here than in any other CCD in the metro. The CCD is not ethnically monolithic but it is one of the most homogeneous in the region, and its missional character is shaped more by the spiritual conditions of affluence and comfort than by the dynamics of immigration and cultural plurality. All demographic 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, Dripping Springs and Wimberley is among the oldest by median age and among the wealthiest, the least Hispanic, and among the most geographically spread across Hill Country terrain. It shares the western crescent with Northwest Travis and Southwest Travis but has a distinctly different character from both. Northwest Travis is suburban and executive, anchored by Bee Cave, Lakeway, and the 620 corridor. Southwest Travis is older and more rural, with ranch estates and a semi-rural pace. Dripping Springs and Wimberley runs further out into the Hill Country and holds two distinct community personalities: the exurban growth corridor of Dripping Springs and the creative, retreat-oriented culture of Wimberley.

The deltas from the MSA profile are significant. Median age is 42.9, compared with 36 for the MSA, a gap of nearly 7 years that is among the largest of any CCD against the metro baseline. Median household income is $135,475, up from the MSA's $100,431. White non-Hispanic residents are 75.4 percent, well above the MSA figure of 48.7 percent. Hispanic residents are 16.4 percent, compared with 32.2 percent at the MSA level. The foreign-born share is substantially below the metro average. Population density is low, housing lots are larger, and the pace of the built environment is slower. The composite portrait is of a CCD that has absorbed a particular kind of Austin-adjacent growth: affluent, educated, drawn by landscape and lifestyle rather than by economic necessity, and older than nearly any other zip code in Greater Austin.

Wimberley carries a cultural and spiritual texture that is distinctive even within this CCD. The town has long attracted artists, writers, and creatives, and has also drawn significant numbers of spiritual seekers who are open to religious experience but wary of institutional Christianity. The presence of Unity of Wimberley alongside Cypress Creek Church and Chapel in the Hills and Wimberley Christian Church is not an accident of geography. It reflects a real dynamic in the town: neighbors who are hungry for transcendence but have not yet found it in the person of Jesus. Dripping Springs, by contrast, is growing fast and younger, and carries more of the traditional suburban-evangelical character of the greater I-35 and US-290 corridors. The two communities share a CCD boundary but represent two different mission fields within it.

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.

  • Non-Hispanic White75.4%
  • Hispanic or Latino16.4%
  • Two or more races3.7%
  • Non-Hispanic Asian2.6%
  • Non-Hispanic Black0.9%
  • Some other race0.7%

Metro share, for comparison

  • Population

    Dripping Springs and Wimberley58,887
    Austin metro2,426,592

    2026 edition, ACS 2020-2024

  • Median age

    Dripping Springs and Wimberley42.9
    Austin metro36.0

    2026 edition, ACS 2020-2024

  • Median household income

    Dripping Springs and Wimberley$135,475
    Austin metro$100,431

    2026 edition, ACS 2020-2024

  • Non-Hispanic White

    Dripping Springs and Wimberley75.4%
    Austin metro48.7%

    2026 edition, ACS 2020-2024

  • Hispanic or Latino

    Dripping Springs and Wimberley16.4%
    Austin metro32.2%

    2026 edition, ACS 2020-2024

  • Active churches

    Dripping Springs and Wimberley33
    Austin metro1,151 (metro total)

    Our church database, 2026-08-30

  • Residents per church

    Dripping Springs and Wimberley~1,780
    Austin metro~2,060 (fifteen divisions)

    Both sources

The others who serve here

You share Dripping Springs and Wimberley with congregations across 10 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.

Dripping Springs and Wimberley has 34 active churches serving 58,887 residents, for a ratio of roughly 1 church per 1,732 residents. On paper, this is one of the stronger per-capita ratios of any CCD in the Austin MSA. The number deserves a careful read, however. Many of the 34 active churches carry too little public information to be known well, so the count says more about presence than about health. The 2025 State of the City report describes this western Hill Country crescent as a region with "fewer congregations that preach the gospel overall" and "less cultural openness to organized religion." That assessment is consistent with what the data show. We believe the primary missional needs in Dripping Springs and Wimberley are threefold. First, the existing congregations need renewal, deeper fellowship with one another, and a shared burden for the unreached within this corridor. Second, the fastest-growing edge of the CCD, particularly the new residential developments along US-290 east of Dripping Springs, needs church planting rather than additional campuses of Austin congregations. Third, this CCD's spiritual culture tends toward spiritual curiosity without gospel clarity, and the Church here has an unusual invitation to present Jesus specifically and unapologetically to neighbors who are searching but have not yet found.

33 congregations across 10 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 Christian institutions 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

Dripping Springs and Wimberley 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 Dripping Springs and Wimberley, this citywide ecosystem is largely a resource to be reached rather than one headquartered on the ground here. The corridor's own strengths lie in counseling and in outdoor and retreat ministry, including the pastoral restoration work centered in Driftwood, and those gifts can serve the wider metro. The gaps worth praying toward are in mercy and justice and in multiethnic ministry, both thin for a CCD of this wealth, so pray that the churches here would tie into the metro's justice, mercy, and multiethnic networks and convert their considerable capacity into mission.

Ministries at work here

Alongside the congregations, 9 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.

Nonprofits6 organizations

Know a nonprofit we have missed? Tell us.

Christian Schools3 schools

Know a school 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 Dripping Springs and Wimberley, write info@missionatx.org. A correction and an introduction are equally welcome.

The full Census Reporter profile for Dripping Springs and Wimberley. How this data is gathered and verified.

You have seen the ground. Now stand watch over it. The Dripping Springs and Wimberley prayer guide is written to be prayed out loud with others.

Open the Dripping Springs and Wimberley prayer guide