Cedar Creek and Red Rock

Executive Summary

Cedar Creek and Red Rock is the southwestern face of Bastrop County, a rural-to-exurban stretch of ranchland, river bottom, and fast-filling subdivisions along the Highway 71 corridor between Austin and the city of Bastrop. At roughly 40,000 residents it is a mid-sized division in the Greater Austin MSA, and it is one of the most distinctive, because it is Hispanic-majority at 55.9 percent, a share matched only by Lockhart among the fifteen CCDs. Homeownership is unusually high at 79.1 percent, homes are still affordable by metro standards at a median value of $329,200, and the median commute of 36.5 minutes is among the longest in the region, carrying most workers west toward Austin and Del Valle each morning. Beneath the new construction lies a deep rural memory, in congregations at Cedar Creek, Red Rock, and Wyldwood that have prayed here since the 1840s.

The division has 42 active churches, a strong per-capita density of roughly one church for every 952 residents, yet a third of those congregations carry too little public information to assess and the local ministry infrastructure outside the church is thin. The Spanish-speaking congregations that serve the majority population need stronger ties to their English-speaking neighbors, and the mercy work that meets real hunger here, most visibly the Grace in Red Rock food pantry, runs almost entirely through churches rather than through standalone nonprofits. What follows is a demographic and spiritual portrait of Cedar Creek and Red Rock, paired with prayer prompts to help the church here pray with discernment for a place that is being settled and built in real time.

Cedar Creek and Red Rock CCD at a Glance

Measure	Cedar Creek and Red Rock CCD	Greater Austin MSA
Population	40,000	2,426,592
Median age	35.9	36.0
Median household income	$86,747	$100,431
Non-Hispanic White	37.5%	48.7%
Hispanic or Latino	55.9%	32.2%
Active churches	42	1,123 (metro total)
Residents per church	~952	~2,161

Demographic figures are drawn from the 2024 five-year ACS release, and church figures from the Greater Austin Mission Society church database, refreshed in July 2026. The MSA church figure is the metro-wide total across all fifteen CCDs. A fuller picture follows below.

The snapshot above is a starting point, not the whole picture, and two tools open it up further. This site's own map and church list for Cedar Creek and Red Rock plots the known congregations of this division, so you can see for yourself where the church is already present and where she is thin. The official Census Bureau profile for Cedar Creek and Red Rock CCD holds the full demographic detail behind the figures above, for anyone who wants to look more closely at the people who live here. Both are worth opening before you pray.

The local church sits at the center of everything God is doing in Cedar Creek and Red Rock. She is not one ministry among many but the community Jesus promised to build and the one he sends into the world, the gathered people through whom the gospel is preached, disciples are formed, the weak are carried, and the good news becomes visible to a watching region. No parachurch ministry, nonprofit, or network can replace her or reproduce what she is. Whatever else happens in this CCD, the health of its congregations is the first thing to pray for, because everything else depends on it.

So prayer for Cedar Creek and Red Rock should hold three things together. Pray first for the church in her many forms to be strong and faithful at the center. Pray for the fuller ecosystem of ministries around her, the planting and renewal and the specialized callings, to grow where it is thin. And pray for the relationships of trust among leaders across this region, because it is through a united and interdependent church that the prayer of Jesus, in Cedar Creek and Red Rock as it is in heaven, comes to Cedar Creek and Red Rock.

An Anchor from God's Word

"Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce... Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the LORD for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper."

Jeremiah 29:5-7 (NIV)

Jeremiah's letter to the exiles speaks with unusual precision to a division whose people build houses in one place and earn their living in another. Cedar Creek and Red Rock is being settled in real time, with families planting themselves in affordable homes on old ranchland and driving long miles each day toward the city where the work is. The temptation of a commuter exurb is to treat the place where you sleep as a way station rather than a home worth seeking the welfare of. Jeremiah refuses that posture. He tells a displaced people to build, to plant, to settle, and then to seek the peace and prosperity of the very place they live, because their own flourishing is bound up with its flourishing. The invitation to the Church here is to help these households believe that the ground between Cedar Creek, Wyldwood, and Red Rock is not merely affordable but worth loving, praying for, and building well.

Prayer Prompts for Cedar Creek and Red Rock

For the Presence of God Among His People in This Region

"If your presence will not go with me, do not bring us up from here."

Exodus 33:15 (ESV)

Before praying for anything the churches of Cedar Creek and Red Rock might accomplish, pray first that God himself would be manifestly present among his people in this division. This was Moses' refusal at Sinai, not another step forward without the Lord himself going with them. It was the early church's first corporate cry after persecution, not escape or strategy but boldness and the stretching out of God's hand (Acts 4:29-30). Ask the Spirit to pour himself out afresh on the 42 active churches of this division in every form the Church takes here, from the Methodist congregation at Cedar Creek that has met since 1847 to the newest Spanish-speaking fellowship meeting along the Red Rock highway. Cedar Creek and Red Rock does not need a program. It needs God.

For the Spanish-Speaking Majority and the One Church of This Division

"From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth... God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us."

Acts 17:26-27 (NIV)

Hispanic or Latino residents are 55.9 percent of this division, a majority, and the division holds a large and growing cluster of Spanish-speaking congregations, including Iglesia Cristiana de Bastrop, Iglesia Cristiana Puerta Del Cielo in Red Rock, and Iglesia Nueva Vida. Pray for these congregations to be strengthened and seen, not as a separate ministry lane but as the heart of the one Church of Cedar Creek and Red Rock. Pray for English-speaking pastors to cross the highway toward Spanish-speaking pastors, and for shared prayer, shared meals, and shared mission to become ordinary rather than occasional. Pray that the gospel would move freely in Spanish and English alike, and that a division where the majority speaks Spanish would be served by a Church that looks like its people.

For Households That Settle and the Lord Who Builds With Them

"Unless the LORD builds the house, those who build it labor in vain."

Psalm 127:1 (ESV)

The defining feature of this division is settlement. Subdivisions are rising along Highway 71 on what was ranchland, and families are buying homes here faster than the Church has capacity to receive them, drawn by a 79 percent homeownership rate and prices still within reach. Pray that the Lord would build these households, not merely that the houses would stand. Pray for marriages formed under the pressure of long commutes and single-earner budgets. Pray for parents catechizing children in homes that are the first their family has ever owned. Pray for new arrivals to find a church home and neighbors who know their names, and a reason to root their lives here that is larger than an affordable mortgage.

For the Commute Out and the Witness Home

"Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward."

Colossians 3:23-24 (NIV)

The average worker here commutes 36.5 minutes each way, among the longest in the metro, and many drive considerably farther, west into Del Valle, the Austin airport corridor, and the job sites and warehouses of eastern Travis County. Pray for faithful Monday-through-Friday witness in those workplaces. Pray for believers in construction, trucking, warehousing, healthcare, and the trades to see their labor as kingdom work rather than as the price of a Bastrop County zip code. Pray against the idols that ride the commute home, which in this division are not primarily ambition but exhaustion, isolation, and the slow erosion of family time between an early departure and a late return.

For the Renewal of the Historic Congregations

"I know your deeds, your love and faith, your service and perseverance, and that you are now doing more than you did at first."

Revelation 2:19 (NIV)

The oldest congregations in this division, Cedar Creek United Methodist Church since 1847, Sacred Heart Catholic Church since 1876, and Hopewell Primitive Baptist Church since 1873, together with the historically Black witness of Union Chapel AME Church and the Primitive Baptist congregations at Shiloh and Mount Pleasant, hold well over a century of continuous presence each. Pray for these congregations to find second and third winds. Ask the Lord to knit their deep rural and African American heritage together with the Hispanic families and new arrivals now filling the land around them. Pray that the sanctuaries that have stood through drought, fire season, and generational change would not merely survive but do more than they did at first.

For Church Planting Along the Highway 71 Corridor

"And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved."

Acts 2:47 (NIV)

New non-denominational congregations have arrived in this division in recent years, from Celebration Community Church and Calvary Chapel Bastrop to LifeFamily Bastrop planted in 2024, a real planting momentum for a rural region. And yet the housing is outpacing the planting, and subdivisions are still filling ahead of any gospel presence. Pray for church planters called specifically to the growing edges of Cedar Creek, Wyldwood, and Red Rock, for sending churches in Austin, Del Valle, and Bastrop willing to release leaders and resources into this division, and for existing pastors here to find one another in planting conversations rather than in planting competition. Pray as well that this division would send and not only receive. At roughly one church for every 952 residents it is among the better-supplied parts of the metro, and pray that its rural congregations, small as most of them are, would carry leaders and prayer back up the Highway 71 corridor toward the southeastern edge of Austin, where one church serves nearly 2,600 residents, and would stand alongside Bastrop's growing edges. Planting has rarely begun with abundance.

For the Hungry and the Church That Feeds Them

"Is not this the fast that I choose... to share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house?"

Isaiah 58:6-7 (ESV)

The poverty rate here is 11.5 percent, above the metro figure, and the mercy work that answers it runs almost entirely through congregations, most visibly the Grace in Red Rock food pantry, which fed more than 19,000 families in a single year. Pray for the churches carrying this weight, often with volunteers who are themselves stretched thin. Pray for the standalone ministries of mercy, recovery, and family care that this division lacks to be raised up locally, so that a hungry or hurting family does not have to drive to Bastrop or Austin at the end of a long day. Pray that the generosity Isaiah describes would mark the whole Church of this division, and that meeting bodily need would open doors for the gospel that meets the deeper hunger.

For Discernment Toward the Lesser-Known Congregations

"I pray also... that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me."

John 17:20-21 (NIV)

Many of the active churches in this division carry too little public information to be known well, most of all the small and Spanish-speaking congregations without websites or wider networks. This is not a mark against them; it is an invitation. Pray for the relationships that would let the wider body know these congregations by name rather than by data. Pray for the Baptist and non-denominational pastors near Cedar Creek to befriend the Spanish-speaking pastors in Red Rock, for the Catholic and Methodist congregations to be known and honored by their evangelical neighbors, and for a unity in this division that is forged in shared burden rather than declared at a distance.

For Pastors and Leaders, and for a God Who Prospers the Place

"Seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you... Pray to the LORD for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper."

Jeremiah 29:7 (NIV)

The 42 churches of this division span Baptist, Catholic, Methodist, non-denominational, Pentecostal, Church of Christ, Lutheran, Mennonite, Messianic, and a large Spanish-speaking presence, and many of their leaders serve stretched thin and relationally isolated across a wide rural geography. Pray for these pastors and ministry leaders to find one another across denominational and language lines, and to seek the welfare of Cedar Creek and Red Rock together. Pray that this division would come to see itself not as a bedroom for Austin but as a home worth loving, and that its churches would seek its peace and prosperity as their own. Ask the Lord to build these houses and watch over this place, so that the prayer of Jesus, in Cedar Creek and Red Rock as it is in heaven, would be answered on the ranchland and the frontage roads of southwestern Bastrop County.

Additional Ways You Can Pray

The prompts above are a starting point, not a ceiling. Here are four practical ways to take this prayer further into the life of Cedar Creek and Red Rock.

Walk the CCD. Pick a corridor or neighborhood in Cedar Creek and Red Rock and walk it slowly. Walk the older cores of Cedar Creek, Wyldwood, and Red Rock, and walk the frontage roads along Highway 71 where new subdivisions meet the ranchland. Stop in front of schools, the volunteer fire stations, dollar stores and feed stores, apartment complexes, ball fields, and the food pantry in Red Rock. Pray over what you see. Ask God to move in the specific people and institutions that shape daily life along that stretch of ground. Prayer walking turns abstract petitions into embodied ones and tends to change the one who walks as much as the region being prayed for.

Map the CCD. Use the demographic picture in this guide as a starting point and sketch a simple map of your own neighborhood or area of Cedar Creek and Red Rock. Mark the school attendance zones, the historic cores of Cedar Creek and Red Rock, the newer subdivisions along Highway 71, the farmland and ranchland still in production, and the Spanish-speaking and English-speaking congregations that share the same roads. Let the map expose where the gospel is already at work, where it is absent, and where the church might be invited in next. A rough hand-drawn map is worth more than a polished one, because the act of drawing forces attention.

Pray for the CCD like you would pray for a person. Write down two lists. First, what you love about this region, the gifts and beauty and strengths that are worth naming in thanksgiving, the deep rural heritage of Cedar Creek and Red Rock, the historically Black and Primitive Baptist congregations, the strength of Hispanic family life, the young families settling into their first homes, the sanctuaries whose doors have stayed open for 150 years. Second, what you lament in this region, the exhaustion of the long commute, the thin local ministry infrastructure, the Spanish-speaking congregations carrying heavy loads without much support, the hunger that keeps a food pantry busy. Bring both lists before the Lord. Loves become the material of worship, and laments become the material of intercession.

Pray Together. The prompts in this guide are written to be prayed out loud by a gathered group, not only read privately. Invite two or three other pastors, ministry leaders, or intercessors from across traditions in Cedar Creek and Red Rock to pray through this guide together on a rhythm, whether weekly, monthly, or in a standing prayer gathering. Corporate prayer has formed every lasting gospel movement, and it tends to form the relational trust among leaders that the Kingdom Ecosystem section describes as connective tissue.

---

If this guide served your prayers, there is more coming. The Greater Austin Mission Society is building a prayer guide for every Census County Division in the metro, alongside ongoing research on the church across the region. Follow us on Substack at notes.missionatx.org to receive new guides as they are released, regional research, and invitations to pray with leaders across the city. The full Cedar Creek and Red Rock CCD Prayer Guide is also available as a PDF to download, print, and pray through with your team.

---

This prayer guide was prepared by the Greater Austin Mission Society. For questions or to contribute data, contact info@missionatx.org.