A new stake was created last Sunday in Texas. The Spring Texas Stake was created from the Houston Texas North Stake and the College Station Texas Stake. The new stake consists of seven wards, two of which were taken from the College Station Texas Stake. Growth in the number of stakes in Texas has been impressive in recent years. Since the beginning of 2005 there have been 11 new stakes created in the Lone Star State, now totaling 55. Only Utah, California, Idaho, and Arizona have more stakes. Membership growth has also been consistent, with the number of Church members increasing from 217,725 in 2000 to 278,492 in 2008. Strong growth in the Church in Texas is due to large numbers of Church members moving to the state combined with the missions in Texas regularly baptizing converts into the Church. Some of the more successful missions in terms of the number of converts in Texas are the Texas San Antonio and Texas McAllen Missions.
Below is a list of the stakes organized in Texas since the beginning of 2005:
Tyler Texas Stake: January 22, 2005
Houston Texas West (Spanish) Stake: January 8, 2006
Weatherford Texas Stake: April 30, 2006
Richmond Texas Stake: May 7, 2006
Allen Texas Stake: August 26, 2007
San Antonio Texas Hill Country Stake: January 27, 2008
Frisco Texas Stake: May 4, 2008
Kyle Texas Stake: May 4, 2008
McAllen Texas West Stake: September 7, 2008
League City Texas Stake: October 25, 2009
Spring Texas Stake: November 8, 2009
Several stakes in Texas appear close to dividing. Below are a list of stakes likely to divide in the near future. These stakes have seen consistent growth in new congregations and currently have enough congregations to be divided. Oftentimes new stakes are not created until a stake has at least 13 wards in Texas.
Colleyville Texas Stake: 13 wards
Dallas Texas East Stake: 12 wards
Richardson Texas Stake: 14 wards
Round Rock Texas Stake: 12 wards, 2 branches
10 comments:
Thanks for the great posts. As a lifetime (age 48) member in Texas, I remember the Dallas-FortWorth (DFW) area only having one stake that stretched over 200 miles in each direction, we now have 15 DFW area stakes and should have 3 more soon. We now have very strong wards and stakes, and at least in the northern DFW counties LDS is about 2% of the population. My ward and stake has about 60-65% activity rate and my ward has had 14 convert baptisms and many move-ins this year. The church is much more known and respected than 10-20years ago.
Matt, perhaps add these as stakes that could soon divide?
Dallas, 9 wards 4 branches
Killeen, 9 wards, 5 branches
It seems there are enough wards in the DFW area that are Spanish-speaking that there could be a stake for Spanish-speaking members like the 2 in Houston.
Also, you mention two Texas missions that have been very high baptizing missions. Do you have a ranking of the top ten or so missions in the Church for baptisms? I once heard that the Provo Utah Mission was #1, but I don't know if it was just for the Utah missions.
To: Randall
I looked in the 1967 Directory of General Authorities and Officers of the Church and saw that the Dallas Stake had 9 wards and 9 branches stretching from Waco to Wichita Falls to Paris. It was huge!
There were 6370 members then. At year-end 2005 (latest year figures are available), there were 62,433 members in the Dallas
Metropolitan Area. I believe there must be close to 100,000 members within the borders of the original Dallas Stake now.
I don't known what the highest baptizing mission is for the Church. If you search "highest baptizing" in google you get quite a few different missions which missionaries serving in the field claim are the highest baptizing. Many missions see large fluctuations in the numbers that join the Church every month. Below are a list of some of the higher baptizing missions I am aware of. This list has been created from reports either from mission presidents or missionaries serving.
-Brazil Fortaleza Mission
-Brazil Joao Pessao Mission
-Brazil Manaus Mission
-Democratic Republic of Congo Kinshasa Mission
-Florida Jacksonville
-Madagascar Antananarivo Mission
-Mexico City missions
-Mexico Leon Mission
-Nicaragua Managua Mission
-Paraguay missions
-Peru Lima North Mission
-Taiwan Taichung Mission
-Utah missions
One of the highest baptizing missions in Europe is the Spain Barcelona Mission by the way.
To:rfelsted,
Thanks for the information regarding actual LDS #'s from 1967 and 2005. Very interesting.
I agree that Dallas County could have a Spanish Stake. There are the following Spanish units in Dallas County:
Oak Cliff, Garland 5th, Casa Linda, Shady Grove, and Rowlett 3-wards, and the Sunbeck and Pioneer branches.
To: Randall
The 1967 Directory showed Houston as having 11 wards, 3 branches, and 5343 members. I calculated the '05 metropolitan area to have 57,333 members. Apparently the Dallas metropolitan area has almost half a million more people than Houston. In 1967 there was also the Beaumont Stake with 4 wards, 6 branches, and 2305 members.
What are the 3 prospective stakes you see for Dallas? Thanks, Ray
When did the original Houston stake convert into the Houston Spanish-speaking stake?
i'm a proud member of the harlingen texas stake in the texas mcallen mission! and i was actually baptized two days before you posted this. :]
the church down here is definitely growing!
We are looking at moving to the spring texas area. Do you have or know if a pace where I can find the ward boundaries?
A new stake was created today (Oct 12, 2014) in the Spring area. The Woodlands Stake was created from parts of three other stakes. I gather you are coming down as part of the Exxon migration? Lots of Exxon LDS employees in both the Spring and The Woodlands Stakes.
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