Rev. Moody Envisioned a Promised Land

The Rev. Jess Moody, a large-framed Southern Baptist preacher with visions as big as his native Texas, put his brand of evangelical churchmanship on the San Fernando Valley for 19 years before retiring in 1995.

Moody arrived in 1976 to pastor the First Baptist Church of Van Nuys, an independent congregation with some 10,000 members. Eight years before, he established Palm Beach Atlantic College while pastor of a Southern Baptist church in Florida.

When Moody aligned his new congregation with the Southern Baptists after considerable resistance, many members left the church. In 1986, he met more opposition when he proposed relocating the congregation to the “Promised Land” in the northwest Valley to keep that area “from Satan’s grip.”

Two years later, First Baptist was sold to the Church on the Way, which became a two-campus congregation along Sherman Way. Meanwhile, Moody built a 2,000-seat church on 14 acres in Porter Ranch for $16 million, calling it Shepherd of the Hills Church. In the fall of 1995, at age 70, he was able to bring his church and fast-growing Hillcrest Christian Church in Granada Hills into a merged congregation in Porter Ranch. Although saddled with a large debt, Shepherd of the Hills has steadily grown under the Rev. Dudley Rutherford, Moody’s successor, into what may become another Valley megachurch.

Jocular and garrulous, Moody attracted a number of entertainment figures to his church. He performed the wedding of actor Burt Reynolds and actress Loni Anderson. The annual Passion Play at Shepherd of the Hills draws thousands every Easter.

Always well-known among Southern Baptists nationally, Moody ran a surprising second in the race for president of the nation’s largest Protestant denomination in 1992. Moody, though an ardent Republican and a theological conservative, had run as an apolitical candidate urging reconciliation among the triumphant fundamentalists and fading moderates in the Southern Baptist Convention.

“I never thought I’d be elected,” said Moody, noting that his wife, Doris, was relieved when he lost. “When the vote was announced, my wife sounded like a tire that had just run over a nail.”

Moody is now retired and living in Texas.