North District Urban Ministry Plan
Rio Texas Annual Conference — District Strategy Team, Priority 3 (Plant New Churches and Develop New Faith Communities & Ministries)
Status: WORKING DRAFT / SKELETON — structure follows the Conference's Urban Ministry Strategic Plan (adopted June 2016; proceeds policy updated 2018 & 2020). Section headings below are the plan components the policy itself requires of "Districts that contain an urban municipality." Sections marked [DRAFTED] are substantially answered by existing DST work products; [PARTIAL] have a data foundation but need team input; [OPEN] are for the team to build.
0. Policy Basis and Why This Plan Exists
- 2016 Book of Discipline ¶2549.3, ¶2549.7, ¶212 and the Rio Texas policy Proceeds from Sale of Discontinued and Abandoned Properties (AC 2016, updated 2018 & 2020).
- Urban area = any county with population ≥ 50,000, per the annual list produced by Treasury Services from State Demographer data (osd.texas.gov). [Current-year official list: requested from Treasury Services — see §6.]
- Before any urban property sale, the DS must require the DST to conduct a Study of the mission field: demographic profile, feasibility of a mission/plant/ministry, and proposed restrictions on use of proceeds.
- Proceeds from urban sales, after sale/carrying costs and the 20% Property Administration Fund: 75% to this DST, 25% to the Conference Office of Congregational Vitality and Development — both restricted to urban ministry per the Study.
- The DST receives, evaluates, and approves applications for dispersing these funds, and reports on their use to the Uniting Table, Conference Trustees, and Conference membership.
- If a plan to use a discontinued property in ministry (consistent with the Study) is presented promptly to the Trustees, marketing of the property is deferred — repurposing a building as a plant site is a policy-sanctioned option, not an exception.
This plan is both the district's required urban ministry plan and the standing framework each per-property Study will draw from.
1. Demographic Profile of the Urban Area Mission Field [DRAFTED]
Policy requirement: "Include the people groups in the urban area mission field (demographic profile)."
Foundation already built — the DST geospatial analysis (church-plant-analysis):
- 567 census tracts scored across the 15-county North District (Census ACS, Texas Demographic Center projections, religious-adherence data, drive-time isochrones).
- Plant prospectus (Lens A): tracts ≥ 6 miles from any UMC (Rio Texas + Horizon Texas, 568 congregations checked), clustered into 34 named opportunity areas, ranked on growth (0.35), religious gap (0.30), demographic fit (0.20), and density (0.15). Top opportunities at last run: Sonterra (Williamson Co.), rural Hays Co., Weir, rural Caldwell Co.
- Deliverables in hand: 5-page DS strategic brief (PDF), per-cluster briefing site (34 opportunity briefings, including bottom-of-list cautions — knowing where not to plant is part of the profile), per-church briefing site (69 congregations).
Remaining for the team:
- Adopt (or amend) this analysis as the plan's official demographic profile.
- Name the priority people groups explicitly (the policy asks for people groups, not only geographies — e.g., Hispanic/Latino communities along the I-35 corridor, new-arrival suburban families, rural Hill Country communities).
2. Demographic Profile of the Church Population [PARTIAL]
Policy requirement: "Include the people groups who are participating actively in existing churches."
- Foundation: GCFA statistical tables 2000–2024 for every district congregation (membership, worship attendance, professions of faith, baptisms), assembled in the Rio Texas Atlas.
- Known conference-level context the plan should state honestly: worship engagement has fallen from 39% of membership (2010) to 25% (2024); the congregations growing in demographically hard contexts are disproportionately Hispanic/Latino new expressions.
- Add per-congregation racial/ethnic composition (GCFA carries these fields; not yet surfaced) to make the diversity gap between mission field (§1) and church population explicit — this gap is the stated rationale of the Conference's strategic plan.
3. Churches Capable of Extending New Missions [PARTIAL]
Policy requirement: "Include churches that are capable of extending new missions or ministries to reach people outside the prominent people group of the church — do cross-cultural ministry."
- Foundation: growth-halo analysis (Lens B) — for each district congregation, population, growth, and demographics within a 10-mile halo. Congregations with significant growth at their doorstep include Kyle UMC, Buda UMC, the San Marcos cluster, and St. Marks Lockhart (high-growth, high-Hispanic halos).
- The halo list identifies opportunity; only the team can assess capability and willingness (leadership health, financial position, appetite for sponsorship).
- Team review of halo candidates: which congregations could realistically sponsor or host a new community (church-to-church "flat-world" planting)?
- Note recent/current new starts and their sponsors so existing efforts are built on, not duplicated. (Caution: unchartered new starts are invisible in GCFA statistics — inventory them from district knowledge, not the data.)
4. Potential Leaders [OPEN]
Policy requirement: "Include potential leaders of new missions, new church plants and new ministries among the diverse people in the urban mission field."
Nothing in the data answers this; it is the team's discernment work — and per the church-planting literature, the leadership pipeline (not site selection) is the single strongest predictor of success or failure.
- Build a running roster of potential planters/leaders: clergy, licensed local pastors, laity, bivocational candidates — with intentional attention to leaders from the priority people groups in §1.
- Define the pipeline: wide intake → assessment → training → benchmarked supervision → honest exit ramps (a fail-fast trigger agreed in advance, not improvised).
- Identify assessment/training partners (Path 1 / conference CVD office / seminary or planting-network options).
5. Plan to Reach the Mission Field [OPEN]
Policy requirement: "Develops a plan to reach the people in the mission field with missions, new church plants and ministries."
This is the heart of the document — the team's strategy, matching §1 opportunities with §3 sending churches and §4 leaders. Candidate models to weigh:
- Church-to-church plant: a healthy halo congregation (§3) sponsors a new community in an adjacent growth cluster (§1).
- Property-repurpose plant: a discontinued building becomes the site of a new expression — presented promptly to the Trustees under the policy's deferral provision.
- New faith communities that are not building-first: house networks, workplace/school-adjacent communities, fresh expressions — consistent with the finding that fruitfulness does not correlate with size.
- Hispanic/Latino new expressions: aligned with where district growth actually is, and with the former Rio Grande Conference fund restriction ("highest priority… for Latino and Hispanic ministries") where those funds apply.
- For each selected initiative: mission field, model, sending partner, leader source, and which funding stream (§6) carries it.
6. Long-Term (7–10 Year) Funding Plan [OPEN — information requested]
Policy requirement: "Develops long-term (7 to 10 year) funding plans for missions, church plants and ministries among the diverse people in the urban mission field."
Honest premise the plan should state: conference apportionment revenue has declined roughly 7% per year for a decade ($10.8M in 2016 → $6.0M in 2024). Plants cannot ride the operating budget; the durable stream is the one this policy creates.
Funding streams to chart (per-initiative, per-year, 7–10 year horizon):
| Stream | Status |
|---|---|
| Urban property sale proceeds — 75% DST share | [ ] Balances + pipeline requested from Conference Board of Trustees |
| Conference CVD office — 25% share (grants back to district initiatives) | [ ] Application process to confirm with CVD |
| Former Rio Grande Conference proceeds (Latino/Hispanic priority restriction) | [ ] Applicability + balances to confirm |
| Sponsoring congregation(s) (§3) | [ ] Per-initiative commitments |
| Foundation / partner / personal-donor gifts | [ ] "Without a strategy, donors have nothing to give to" — this plan is the giving instrument |
Information requests outstanding (the pre-August email — addressed to the Conference Board of Trustees, who hold all of these; neither the DS nor the district has this information):
- Inventory of discontinued/abandoned North District properties — sold, unsold, and in process.
- Balances already designated to this DST (and to CVD) from past urban sales.
- Disposition of proceeds designated to predecessor district strategy teams before the 2025 three-district reorganization.
- Separate email to the Conference Treasurer / Treasury Services requesting the current-year ≥50k-population county list (the policy assigns production of that list to Treasury Services; sender to be designated by the team).
7. Measurable Goals and Timelines [OPEN]
Policy requirement: "Sets measurable goals and timelines for reaching the diverse people in the urban mission field with the gospel of Christ."
To be set by the team once §5–6 take shape. Placeholder scaffold:
- N new faith communities launched per year (with a named target, even if modest).
- Per-initiative launch benchmarks (leader in place → launch team → public launch → sustainability checkpoints) with go/no-go dates.
- District-level indicators: professions of faith and baptisms in new communities; people groups newly reached (vs. §1 profile).
- Funding indicators: proceeds received, deployed, and committed forward (7–10 yr view).
8. Assigned Responsibilities [OPEN]
Policy requirement: "Assigns specific responsibilities for carrying out the plan to individuals, teams and churches."
| Responsibility | Owner | By when |
|---|---|---|
| Conference Board of Trustees information request (§6) | before August DST meeting | |
| Conference Treasurer email — ≥50k county list (§6) | before August DST meeting | |
| Demographic profile adoption + people-group naming (§1) | August meeting | |
| Halo-church capability review (§3) | ||
| Leader roster + pipeline design (§4) | ||
| Funding chart once balances known (§6) | ||
| Per-property Studies as sales arise (§0) | DST (required by policy) | as triggered |
| Reports on fund use to Uniting Table / Trustees / Conference | annually |
9. Evaluation [OPEN]
Policy requirement: "Evaluates the plan and its implementation."
- Annual review of the plan against §7 goals (suggest: the DST meeting nearest Annual Conference).
- Honest per-initiative review at each benchmark date — including the discipline to stop what is not working (fail-fast is a kindness to planters, people, and funds).
- Refresh the demographic profile (§1) as new ACS/TDC data lands; the pipeline re-runs end-to-end.
Appendix A — Per-Property Study Template
When a sale triggers the Study requirement (¶2549.7), the Study must include:
- Demographic profile of the mission field — generated from the district analysis (§1), scoped to the urban area or a tighter radius around the property at the DST's discretion.
- Feasibility study for a mission, new church plant, or ministry to reach the people identified — drawing on cluster scoring, halo analysis, and §3–4 of this plan.
- Proposed restrictions and/or priorities for use of sale proceeds to reach the diverse people of that mission field.
The Study also advises whether a ministry-use plan for the property itself should be presented to the Trustees before marketing.