Southwest Travis

Executive Summary

Southwest Travis is the Hill Country corridor along the southwestern edge of Travis County, wrapping the southern shore of Lake Travis from Westbank and Eanes through Bee Cave and Lakeway to the Pedernales canyons west of Spicewood. At 86,480 residents, it is the wealthiest, most educated, and most stable of the metro's fifteen CCDs, with a median household income of $140,390, a median home value of $756,400, and a bachelor's degree attainment rate of 66.2 percent. It is also one of the two oldest by median age at 44.8, a settled region of long-tenured retirees and well-resourced young families who largely stay put rather than chase the growth pulse of the broader metro.

The spiritual picture is more sobering than the wealth suggests. With 25 active churches, the per-capita density of roughly one church for every 3,459 residents is one of the thinner in the metro, closer to the urban core than to the affluent suburbs nearby, and the quiet pull of self-sufficiency makes practical secularism a steady undertow. Yet this is also a CCD that sends, with mission organizations reaching from Lakeway and Bee Cave to the 10/40 Window. What follows is a demographic and spiritual portrait of Southwest Travis, paired with prayer prompts to help the church here pray with discernment for a region that has been given much.

Southwest Travis at a Glance

Measure	Southwest Travis CCD	Greater Austin MSA
Population	86,480	2,426,592
Median age	44.8	36.0
Median household income	$140,390	$100,431
Non-Hispanic White	71.3%	48.7%
Hispanic or Latino	15.1%	32.2%
Active churches	25	1,123 (metro total)
Residents per church	~3,459	~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 Southwest Travis 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 Southwest Travis 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 Southwest Travis. 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 Southwest Travis 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 Southwest Travis as it is in heaven, comes to Southwest Travis.

An Anchor from God's Word

"Take care lest you forget the LORD your God by not keeping his commandments and his rules and his statutes, which I command you today, lest, when you have eaten and are full and have built good houses and live in them, and when your herds and flocks multiply and your silver and gold is multiplied and all that you have is multiplied, then your heart be lifted up, and you forget the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery... Beware lest you say in your heart, 'My power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth.' You shall remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives you the power to get wealth."

Deuteronomy 8:11-14, 17-18 (ESV)

Few scriptures could be more precisely fitted to Southwest Travis than the one Moses spoke to Israel as they prepared to enter a good land. This is a CCD whose households have, by almost every measurable standard, eaten and grown full. The houses are good. The herds, in the form of stable household income, robust 401k balances, and diversified portfolios, have multiplied. The silver and gold of professional careers, real estate, and intergenerational wealth have multiplied with them. Deuteronomy 8 does not condemn that abundance. It names what is at stake within it. The temptation is not poverty but forgetting, not lack but the quiet drift toward "my power and the might of my hand." The invitation to the Church in Southwest Travis is to hold abundance and remembrance together, to receive the goodness of the land without confusing the gift for the giver, and to disciple a generation of children whose lives unfold inside the rare gift of stability so that they grow up knowing not merely what they have but who has given it to them. Pray for the homes around Lake Travis, the sanctuaries from Oak Hill to Bee Cave to Lakeway, and the schools and businesses of this CCD to remain rooted in the remembrance that everything they hold is from the Lord, and that the only durable response is faithfulness, generosity, and worship.

Prayer Prompts for Southwest Travis

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 Southwest Travis might accomplish, pray first that God himself would be manifestly present among his people in this CCD. This was Moses' refusal at Sinai, not another step forward without the Lord himself going with them, and it was the early church's first corporate cry after persecution, not strategy or escape but boldness and the stretching out of God's hand (Acts 4:29-30). A region this stable and well-resourced is uniquely susceptible to settling for orderly worship that has lost the weight of God's actual presence. Ask the Spirit to pour himself out afresh on the 25 active churches of this CCD in every form the Church takes here, from a sanctuary founded in 1926 to a congregation launched in 2025. Southwest Travis does not need better programs. Southwest Travis needs God.

For Households That Have Eaten and Are Full

"Take care lest you forget the LORD your God... lest, when you have eaten and are full and have built good houses and live in them... your heart be lifted up, and you forget the LORD your God."

Deuteronomy 8:11-14 (ESV)

The defining condition of this CCD is abundance. Median household income is $140,390, the median home value is $756,400, and 66.2 percent of adults hold a bachelor's degree or higher. Pray that the households of Southwest Travis would not forget the Lord in the rare gift of plenty. Pray for hearts that are not lifted up by what they have built, for marriages that hold faith and finances together with open hands, for wills and trusts that are written with the kingdom in view, and for families who tell their children the truth that wealth is given by God for blessing the world. Pray against the quiet self-sufficiency that runs deepest in places that look the most successful, and for repentance to remain easy in households that rarely lack anything.

For the Schools and the Children Growing Up Here

"Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it."

Proverbs 22:6 (ESV)

Southwest Travis is shaped by its schools as much as by its houses. Lake Travis ISD, Eanes ISD, Dripping Springs ISD, and the Oak Hill schools of Austin ISD draw families to this CCD and hold them here through their children's school years. The 5.9 percent fertility rate among women aged 15 to 50 and the 2.4-person-per-household average testify that significant numbers of children are still being raised here despite the older median age. Pray for the catechesis of this generation, that the children of Southwest Travis would not inherit only test scores, college acceptances, and family vacations but also a living faith. Pray for Christian teachers, coaches, and counselors in these districts to hold their classrooms and locker rooms before the Lord. Pray for the youth ministries of the churches across this CCD to compete not against video games and travel sports but for the souls of children whose schedules are full and whose hearts are still ready. Pray against the academic and athletic pressure that can replace the worship of God with the worship of the next achievement.

For Church Planting Across the Whole CCD

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

Acts 2:47 (ESV)

Several new congregations have been planted in this CCD since 2014, with Celebration Church Lake Travis launching as recently as 2025 and Cornerstone Church ATX, Rescue Church, South Austin Presbyterian Church, and the Episcopal Church of the Cross all begun within the last decade. That is meaningful planting momentum. And yet the planting has clustered heavily around Lakeway and Bee Cave, while the Oak Hill ridge, the RM 1826 corridor, and the Westbank corner of Eanes have received less new gospel presence per square mile. Pray for church planters and renewal leaders called to the corners of this CCD where the planting energy of the past decade has not yet reached. Pray for sending churches in Lakeway and Bee Cave to release leaders and finances toward Oak Hill and RM 1826, and for established congregations on the Oak Hill side to receive new plants as kingdom partners rather than competitors. Pray especially for new gospel work that can take root in Spanish, in Mandarin, in Korean, and in the languages of the foreign-born 12.8 percent who already live here. Pray also that this CCD would send beyond itself. At a median household income of $140,390 it is among the wealthiest divisions in the metro, and at roughly one church for every 3,459 residents it is the thinnest, so it needs planters and holds resources at the same time. Pray for its congregations to release leaders and money into Austin's southern and eastern corridors and south into San Marcos, rather than waiting until their own need is met first.

For Faith and Work in the Commute Out

"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 in Southwest Travis commutes 27.5 minutes each way, with the bulk of those drives heading east toward downtown Austin, the central business district, and the North Austin tech corridor. Believers in this CCD spend their working hours among the lawyers, software engineers, executives, consultants, doctors, professors, real estate professionals, and entrepreneurs who shape the economic and cultural life of Greater Austin. Pray for faithful Monday-through-Friday witness in those workplaces. Pray for believers in tech, finance, healthcare, law, education, and the trades to see their labor as kingdom work rather than as a means to a Lakeway address. Pray against the idols of identity, status, and success that ride the commute home with them, and for a generation of Christian professionals in this CCD to be shaped less by their LinkedIn profile and more by their baptism. Pray that the wealth gathered through these careers would not be hoarded but stewarded, and that homes around Lake Travis would become hospitality outposts of the kingdom rather than islands of private comfort.

For the Spanish-Speaking and Asian Households We Live Beside

"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 15.1 percent of this CCD and Non-Hispanic Asian residents are 7.3 percent, together making up nearly a quarter of the population. The number of congregations serving these communities, however, is one Spanish-language non-denominational church and zero Asian-American congregations on file in the Greater Austin Mission Society research. Pray for the Lord to raise up Spanish-speaking pastors and Asian-American church planters with a heart for Lakeway, Bee Cave, Oak Hill, and Westbank, for established English-speaking congregations to make room rather than only outreach, and for shared meals, shared mission, and shared sanctuaries to become ordinary across the cultural and linguistic lines of this CCD. Pray also for the foreign-born 12.8 percent who have made Southwest Travis their American home, that the gospel would reach them in their languages and their kitchens, and that the wealthier households of this CCD would discover that hospitality across cultural lines is one of the most concrete forms of repentance available to them.

For the Renewal of the Historic and Mainline Congregations

"Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first."

Revelation 2:5 (ESV)

The longest-running congregations of this CCD, Bee Cave Baptist Church since 1926, Emmaus Catholic Church since 1963, Lakeway Church since 1969, and Mt. Olive Lutheran Church since 1977, hold much of the spiritual memory of the region. Pray for the Spirit to renew the historic anchor congregations of this CCD, that their decades of continuous witness would deepen into fresh faithfulness. Pray for the United Methodist congregations in Oak Hill and Lakeway, for the Episcopal Church of the Cross, for Emmaus Catholic Church, and for every mainline body in this CCD, that the gospel would be preached clearly and the Scriptures held high. Pray for every congregation in this CCD, that the Lord would keep awakening individuals, families, and whole churches to the faith once delivered to the saints, and that none would be content with a Christianity that has lost its center in Christ.

For Pastors and Ministry Leaders Across Lakeway, Bee Cave, and Oak Hill

"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)

The 25 active churches of this CCD span Baptist, Catholic, Methodist, non-denominational, Presbyterian, Lutheran, Episcopal, Church of Christ, Assemblies of God, and Spanish-language traditions. Their leaders are often well-resourced compared to pastors elsewhere in the metro, yet they are not exempt from the loneliness of leadership and the temptation to build separately. Christ Together Greater Austin already operates as a unity and collaboration network across the metro. Pray for that work to deepen rather than thin. Pray for honest friendships to form between the OPC pastor in Oak Hill and the non-denominational planter in Bee Cave, between the Catholic priest at Emmaus and the Baptist pastor at Bee Cave Baptist, between the Anglican rector at the Episcopal Church of the Cross and the LCMS pastor at Mt. Olive. Pray for Spanish-speaking and bilingual leaders to be drawn into the wider fellowship of the CCD as full peers, and for Asian-American pastors to find a welcome here as the Lord raises them up. Unity in Southwest Travis will not be forged in a conference. It will be forged over barbecues, prayer breakfasts, school board meetings, and shared funerals.

For a Generosity That Turns Comfort Into Mission

"Command those who are rich in this present age not to be haughty, nor to trust in uncertain riches but in the living God, who gives us richly all things to enjoy. Let them do good, that they be rich in good works, ready to give, willing to share, storing up for themselves a good foundation for the time to come, that they may lay hold on eternal life."

1 Timothy 6:17-19 (NKJV)

Southwest Travis already sends. BLESS Foundation reaches Unreached People Groups across the 10/40 Window from Bee Cave. Lake Travis Crisis Ministries has fed and resourced families in this CCD for nearly forty years out of a borrowed church space. Pray that this CCD would know itself not as a place where the gospel finally arrives but as a place from which the gospel goes out. Pray for households whose 401ks are funded and whose mortgages are paid to discover that storing up treasure in heaven is the only investment that compounds forever. Pray for new ministries of pregnancy support, addiction recovery, refugee welcome, and youth development to be planted in this CCD by households who have run out of better uses for their abundance. Pray for the schools, lake homes, professional networks, and family foundations of Southwest Travis to be drafted into the mission of God across the metro and to the ends of the earth. Ask the Lord to make this CCD a place where comfort is no longer a barrier to faith but a furnace for it, and where the prayer of Jesus, in Southwest Travis as it is in heaven, is answered in the boats on Lake Travis and the offices on Bee Caves Road as surely as on the ranchland of Williamson County's edge.

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 Southwest Travis.

Walk the CCD. Pick a corridor or neighborhood in Southwest Travis and walk it slowly. Walk Lakeway Boulevard at sunset. Walk the trails of Bee Cave Central Park or the Hill Country Galleria after the stores close. Walk RM 1826 and the farm-road communities along the CCD's southeastern edge. Walk a Westbank cul-de-sac in Eanes, or the older streets of Hudson Bend, or the Oak Hill ridge along US-290. Stop in front of schools, city halls, retail centers, lakeside parks, churches, and gathering places. 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 Southwest Travis. Mark the Lake Travis ISD, Eanes ISD, Dripping Springs ISD, and Austin ISD attendance zones, the lakefront communities of Lakeway and Hudson Bend, the commercial heart of Bee Cave, the older neighborhoods of Oak Hill, the RM 1826 corridor, and the places your family already lives, works, and gathers. 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 limestone cliffs and live-oak ridges, the lake itself, the schools that have shaped generations of Central Texans, the historic congregations whose doors have never closed, and the households whose generosity already reaches the nations. Second, what you lament in this region, the quiet self-sufficiency that comes with comfort, the loneliness that hides inside large homes, the schools whose pressure can replace the gospel with achievement, the Spanish-speaking and Asian neighbors who do not yet have a church home in their own language. 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 Southwest Travis 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.

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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 Southwest Travis CCD Prayer Guide is also available as a PDF to download, print, and pray through with your team.

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