State of the City / Methodology

Glossary

The words this site uses for places, surveys and churches, each in one sentence. The methodology says how each is measured.

Metro (MSA)

The Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos metropolitan statistical area, the five counties of Travis, Williamson, Hays, Bastrop and Caldwell that the Census Bureau counts as one metro.

Census County Division (CCD)

A part of a county that the Census Bureau draws for counting people, following roads, rivers and the shape of communities rather than city limits.

Division

One of the fifteen Census County Divisions this site is built around, each with its own explore page and prayer guide.

ZIP Code Tabulation Area (ZCTA)

The Census Bureau's map of a postal zip code, built from census blocks, so the two can differ at the edges.

American Community Survey (ACS)

The Census Bureau's yearly survey of households; this site uses its five-year estimates, which pool five years of answers so that smaller places can be described.

Margin of error

The range, at 90 percent confidence, within which a survey figure's true value probably falls, so 1,000 ±100 likely means between 900 and 1,100.

A rough estimate

A figure whose margin of error is more than about half the figure itself; a figure whose margin passes about two-thirds of it is not shown.

Residents per church

The people living in a place divided by the congregations there, a measure of how many neighbors each church has rather than how many attend.

Congregation

A local church that gathers regularly for worship; our database lists each one active in the fifteen divisions.

Ministry

A Christian organization that is not a congregation: a nonprofit, a Christian school, or a network that serves churches across the city.

Tradition

One of the families of churches this site groups congregations into by denomination, such as Baptist, Catholic or Pentecostal; it tells you a church's family, not what it teaches.

Campus place

One street address shared by several congregations or ministries, shown on our maps as a single marker that opens to each of them.

How current it is

Church and ministry records are refreshed from the Society's database on the first of each month. The fifteen prayer guides are being revised, and the current edition is dated July 2026.