Dr. Virgil Wood is Men's Prayer Breakfast Speaker at St. Francis of Assisi

The men of the community are cordially invited to the Men’s Prayer Breakfast at St. Francis of Assisi Episcopal Church on February 27, 2016 at 8:30 a.m. at the church on 204 Dooley St. in Prairie View, Texas. You are encouraged to come out are hear the featured speaker, Dr. Virgil Wood, Church leader, educator, and civil rights activist who committed much of his life’s work to the struggle for economic and spiritual development among the nation’s disadvantaged. The breakfast is free and you’re asked to confirm attendance at 936-857-3272 or email: stfrancispv@sbcglobal.net.

Ordained as a Baptist Minister in his late teens, Wood has served Churches for more than 50 years, in

Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Virginia. During his Pastorate in Lynchburg, Virginia, he became actively involved with the Civil Rights movement, setting up the Martin Luther King work there as the Lynchburg Improvement Association, a local unit of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. From 1963 to 1970, Wood led the Blue Hill Christian Center, of Boston’s Roxbury community, as its Pastoral Director, and head of the Mass. Unit, SCLC. He served with Martin Luther King, Jr., as a member of his National Executive Board of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference for the last ten years of Dr. King’s life and work, and Coordinated the State of Virginia in the Historic March on Washington April 28, 1963.

A 1956 graduate of Andover Newton Theological School with a Master of Divinity degree, he received his Doctorate in Education from Harvard University, in 1973, where two of his major Professors were Organization Development Expert Dr. Chris Argyris, and Achievement Motivation Expert Dr. David McClellan. As an educator, he served as Dean and Director, the African American Institute, and Associate Professor of Northeastern University at Boston, and had been a Professor at Virginia Seminary and College, in Lynchburg, and a visiting Lecturer, Research and Teaching Fellow at Harvard University.

Dr. Wood has many notable accomplishments. As an administrator for Opportunities Industrialization Centers of America, founded by Dr. Leon H. Sullivan, a job training organization serving disadvantaged and under skilled Americans of all races, he assisted in founding and establishing 13 OIC centers in eight southern states, and in Boston, Massachusetts. Wood also served as a panelist and member of three White House Conferences under the Johnson, Nixon, and Carter Administrations.

Among Wood’s publications are INTRODUCTION TO BLACK CHURCH ECONOMIC STUDIES, ORIGININATOR and contributing editor, THE JUBILEE BIBLE, and author, “IN LOVE WE TRUST: Lessons I Learned From Martin Luther King”. He has combined his dual career in Church Leadership and Education with a life-long commitment to community development as economic and spiritual transformation.

Dr. Wood is Pastor Emeritus of the Pond Street Baptist, which he served from 1983 to 2005, and previously from 1955 to 1958. He concluded his Pastoral Ministry there December 31, 2005, having served Pond Street for 25 years, previously served by the late Dr. Samuel Dewitt Proctor.

He is joyfully married to the former Lillian Walker, and they are the parents of Deborah and David, and grandparents of Christopher and Jordan, whose mother is Lorene, David’s able and lovely wife.