Shades Valley Presbyterian Church
Shades Valley Presbyterian Church was a congregation of the Presbytery of Sheppards and Lapsley in the Presbyterian Church (USA), founded in 1943 and located at 2305 Montevallo Road in Mountain Brook from 1953 to 2022.
The church was organized on December 5, 1943 and a lot for a church building on Mountain Brook Circle was purchased in 1945. By May 1950 the site on Montevallo Road had been purchased. Also in 1950, architects Van Keuren and Davis were retained to design the new buildings which were to be "of colonial design with a tall spire". Ground was broken in July 1951 and the new sanctuary was first used on March 22, 1953. Accounts of the consecration name Charles Davis alone as the architect.
Additional education space was added in 1955 and 1959. In the 1960s a group from Shades Valley Presbyterian founded Southminster Presbyterian Church in Vestavia Hills.
A second building on the church campus was used as a meeting space for New Horizons at UAB.
In 2017 the congregation raised funds to replace the building's failing air conditioning system. During planning for the project, it was determined that it was not feasible to continue maintaining the structure. In June 2022 it began worshiping with Southminster in Vestavia Hills, and formally merged into that congregation on October 2, 2022. Shades Valley's last pastor, Leanne Pearce Read became co-pastor of newly merged congregation.
The church sold its 4.3-acre parcel on Montevallo Road for $7 million, with the buyer planning to market the site as the Chester Court planned unit development. The congregation immediately used just over $1 million from those proceeds to make gifts to the Presbyterian Home for Children in Talladega, the Winsborough Living and Learning Center at Stillman College, Living River in Montevallo, Firehouse Ministries, Habitat for Humanity and Greater Birmingham Ministries in Birmingham, and the Good Shepherd Hospital in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo. The remaining funds were invested in trusts to sustain the new combined church.
The former church building was demolished in 2024.
Pastors
- Thomas Nelson Rains, 1995
- Leanne Pearce Reed, 2017–2022
External Site
- Shades Valley Presbyterian Church at southminsterpcusa.org
References
- Schnorrenberg, John M. & Janice Ford-Freeman (1999) Walking Tours of Birmingham Churches Conducted from 1990 to 1999. Birmingham Historical Society
- Malec, Bonnie (July 8, 2022) Planning Commission considers request to rezone church site for new Planned Unit Development Village Living
- Burgess, Sid (September 26, 2022) "Birth, Death, Rebirth Mark Merger". Newsletter of the Presbytery of Sheppards and Lapsley
- Watson, Nathan (August 12, 2024) "Why this historic Mountain Brook church is coming down + what’s next for the site." Bham Now