About Donna Gaines

Donna Gaines is a devoted student of God’s Word and has written and taught Bible Studies for the past 20 years. She has an intense desire to see women not only study God’s Word, but also be changed by it. Donna experienced a growing frustration over women filling out the last blank of a Bible Study workbook only to look forward to the next one. The lack of Biblical literacy and life change led to a quest for a discipleship method that was both contagious and reproducible. It was at this time that the Lord brought Iva and Donna together in a once a month prayer group. After hearing Iva talk about discipling seminary wives with the One Year Chronological Bible, she requested to visit one of the groups. Donna left that encounter telling Iva that she needed to get the material in print and start training leaders.

That was in 2007. Since that time the small group discipleship material has not only been put in print, but is now in a semester study for women’s ministries and a mission piece has been developed and used in India and Tanzania. They are also partnering to train women through WILD (Women’s Intensive Leadership Training). Requests for training have led them to record the leadership sessions as well as teach intensives (6 hour sessions) of God’s Big Story.

Donna is married to Steve Gaines, pastor of Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis, Tennessee. There she teaches a weekly Bible Fellowship class for college women and leads Bible studies through Women’s Ministry. Understanding the unique needs that ministers’ wives have, she serves as chairman of the board for the Pastors Wives’ Session of the Southern Baptist Convention Pastors’ Conference. This annual meeting brings encouragement and rejuvenation to ministers’ wives across the country. In 2009 she was appointed by the Southern Baptist Convention to serve on the Great Commission Resurgence Task Force. At Bellevue she also leads the Staff Wives’ Ministry. Her fervent desire to share the Gospel has taken her on mission trips to Honduras, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Romania, India and Tanzania.

Steve and Donna have four children. Their son Grant is a doctoral student at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. He pastors the Brushy Fork Baptist Church in Canaan, Indiana, where he and his wife Melisa live with their daughter Alivia, and son John Weston. Lindsey, is married to minister and musician Ryan Wingo, and graduated from Union University in 2009. Allison is a senior at Union University and will be married to Gentry Hill in July, and Bethany is a senior at Evangelical Christian School.

You can contact Donna at donna@donnagaines.org.