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Shades Crest History
1954 - 2011 and Beyond
- Shades Crest was organized in 1954 by forty-five individuals with a determined commitment to found a Baptist Church in the Bluff Park area of suburban Birmingham in what is now Hoover, Alabama.
- Although advised and encouraged by other Baptist churches, Shades Crest was never a mission of another church.
- From the beginning this handful of people under the leadership of the Holy Spirit assumed responsibility for planning and developing a church. They began with a simple but full program of spiritual growth which soon became a body of Christ serving through multiple opportunities in the community, city, state, nation, and world. As such, Shades Crest has maintained a family spirit while pioneering in children's, youth, recreation, senior adult, music, and practical mission ministries.
- Shades Crest has grown
-from a budget of $0 to one of about $1,600,000 a year;
-from an annual mission expenditure of less than $250 in 1954 to one of almost $200,000 in 2006;
-from bare land to a physical plant valued at more than $20,000,000 and still building;
- from a charter membership of 119 to one of 1600 while maintaining small-church relationships of love, mutual support, and affirmation.
- The history of Shades Crest is that of a stable church of traditional baptistic beliefs, values, and practices but contemporary and missional vision.
- In its first fifty-two years, the Church has had only four pastors and a comparable number of other staff members whose average tenure is far longer than that of their professional contemporaries.
- Worshipping, learning, and ministering alongside them have been a host of members of all ages, occupations, professions, and political persuasions -- a cross-section of Bluff Park and surrounding communities -- Shades Crest Baptist Church.
- Shades Crest focuses on congregational health and missional initiatives. We believe God has created our universe so that healthy things grow in healthy ways. Relationships undergird programs and principles undergird practice.