Daylan Woodall

Senior pastor of First Missionary Baptist Church Decatur
Bachelor of Arts from Huntingdon College
Master of Arts in Christian Education and a Master of Divinity from New Orleans Baptist Theological Studies

Rev. Daylan C. Woodall currently serves as the Senior Pastor of First Missionary Baptist Church in Decatur, Alabama. A native of Calcis, a small community southeast of Birmingham, he earned a Bachelor’s degree from Huntingdon College in Montgomery, Alabama where he studied Communication and Religion. He later completed both a Master of Arts in Christian Education and a Master of Divinity at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary.

In 2016, Rev. Woodall was elected the sixteenth—and youngest—Senior Pastor in the church’s history. His ministry is marked by ongoing theological inquiry, historical analysis, and engagement with contemporary culture. He is the author of Faces in the Crowd Around the Cross and a contributor to The Gospel Coalition. In 2024, he presented “Our Rosetta Stone: Towards an Understanding of Twentieth Century Black Baptist Life” at the Baptist History and Heritage Society’s Annual Convention. In March 2025, he presented “The Quest of Two Kings and the Rhetoric of Becoming” at the inaugural Conference on Rhetoric, Race, and Religion.

Rev. Woodall is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Education at Regent University. His recent scholarship includes an academic journal article entitled “From Decay to Redemption: Exploring the Theological and Rhetorical Dimensions of C.A.W. Clark’s ‘The Worms Got Him,’” published in a special edition of Sermon Studies

He is a devoted husband and father and authors a Substack newsletter on history, culture, and theology titled Too Hip For The Room.