Among the influences in Dr. Junior Hill’s life and upon his ministry were two women from his youth: Bessie Penn and Zula Montgomery, both members of the First Baptist Church in his hometown of Hartselle, Alabama.

“Mrs. Montgomery was responsible for me starting to church,” Hill told The Christian View magazine. “She worked in the children’s and youth departments and had an interest in children and youth who were not going to church. She came to my house to visit and invited me to church, and, consequently, I started and was eventually saved when I was 17.

“Mrs. Penn was a Sunday School teacher, and, when I became a Christian and became a preacher, she took a keen interest in me and helped me. She gave me various books of good, conservative theologians to help me get started in the right direction.

“My parents were not Christians when I started to church,” he said. “My mother had come from a religious family. Her father was a Church of God lay preacher. My mother may have been saved, but she certainly did not give much evidence of it when I was a little boy. And neither of them went to church. After I started to church and became a Christian, both of my parents also became professing Christians. They did not influence me much spiritually, because neither of them were Christians until I became a Christian, but they were good parents. I had a great respect for them, and I honored both of them.”

Hill became a preacher at the early age of 19. “I was a senior in high school when I was saved, and the Lord began to deal with me about a year later,” he said. “I had gone away to college on a football scholarship and had gotten disillusioned and came back home and started to a local college. I had contact with some other young Pastors, preacher boys who influenced me some. The Lord began to deal with my heart. We had a meeting in our church with a layman from Texas named Ivey Boggs. It was a great meeting. A lot of people were touched. During that meeting, I sensed that God was calling me to preach, and I surrendered.

“I was called to a small, rural church. They didn’t understand, probably, that a novice shouldn’t be a Pastor, and I didn’t know it, either, but the Lord honored it, and it worked out.”

Hill graduated from Howard College (now Samford University) in Birmingham, Alabama. He received his Master of Divinity degree from the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and his Doctor of Divinity degree from Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia.

The New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary chose him as its Distinguished Alumnus of the Year in 1995. Reflecting on his time in school there, Hill recalled a particular professor, Dr. B. Gray Allison, who influenced him. “I was greatly impacted by his life and ministry,” said Hill. “He taught a course in evangelism and challenged us to be faithful in witnessing and made us memorize a lot of scripture verses in evangelism.”

Hill’s Pastor was an encouragement to him when he started in the ministry. “Brother D.C. Stringfellow was the Pastor who baptized me and was there when I was saved,” he said. “He helped me get started at Howard College. He was an influence in my life, and I appreciate Dr. Stringfellow.”

During his early ministry, Hill was also influenced by preachers such as Dr. Vance Havner, Dr. R.G. Lee, and Dr. J. Harold Smith. “I knew them personally and talked with them from time to time,” he said. “I read Dr. Havner’s books, and I met with him, and he helped me. Dr. Lee counseled me a good bit and gave me advice when I was getting ready to go into evangelism. Dr. Smith was a close friend. He encouraged me, prayed for me, and helped me.”

Hill has many fond memories from his years as a Pastor. “I have many friends and many memories of people who were close to me, some I led to the Lord, and some young people who became Pastors,” he said.

The 11 years Hill served as a Pastor prepared him well for his role as a full-time evangelist for the past half-century. “I think those years as a Pastor helped me to understand the Pastor and where he struggles, with his heartaches,” he said. “Sometimes, evangelists who have not been Pastors do not understand the struggles and heartaches that a Pastor usually has. I think it gave me better insight into that and made me a better evangelist.”

Hill has preached in more than 1,500 revival services across the United States and in foreign countries, including India, Australia, Puerto Rico, Canada, Germany, Switzerland, Israel, and El Salvador.

He has authored 13 books, including devotionals and books on prayer, preaching, and why Christians may doubt their salvation.

“I always had a desire to express myself with the written word,” he said. “I have tried to write some things that were simple and easy to understand for non-theologians in the churches, average people.”

Hill enjoys reading works by preachers such as Warren Wiersbe, Vance Havner, E.M. Bounds, and A.W. Tozer, and he recommends that serious students of the Bible have a Bible dictionary, a Greek concordance, and commentaries for understanding scripture passages.

He preaches from the King James Version of a Scofield Bible but studies from several translations. “I have a book called Twenty Six Translations of the Bible,” he said. “In preparing for a sermon, I first select the Scripture that I feel the Lord wants me to use, and then I try to learn all I can about that verse. I look at the translations and see the different shades of meaning for each one. I try to look up the background material, what the words themselves mean, the Greek or Hebrew words. And then I try to determine what the verses say, what the passages say, and try to outline it in a logical way so that I can deliver it to the people.”

His life verses, he said, are Philippians 2:10-11: “That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” “Those verses seem to speak to my heart,” he said. “I’ve used them over the years.”

Other favorite verses include Romans 8:28: “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose”, and John 3:16: “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”

Hill and his wife, Carole, a Birmingham native, whom he met when they both were students at then Howard College, were married on March 29, 1957. They have a son, Mark, and a daughter, Melanie, and five grandchildren, Katie, Kelley, Matthew, Bonnie, and Julianna.

The Hills make their home in Hartselle, Alabama and are members of Westmeade Baptist Church in Decatur, pastored by Rev. Scotty Hogan, whom Hill calls a good friend. He is unable to attend his home church regularly, however, as his ministry as an evangelist calls him to other churches to preach nearly every week.

A great blessing, from being in the ministry for so long, Hill said, has been “seeing people saved and watching them become mature believers.” Many of them, he added, are in the ministry today. “I’ve watched a lot of people get saved in meetings, and I would come back years later and see how they’ve grown and matured. That has been encouraging and a great blessing.”