Alabama evangelist Junior Hill is counted among the leading evangelists in the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC).
In June he spoke at both the SBC Pastors Conference and the SBC annual meeting. He regularly headlines state evangelism conferences and pastors conferences as he travels across the United States.
This year, Hill celebrates his 35th year as a vocational evangelist. The Hartselle native is a graduate of Samford University and New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and has served as first vice president of the SBC.
Recently Hill sat down with Editor Bob Terry of The Alabama Baptist to reflect on his career as an evangelist.
Q: During your 35 years as an evangelist, what changes have you observed in the churches?
A: The first thing is the length of meetings and the frequency of meetings. When I started, the pattern was to start on Sunday night and go through Sunday morning.
The first few days you preached to the church about getting right with God. Then you turned to evangelism. If you were going to have a harvest of souls, that usually came at the end of the week.
Churches used to have two meetings. A spring meeting and a fall meeting. Now, many churches have no revivals. When they do, it is usually Sunday through Wednesday.
A lot of people say revivals are not effective anymore.
If you study churches using revivals, you find they are very productive.
I do not like to use statistics, but I looked at some of my records for this interview. This year I have done 22 Harvest Days and three Sunday to Wednesday meetings. In those three meetings, there were 180 people saved.
I believe the assessment that revivals won’t work is wrong. If churches have a passion and zeal for the lost, they could still see a great harvest.
It is not so much that the lost are not as interested in the church as the church is not as interested in the lost.
Church used to be the most prominent thing in a person’s life. Now church is just a tiny segment of life. People give only an hour or two a week to the church.
Evangelism has been squeezed down in importance in the church. It has become almost incidental.
Q: What changes have you seen in the way churches worship?
A: When I first started, I had a pretty set idea of how a church ought to worship. It reflected my comfort zone.
Over the years I’ve learned that a lot of people don’t worship the way I do, but they still have a heart for winning souls.
A man who claps his hands does not love Jesus any more than the man who doesn’t clap his hands.
I believe we can get on dangerous ground when we become too rigid about worship styles, about praise worship.
It is easy to fall into the “how to” of praise. Then you slip to the “must do.”
The result is you view with suspicion those that don’t worship the way you do. That isn’t right.
Baptists may make too much out of worship styles.
I may be wrong, but I do not believe the average lost man cares if we sing a chorus or a hymn.
When a man is hungry, he is not interested in whether food is served on a paper plate or a china plate.
What he wants to know is, “will the food satisfy my needs?”
We need to be concerned about serving the food of the gospel.
Q: Are you indicating that there is a change in concern for the lost?
A: Thirty-five years ago when I started as an evangelist, men would pray for hours and hours. There was a passion for the lost.
Now I don’t see such intense prayer. The “sweet hour of prayer” has become a “stolen second of prayer.”
I believe we do not have as much passion and hunger to see people saved. The necessity of evangelism has fallen on hard ground.
Society doesn’t seem to have time for spiritual thoughtfulness. We are too busy to ponder eternal values like we used to.
The result is an absence of conviction.
I used to preach at meetings and deal with people who struggled with God about their eternal destiny for days or week. It is rare to see that today.
I do not want to be a negative person, but I think you see that reflected by our baptisms.
Q: The “conservative resurgence” emphasized evangelism. What happened?
A: The controversy diverted us from the main thing. It had its inevitable fallout.
It was an error to conclude that conservative beliefs translate into evangelistic zeal.
That is not true. You can be conservative and still have a cold heart. Dead orthodoxy is just as dead as dead liberalism.
I would say that a Bible-believing church is usually more evangelistic because the people believe the Word of God.
Liberalism was a problem, but the gravest threat to the church is creeping universalism, the idea that all people will be saved.
The church has been unduly influenced by our pluralistic society to think that we all worship the same God.
It is shocking how many people in the church believe one can be saved outside of Christ.
It makes one sound harsh to take a strong stand for the exclusive nature of Christ, but what alternative do you have if you believe what we say we do?
When I first started, I used to be criticized that I preached a cheap, easy believism.
Today, the criticism is that the same gospel is too hard, that it is too straight and judgmental.
That says something about the changes in society and in our churches.
Q: Have pastors changed across the years?
A: Pastors used to perceive themselves as undershepherds. Their job was to care for the flock.
Today the trend is toward the CEO mentality. Pastors are heavily into leadership and style.
I think that will have devastating results in the years to come. There is a lessening of recognition of the divine call to be a preacher.
Denominational identity is not as strong with some younger pastors. They are not “anti,” but the denomination is not as much of their identity as it used to be. Some have dropped “Baptist” from their name. That will have a severe impact in years to come.
Denominational unity is good because it gives us our cooperative efforts. We need each other.
How do you do cooperative missions if you do not have denominational respect?
I tell you, it is distressing. What will happen to us if we go our separate ways?
We need each other. We are part of the body of fellow believers. We have a responsibility to each other. It bothers me when we don’t call for loyalty.
Q: What do you think needs to be done?
A: When I’ve been asked that question before, I answered with what I thought was right — faithful, strong Bible preaching. A friend observed that would not be enough. He said we needed to reclaim individual passion for the lost.
FAITH is a wonderful program that God is blessing to reach lost people. But FAITH is reclaiming an old methodology of visiting. It all comes back to asking God for a burden for the lost. I hope it happens but I am not sure it will.
Q: How has Junior Hill changed in the last 35 years?
A: The most obvious change is that I don’t know nearly as much as I thought I did. I was a little brash back then. I had answers for most of the problems of the church and the world.
The older I’ve gotten, the more I realized that wisdom is coming to the place where you recognize that you don’t know as much as you thought you did. God has taught me that His ways are past finding out. No one has a corner on the sovereignty of God. We must hoist up the sails of faith and trust God. We must do what we know to do.
The purposes of God and the processes of God are not the same. We know His purposes. We do not always understand His process. We must be faithful and do what He told us to do.
Q: What are your plans and hopes for the future?
A: I plan to preach as long as I can. My great desire is to cross the finish line running hard. I want to be faithful and effective as long as God gives me strength.
God gave me the promise that my last days will be my best days. And that is true. I have more opportunities, more open doors, more souls saved than ever in my ministry. I don’t know how long I have, maybe tomorrow or several years. I want to be faithful, I want to be clean. I pray I will not do anything to mar my effectiveness.
To my knowledge, I have not altered the simple gospel message. I have always had great confidence in the Bible. I have always been passionate for winning people to Jesus. I’ve always been conservative but not a firebrand.
I have a pretty narrow focus. First I am a simple evangelistic preacher. Second, I have a ministry to preachers. I don’t get out of these tracks very often. I doubt that I ever will.
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