Way back when he was 13, 17-year-old Hunter Williams said he would repeat “No, no, no, no,” when someone suggested he become a preacher.
“No way,” he said he would tell them, “I’m going to do my own thing.”
Hunter, as it happens, is the son of the Rev. Ray Williams, the founding pastor of One Accord Community Church.
And, as it happens, he’s discovered preaching is also his thing.
Last Sunday, the Berean Academy senior was licensed to preach in a ceremony at the Red Bank church his father pastors.
The license, the elder Williams said, allows him to perform weddings, funerals and the sacraments his Southern Baptist denomination sanctions.
“The church,” he said, “is saying we support him. We believe the call is there, that [ministry] is the work that has been put in his heart.”
In December, the church will vote on whether to ordain him, a more formal step. Assuming he is approved, he officially will be ordained in January.
Upon being licensed, Hunter said he felt a little wave of nervousness with the knowledge he will be expected to uphold the high standards of a pastor as a high school student.
However, while the book of Timothy calls for “deacons” to be “blameless,” the senior said that doesn’t mean he can’t have fun.
“I love having fun,” Hunter said. “I’m probably the loudest among my friends. Maturity doesn’t mean not having fun. It means having fun at the right time.”
Pastor Williams said his bias as a father not withstanding, his son preaches as if he’d had 20 years’ experience doing it.
“He preaches with such a passion,” he said. “He has such a love for the Lord. He is very evangelical. He has no fear of sharing the Gospel.”
Hunter’s first major experience at preaching came when he volunteered to speak at his church’s Youth Sunday service. He said he’d been told over and over that he should be a preacher, so he volunteered “as a leap of faith.”
“I went in having no idea how it would go,” he said. “It went amazing. I believe that showed me.”
Since then, Hunter has preached from hut to hut in Uganda, Africa, and on street corners in India while on mission trips with the Texas-based group Global Expeditions, and in several churches in the tri-state area.
“I want to travel the country and preach,” he said, fully knowledgeable he’ll have to count on love offerings and the ability to raise his own support. “I don’t see myself having my own church.”
He’s not quite ready for that, though, he said. Hunter said he hopes first to attend college, perhaps concentrating on evangelism and apologetics at Moody Bible Institute in Chicago.
However, he said teenagers preaching the Gospel is nothing new. Some of the disciples of Jesus, he said, were just teenagers.
“This should not be all that surprising,” he said. “Age doesn’t matter as long as you have a broken spirit and a ready heart to do what God’s calling you to do.”