GULF SHORES, Ala. — Sunday will be a special day at Gulf Shores United Methodist Church. It will be the last Sunday for Rev. Neil McDavid who has served as Pastor of the church for the past six years.

McDavid, who has been pastoring churches for the past 40 years, will be relocating to Montgomery to become the Director of Connectional Ministries for the Alabama / West Florida Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church. He will be working with churches all across South Alabama and Northwest Florida.

But leaving the church will not be easy for Rev. McDavid or the congregation he has served. It is because of his faithful dedication to his church that he is leaving.

“Our Bishop called me and asked me to consider taking a new position.  I have been the pastor of a local church since I was a 20-year-old college student.  That is what I have always done,” McDavid said.

McDavid attended Huntingdon College in Montgomery, a UMC school, where he served a church during his junior and senior years. He finished his education at Duke Divinity School where he also served a church for four years.

“This is a whole new area of ministry for me.  Something I’ve never really considered, but our Bishop wanted me to join the conference staff.”

While McDavid is excited about the opportunities of his new position, he will find it hard to leave the friends he has made and the church he has watched grow over the past six years.

The pastor said he has seen significant changes over the past several years, namely making it through Hurricane Ivan which had a major impact on this area, but he is quick to talk about the response of his church members.

“This church responded wonderfully to the aftermath of that storm even though many of our people had significant damage or even lost their homes.”

It was during that time that McDavid said he witnessed an incredible act of faith on the part of his church. Despite the issues that so many of the church members were dealing with due to the storm, church members were still providing goods and services to families in need all across the area, and much of the work went on for as long as a year after Ivan.

During that same time, the church voted to purchase the Paradise Island Shopping Center next door to the church.

While some of the tenants left the shopping center after Ivan, and the church has renovated more than 2,500 square feet for church use, three tenants still remain.

“Our goal when we bought the shopping center was to use it for space that we needed.  We were just out of space,” said McDavid. “We had gone through all the procedures to purchase the property, then Hurricane Ivan hit.  But even in the midst of so much destruction, the church still voted to purchase the shopping center two months after the storm.”

McDavid recalls the night the church met to vote on the purchase.

“We met in our damaged sanctuary.  We had only two spotlights that worked, we were using a portable sound system, we had one electrical outlet that worked at the back door of the church, all the wet carpet had been removed, the ceiling was sagging, it was a mess.”

McDavid said it was amazing that in the midst of so much turmoil, the congregation voted 97 percent to purchase the property.

As tenants have left, the church has continued to transform the area into church ministry space.

With 1,000 church members, McDavid says that he has watched the different ministries of the church continue to grow, including the children, youth, music and adult ministries, but he quickly attributes the growth to the loving hospitality of the church.

“You can’t program that.  People are just made to feel welcomed here and that says a lot about our congregation.”

McDavid says that he believes every church member wants to serve, whether it be a big responsibility or a small one, but the congregation would attest that in the past six years, Pastor Neil McDavid has served and served well.