Junior Hill Obituary – Death, Alabama Evangelist Junior Hill is Dead

Junior Hill, a popular Alabama evangelist, has reportedly passed away. Hill died on January 3, 2024, at the age of 87. However, details regarding his cause of death are still unknown.

Hill, a Hartselle native, began his ministry at the age of 19. He was a pastor in Alabama and Mississippi for 11 years before becoming a full-time evangelist in 1967. During his ministry, he conducted over 1,700 revivals and several crusades around the world. He spoke at pastors’ gatherings, evangelism conferences, seminaries, and state conventions on a regular basis.

Hill was chosen first vice president of the Southern Baptist Convention in 1989, when it gathered in Las Vegas. In 1981, he spoke at the Southern Baptist Pastors’ Conference in Los Angeles.

“They Call Him Junior,” his autobiography, documented his more than 68 years in ministry.

After 11 years as a pastor in Hartselle, Birmingham, and Mississippi, he became a full-time traveling evangelist in 1967.

Hill was the inaugural recipient of the Fred Wolfe Lifetime Pastoral Ministry Award in 2021, named for the previous pastor of Cottage Hill Baptist Church in Mobile.

“Junior has been a powerful, evangelistic voice to Southern Baptists in our lifetime,” stated Wolfe of Hill. “No man has preached the Gospel more clearly and powerfully to saints and sinners than Junior Hill.”

Wolfe died three years to the day before Hill on January 3, 2021.

Hill called himself a “pastor to pastors” after being ousted as pastor of a Mississippi church he had served for 18 months while attending New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary in 1962.

Hill taught a Sunday school class that all churches, regardless of race, should be open to all people. The deacons sacked him over the week but did not notify him until the following Sunday.

“I can still remember how humiliating it was to walk past those laughing men, go back to the car, and sadly tell Carole what had happened to us,” Hill wrote in his book of memoirs.

Hill said he spent more than 20 years on the road as a traveling evangelist, preaching at more than 40 congregations per year.

Carole, Hill’s 66-year-old wife, survives him, as do two children and five grandchildren.

Peck Funeral Home in Hartselle is in charge of funeral preparations.