The Austin Project
Our Vision and Purpose
The Austin Projects' goal is to see a new church planted in East-Central Austin. This work has been a desire of several already existing churches and leaders in Austin for over a decade.
You can read about our vision, target area, and fundraising goal below. Our fundraising page can be accessed at give.pcamna.org/to/the-austin-project/. Checks to support the Austin Project can be mailed to Mission to North America.
P.O. Box 890233 Charlotte, NC 28289. Please write #2056 Danny Morgan or Austin Project in the Memo Line.
Why Austin? Why Now?
In many ways, Austin represents the modern Modern Western City. Morally fluid, culturally inventive and influential, an intellectual powerhouse, and highly pluralistic. While Austin leans heavily toward a liberal moral and social conscience, many Austinites have a libertarian political or social perspective. The average Austinite is highly individualistic, private, and concerned about their well-being, personal rights, and career opportunities. Yet, many of them come from various spiritual, religious, and socio-economic backgrounds, making the city a modern-day Corinth- pluralistic, spiritual, upwardly mobile and influential, hedonistic, but with a thread of both modernity and post-modernity in its approach to politics and morality. In its pluralism, Austin is predominantly pagan yet profoundly open to Christianity. Competing worldviews can take center stage at various moments across the city in different social or political spaces. In Austin, you can listen to Joe Rogan reverently explore and mock Christianity at the same time. You can attend either the new University of Austin, focused on classics and liberal arts, or the University of Texas, with over 50,000 students. Austin regularly hosts marches for abortion access, transgender rights, and racial justice in downtown and on the East side, while also boasting as the capital of one of the most politically conservative states in the country. To live here means you have an immense opportunity, like many major cities, but in Austin, there is no predisposed political or social allegiance one must conform to in order to find these opportunities. Both liberal leaning Texans and conservative-leaning West and East Coasters move to Austin for similar reasons: to find refuge and opportunity.
A hub of music, art, tech, entrepreneurship, education, and Law, Austin is a powerhouse of industry and influence. Anyone can move here and reinvent themselves overnight. Austinites value their culture of moral fluidity, individual freedoms, uniqueness, and pluralism over inheritance, heritage, or status, making cultural identity here always in flux. Rather than prestige and status, Austinites signal inclusion by asking, “How long have you been here?” This is a city that draws a wide range of individuals from relocated Texans seeking affirmation in their self-discovery, particularly against traditional and religious upbringings, to entry-level to mid-tier professionals in tech, finance, law, or entrepreneurship from the East or West Coast. This makes Austin a place of innovation, but skeptical of outsiders and change. Moreover, Austin has been described as a libertarian shadow of Silicon Valley in recent years, yet with a historically Black and Latino presence on the East side now being heavily gentrified by Asian and Indian Americans moving here for industry, and many young post-collegiate middle-class professionals. This is a place for the Modern young professional to spend their 20’s and 30’s and start their life however they please- whether as a liberal or a conservative, a Christian or a pagan. Austin accepts all.
Austin has been rapidly expanding over the past decade and continues to climb the list of the largest cities in the US. Texas is also one of the fastest-growing states in the US, with the San Antonio- Austin Corridor projected to be one of the largest and most influential metro areas in the US by 2050. Currently, 55% of the city’s population identifies as Christian, yet only 14% as Protestant. Yet, people across the city and the state of Texas are leaving Christianity and becoming secular or “spiritual but not religious.” 36% of Austinites already identify as “nones.” Since the majority of Austinites are relocated Texans, they are highly familiar with Christianity but are also disappointed and distrustful of the local church. This distrust is largely due to what missiologist Stefaan Paas has called the “credibility issue” of the Modern Western Church. Skepticism is not just toward traditional authority but specifically Christianity, largely due to justice issues surrounding abuse, financial mismanagement, and a lack of transparency, as headlined against many Christian churches today. But, this is not merely an institutional issue. Texans' high familiarity with Christianity also means many Austinites have their own experiences within the church that have led to their skepticism, making the issue deeply personal.
As a national cultural hub and given its proximity to major industries such as tech development, entrepreneurship, music, and the arts, Austin’s trends are expected to spread not only across Texas but also across the country. This means Austin is a critical urban center for the gospel and for more churches seeking to reach the average Austinite for the Kingdom of God.
Target Zip Code
The East Side of Austin is rapidly shifting, more so than other parts of the city. Both in population and culturally, East Austin feels at times like parts of Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Brooklyn with a thoroughly Texas ethos. A historically red-lined neighborhood, what is left of historic East Austin is now a shadow as the majority of our Black and Latino neighbors have moved out and been replaced by young professionals, highly fitting the profile laid out above. Yet, the East Side has a more colorful character than other parts of the city. An emphasis on arts and community, East Austin is highly driven by the bohemian and historically “weird” old Austin lifestyle; outdoor living, wellness, spiritual exploration, and the city’s consuming appetite for food, drink, and fun.
Vision for Ministry and Values
The Austin Project, working closely with the Reach South Texas Church Planting Network, the South Texas Presbytery, and our local MNA Committee, seeks to begin a church that reaches Austinites with the gospel. We are prayerful and hopeful that God will establish a church in one of the fastest-growing parts of the city, East-Central Austin, to be a community renewed by the gospel, for the flourishing of the city. As I’ve engaged with Austinites, particularly on the East side, I’ve been struck by how shriveled up their lives are, facing isolation and hopelessness, and their disappointment with Christianity, the church, God, but also politics, their career, and their social life. Austinites are highly technique-driven, focused on health and wellness, in tune with trends, desirous of living virtuous lives, yet are languishing and unsatisfied. Yet so many of them are remarkably open to Jesus Christ, longing for a spiritual reality that remains unsatisfied. Like the Apostle Paul in Athens, the idols of the city have provoked us to see a church that meets Austinites with the gospel, prayerfully desiring to see a PCA church planted that shows the intellectual credibility and the joy-filled hope of the gospel for all of life.
The Austin Project has the vision to see a PCA church planted in East-Central Austin to reach Austinites with the fullness of the gospel through a ministry that meets them in skepticism, languishing, and disappointment by being to them a community of God’s love through which they will hear the good news of the gospel and be converted, formed together as a community of word and deed ministry, and live outward facing lives in biblical mercy, justice, integrity, and love. We want to give Austinites a hopeful biblical vision for their lives that only Christ and His Kingdom can, and we want to see renewal in every area of their lives so that Austinites become agents of Gospel renewal, building God’s Kingdom across the city. In short, we desire to exist for the “shalom of the city” (Jeremiah 29:7).
About the Morgans
Both relocated Californians, Jaicee and I moved to Austin from Southern California in the Summer of 2022. I was raised in a religiously pluralistic and de-churched family. In God’s providence and immense grace, I heard the gospel proclaimed to me at 12 years old and came to faith in Christ. I attended Christ College at Concordia University Irvine, completing a degree in Theological Studies (2015) and later Fuller Theological Seminary (2019), while also completing significant coursework at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. By God’s grace, I’ve served in ministry since 2012, serving as a minister since 2018. Jaicee and I met in college, married in 2016, and have three amazing young children: Shepherd (4), Salem (3), and Hudson (1). Jaicee is an artist focusing on photography and a servant in hospitality, caring for women in the church and providing them with care and counsel.
MNA has fully recommended us through their assessment process to begin this work, and we are thrilled that God has opened the door for the gospel as our family serves Christ and His Church in Austin by planting this church on the East side of Austin.
Timeline and Budget
We will begin a church-planting residency with Reach South Texas in 2026, while we continue in the ministry of prayer and evangelism in our community. Beginning in the Spring, we will start gathering a launch team, continue fundraising, and hold monthly prayer and vision meetings, with the goal of beginning monthly gatherings with those in the community we seek to reach with the gospel this Summer. Our prayer is that we will see God provide the resources for us to begin publicly gathering in Winter 2027.
Working with Reach South Texas and MNA, we believe this project will need $1.9 Million over 5 years. This is a God-given vision that only He can provide, and our confidence and faith are completely in Him to build His Church. So, we pray that God will provide $825,000 in external funding for His Church in East-Central Austin. We are seeking Churches, Networks, and Individuals to give to the Vision of the Austin Project for the Kingdom here through 2031:
3 Churches, Networks, or Individuals giving $100,000
5 Churches, Networks, or Individuals giving $50,000
10 Churches, Networks, or Individuals giving $10,000
25 Churches, Networks, or Individuals giving $5,000
50 Churches, Networks, or Individuals giving $1,000
Thank you for taking the time to read about our desire to build for the Kingdom in Austin. Would you prayerfully consider joining us in seeing His church prevail here and around the world? We are so thankful for your stewardship and generosity! Your gifts are tax-deductible and can be made through MNA.
Our fundraising page can be accessed at give.pcamna.org/to/the-austin-project/. Checks to support the Austin Project can be mailed to Mission to North America.
P.O. Box 890233 Charlotte, NC 28289. Please write #2056 Danny Morgan or Austin Project in the Memo Line.
Please get in touch with Danny Morgan for inquiries: Danielmorgan413@gmail.com 512.800.0420