Danny Wood, pastor of Shades Mountain Baptist Church, Vestavia Hills, recently celebrated his 20-year anniversary at the church.
Prior to being called to Shades Mountain Baptist in 1997, he served as pastor of First Baptist Church, Ruston, Louisiana, for eight and a half years.
Wood graduated from Auburn University in 1975 and entered the business field where he worked for South Central Bell Telephone Company (now AT&T) in Birmingham for more than eight years. At South Central Bell, Wood felt the Lord call him into full-time vocational ministry, he said.
“In the summer of 1983 God began to change my interests and desires,” he said. So he left the company and went to Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, where he received his master of divinity degree in 1986. He later earned his doctorate from Samford University’s Beeson Divinity School in Birmingham in 1999.
Reflecting on his 20 years at Shades Mountain Baptist, Wood said, “The most rewarding part about preaching at Shades Mountain is that the people here have a hunger for the Word of God and they have a strong desire to learn about it and live it out.”
Because of this hunger for the Word, Wood said he is excited about the future of Shades Mountain. Over the past few years the church has finished constructing and refurbishing church facilities and has been heavily involved in equipping members of the church for missions.
Shades Mountain has conducted ministry in all 50 states, 80 countries around the world, supported more than 30 church plants in the United States and around the world and has seen 190 members go into full-time missions work.
“With all this we are now debt free and have a blank page for God to do miraculous things through our congregation,” Wood said. “For the future we want to continue having an emphasis on engaging the community, church planting and missions involvement.”
Wood said he has grown a lot in his spiritual walk in the last 20 years and offered the advice that “dependence on God through adversity in life” is crucial for growth in one’s spiritual walk.
Wood and his wife, Janice, have one daughter. (Caleb Jones)
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