Photo by Erin Nelson.
McElwain Baptist Church at 4445 Montevallo Road was adopted by Shades Mountain Baptist Church in November and formally changed its name to Hope Community Church.
In 2017, Shades Mountain Baptist Church created an eight-year plan for the future called “Beyond the Horizon.”
In that plan was the desire to revitalize a church in the area.
Three years later, that desire came to fruition. The church has formally adopted McElwain Baptist Church, located on Montevallo Road in the Mountain Brook/Irondale area.
The church, now known as Hope Community Church, will be led by Jacob Simmons, who formerly was the minister for single adults and pastoral care at Shades Mountain, and held their first worship service as an adopted church Nov. 1.
“We are one another’s answer to prayer,” Simmons said. “We are delighted right now that God has brought us together.”
Danny Wood, pastor of Shades Mountain, said Mark Clifton with the North American Mission Board came to McElwain in June to help revitalize it and serve as the interim pastor. He then called Wood and said the church would like to be adopted and wanted to talk to Shades Mountain.
After leaders at Shades Mountain talked to the church and both congregations agreed with the move, it became official. Wood said his church would walk hand in hand with Simmons, who will be a senior pastor for the first time in his life, and will provide resources and leadership to the church, but eventually, they will become fully independent.
“We’re really not wanting to build a kingdom,” Wood said.
Wood said he hopes the church benefits the kingdom of God and reaches the east side of Birmingham with the gospel. Some members of Shades Mountain may go join the congregation as members and volunteers, Wood said.
While Hope Community Church will be separate, they will always be family, and there will also be opportunities in the future to do different church activities with Shades Mountain, Wood said.
Simmons said that he’s excited and that he felt God was creating this opportunity for him for the past several months.
“I preached in July, and Danny asked me to have lunch with him,” Simmons said. “I thought I was in big trouble. He told me about McElwain, and he knew I wanted to be a senior pastor. It didn’t take much time to feel like God was opening a door here.”
While Simmons is taking over the leadership of the church, it has a rich history in the area. The church celebrated 125 years at the end of September.
“We want to build on a 125-year legacy of faithful gospel witness,” Simmons said.
He hopes the church can reach the “unique” neighborhoods around them and share the good news with the people in the area, he said.
Simmons said his first role is to love on the people at the church because they’ve been without a senior pastor for a while and are understandably tired. The church had about 150 people in their service on Nov. 1, which is up from the average of about 100 people before COVID-19, Simmons said.
“Hopefully it’s a sign of things to come,” he said.
While the building is beautiful, Simmons said maintenance had been deferred, and it needed a new roof, boilers, air conditioning and electrical work. The overall cost was $1 million, and by God’s hand, they are in good shape to take care of those needs, Simmons said.
When the pandemic hit, all departments at Shades Mountain were asked to trim their budgets. Thankfully, the congregation’s giving is on track to make up the amount of money that was cut from the budget, which equaled $1 million, the amount needed to cover the needed repairs at Hope.
“Only God could have done that,” Simmons said.
