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Greater Austin Mission SocietyState of the City

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Is the church keeping pace?

The metro adds people faster than almost anywhere in the country. This exhibit asks the question that follows: is church planting keeping up? Each division shades by its new congregations per 100,000 residents in a five-year window, and the four windows below cover two decades side by side. Read them left to right and the story is not that planting stopped: the metro recorded 73 plantings in 2006–2010 and 56 in 2020–2024. It is that the city pulled ahead. Roughly 780,000 more people now live here, so the same planting effort covers less of the city every year, and the rate fell from 4.6 per 100,000 residents to 2.4.

Plantings per 100,000 residents, per window

  • Up to 1
  • 1 to 2
  • 2 to 4
  • 4 to 7
  • Over 7
  • No recorded plantings

Which division is which

AustinBastropCedar Creek and Red RockCedar Park and Liberty HillDripping Springs and WimberleyElginJarrellKyle and BudaLockhartNortheast TravisNorthwest TravisRound Rock and GeorgetownSan MarcosSouthwest TravisTaylorCedar Parkand LibertyHillRound RockandGeorgetownDrippingSprings andWimberleyAustinBastropCedar Creekand Red RockElginJarrellKyle and BudaLockhartNortheastTravisNorthwestTravisSan MarcosSouthwestTravisTaylor

2006–2010

73 plantings metro-wide, 4.6 per 100,000 residents

Austin: 22 plantings for about 745,251 residents, 3.0 per 100,000Bastrop: 2 plantings for about 21,026 residents, 9.5 per 100,000Cedar Creek and Red Rock: 4 plantings for about 24,984 residents, 16.0 per 100,000Cedar Park and Liberty Hill: 8 plantings for about 92,988 residents, 8.6 per 100,000Dripping Springs and Wimberley: 3 plantings for about 34,720 residents, 8.6 per 100,000Elgin: 1 planting for about 17,393 residents, 5.7 per 100,000Jarrell: 3 plantings for about 7,879 residents, 38.1 per 100,000Kyle and Buda: 3 plantings for about 58,368 residents, 5.1 per 100,000Lockhart: 2 plantings for about 23,010 residents, 8.7 per 100,000Northeast Travis: 6 plantings for about 89,401 residents, 6.7 per 100,000Northwest Travis: 5 plantings for about 95,159 residents, 5.3 per 100,000Round Rock and Georgetown: 8 plantings for about 223,798 residents, 3.6 per 100,000San Marcos: 2 plantings for about 53,351 residents, 3.7 per 100,000Southwest Travis: 2 plantings for about 49,901 residents, 4.0 per 100,000Taylor: 2 plantings for about 50,932 residents, 3.9 per 100,000

2011–2015

74 plantings metro-wide, 4.0 per 100,000 residents

Austin: 25 plantings for about 843,115 residents, 3.0 per 100,000Bastrop: 1 planting for about 22,265 residents, 4.5 per 100,000Cedar Creek and Red Rock: 3 plantings for about 28,362 residents, 10.6 per 100,000Cedar Park and Liberty Hill: 7 plantings for about 119,987 residents, 5.8 per 100,000Dripping Springs and Wimberley: 1 planting for about 38,030 residents, 2.6 per 100,000Elgin: no recorded plantings, about 16,672 residentsJarrell: no recorded plantings, about 8,124 residentsKyle and Buda: 4 plantings for about 75,672 residents, 5.3 per 100,000Lockhart: no recorded plantings, about 23,107 residentsNortheast Travis: 5 plantings for about 115,166 residents, 4.3 per 100,000Northwest Travis: 4 plantings for about 103,842 residents, 3.9 per 100,000Round Rock and Georgetown: 14 plantings for about 264,655 residents, 5.3 per 100,000San Marcos: 1 planting for about 63,860 residents, 1.6 per 100,000Southwest Travis: 3 plantings for about 59,522 residents, 5.0 per 100,000Taylor: 6 plantings for about 61,707 residents, 9.7 per 100,000

2016–2020

67 plantings metro-wide, 3.1 per 100,000 residents

Austin: 19 plantings for about 903,834 residents, 2.1 per 100,000Bastrop: 1 planting for about 25,547 residents, 3.9 per 100,000Cedar Creek and Red Rock: no recorded plantings, about 32,081 residentsCedar Park and Liberty Hill: 5 plantings for about 156,272 residents, 3.2 per 100,000Dripping Springs and Wimberley: 3 plantings for about 46,820 residents, 6.4 per 100,000Elgin: 1 planting for about 19,497 residents, 5.1 per 100,000Jarrell: 1 planting for about 10,136 residents, 9.9 per 100,000Kyle and Buda: 6 plantings for about 104,560 residents, 5.7 per 100,000Lockhart: no recorded plantings, about 26,066 residentsNortheast Travis: 4 plantings for about 157,554 residents, 2.5 per 100,000Northwest Travis: 1 planting for about 119,842 residents, 0.8 per 100,000Round Rock and Georgetown: 14 plantings for about 306,072 residents, 4.6 per 100,000San Marcos: 7 plantings for about 71,447 residents, 9.8 per 100,000Southwest Travis: 2 plantings for about 69,654 residents, 2.9 per 100,000Taylor: 3 plantings for about 79,046 residents, 3.8 per 100,000

2020–2024

56 plantings metro-wide, 2.4 per 100,000 residents

Austin: 18 plantings for about 922,674 residents, 2.0 per 100,000Bastrop: 1 planting for about 32,627 residents, 3.1 per 100,000Cedar Creek and Red Rock: 1 planting for about 40,000 residents, 2.5 per 100,000Cedar Park and Liberty Hill: 5 plantings for about 182,962 residents, 2.7 per 100,000Dripping Springs and Wimberley: no recorded plantings, about 58,887 residentsElgin: no recorded plantings, about 22,957 residentsJarrell: 1 planting for about 21,144 residents, 4.7 per 100,000Kyle and Buda: 4 plantings for about 132,671 residents, 3.0 per 100,000Lockhart: no recorded plantings, about 31,133 residentsNortheast Travis: 5 plantings for about 194,031 residents, 2.6 per 100,000Northwest Travis: 2 plantings for about 126,830 residents, 1.6 per 100,000Round Rock and Georgetown: 10 plantings for about 339,811 residents, 2.9 per 100,000San Marcos: 2 plantings for about 77,080 residents, 2.6 per 100,000Southwest Travis: no recorded plantings, about 86,480 residentsTaylor: 7 plantings for about 103,198 residents, 6.8 per 100,000

The same measure in four windows drawn side by side, so the change reads as one picture. The fifteen ACS editions overlap by four years each; these four are the nearest the series has to disjoint coverage, and the last two windows share the single year 2020. The shades step at 1, 2, 4, 7 plantings per 100,000, the same bins the scrubbing map below uses. On a computer, hover a division for its counts. Two cautions: a small division's shade can turn on a single planting, and earlier windows undercount plants that closed.

Scrub the spans yourself

The four windows above are cut from fifteen overlapping census editions. The map below scrubs across all of them, one edition at a time, for anyone who wants to watch the measure move year by year.

Drawing the fifteen divisions

Each division shades by its congregations founded within an ACS edition's five-year span, per 100,000 of that edition's population estimate, so both halves of the ratio describe the same five years. Two cautions travel with it. A small division's shade can turn on a single planting, so hover for the raw counts before reading a dark polygon as a movement. And a plant that closed young leaves no mark here, so earlier spans undercount what was actually tried. Congregations from the Society database as of 2026-10-10; population from the American Community Survey 5-year estimates via the Census Bureau API, fetched 2026-08-21. ACS figures are estimates and carry margins of error.

Where is the gap widest, and who is praying about it?

  • Find the divisions that stay light span after span while their population climbs. Their prayer guides name what is already there and what is not yet.
  • If your church could plant or send, this map is the case in one picture: write to us about the light divisions, and bring the explorer's residents-per-church view to the same conversation.
  • If a founding year is wrong or a congregation is missing, email info@missionatx.org. This site gets better when the people it describes correct it.

What the numbers are telling us

The Greater Austin Mission Society writes about the church in this metro: what this data shows, what it does not, and what we think it asks of us. The letters are free and written for leaders here.

Read the letters