How E.V. Hill Preached: A Phrase to Carry, a Story for Every Move

E.V. Hill pastored Mount Zion Missionary Baptist Church in Los Angeles for 42 years and preached far beyond it, from Moody Church to TBN. We studied seven of his sermons, from a 1978 seminary lecture to his own wife’s funeral in 1987 and a 1988 broadcast. The shape: turn the text into a short phrase or a question, prove every move with a named, true story, save the biggest story for last, and ride a refrain into celebration.

Who E.V. Hill was

Hill was born into poverty in Texas in 1933. He pastored Mount Zion from 1961 until his death and built it into one of the largest African American congregations in the country. He was a confidant of Martin Luther King Jr., a close friend of Billy Graham and a Promise Keepers favorite.

In 1972 he became the youngest president of the California State Baptist Convention. He was one of the first African Americans on the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association board and an associate professor of evangelism for the association. Time named him one of the seven most outstanding preachers in the U.S.

The shape of a Hill sermon

Hill opens with prayer and then humor or a personal word before he gets to the text. The humor comes early on purpose: it lowers defenses.

Then he turns the passage into a short theme people can carry. Sometimes it’s a phrase, sometimes a question. In “Jesus Is Our Hero,” it’s simple: heroes fall; Jesus doesn’t. Often the body follows the words of the verse itself.

Every move gets proved with a story, and the stories are named and true: people he knew, places he’d been, his own family. A refrain runs through the sermon and comes back stronger as it goes.

He saves his longest personal story for the climax, often about his mother. In “What You Have When You Have Jesus,” the climax is Mama and a college scholarship. Then the refrain carries the room into celebration, and most of the time he gives a formal invitation.

What made his preaching different

What others said

“E.V. can move a crowd as well as anybody I’ve ever heard… When he steps up to speak, you listen!”

— James Dobson

“One of the most significant personalities in the clergy over the past 30 or 40 years.”

— Bishop Charles E. Blake (Christianity Today, 2003)

What to take into your own pulpit

Those are the ideas. The guide turns them into ten steps you can follow this week, plus the sermons we studied and a fill-in outline in his shape.

Common questions