Get to Know Our New Teaching Pastor

REVEREND HURMON EUGENE HAMILTON, JR.

A Brief Biography

Reverend Hurmon E. Hamilton, Jr. was born in San Francisco, California and raised from the age of two in Coushatta, Louisiana as the only child of the Reverend Clarence and Mrs. Ola Batchie Berry. He graduated from Coushatta High School in 1982 and continued his education at Grambling State University (GSU). While at GSU, he became the first student body president in GSU’s history elected to the Louisiana Board of Trustees for State Colleges and Universities. Reverend Hamilton earned a bachelor’s degree from GSU in philosophy and history, and later a master of divinity degree from San Francisco Theological Seminary.

In 1994, Reverend Hurmon Hamilton became the senior pastor of the historic Roxbury Presbyterian Church USA (RPC) in Boston, Massachusetts. During his 17-year tenure, he led the congregation through a season of spiritual renewal, a multi-million dollar capital campaign that fully renovated RPC’s historic building, and founded the Roxbury Presbyterian Church Social Impact Center, Inc., RPC’s mission arm in the community.

In 2009, Reverend Hamilton became an adjunct professor at Gordon-Conwell Seminary, teaching courses in “The Church and Public Power.” In 2011, he was invited to join the adjunct staff of Harvard University Divinity School as professor of public preaching. In addition, Reverend Hamilton has served as a lecturer at Yale University, a guest preacher at Boston and Princeton Universities, and a noted preacher of the Gospel of Jesus Christ throughout the United States and Brazil.

In his role as the president of the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization (GBIO), an organization which Reverend Hamilton helped found, he has been prominently acknowledged in The Boston Globe, The New York Times and a wide variety of national and local news publications for his leadership in Massachusetts becoming the first state to achieve near universal health care for its’ residents.

In 2010, Reverend Hamilton, along with RPC, was celebrated by the superintendent of Boston Public Schools for developing a groundbreaking Adopt-A-School Program. Under his leadership, RPC’s Dream Again Initiative organized a coalition of community and faith-based organizations to adopt the Henry Dearborn Middle School, a struggling middle school targeted for closure. This unprecedented church-led effort produced a new Dearborn, now a shining example of successful education reform in Boston. Today, Dearborn, located in one of Boston’s most difficult neighborhoods, is designated as the first early college STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) 6–12 school in Massachusetts, and is slated for a new state-of-the-art, 50-million-dollar facility!

On October 24, 2011, Reverend Hurmon Hamilton became the teaching pastor of Abundant Life Christian Fellowship in Mountain View, California.

Reverend Hamilton says, “My life reveals that faith in Jesus Christ makes a lasting difference, and that faith enables one to make a lasting difference in the world!” By God’s grace, Reverend Hamilton says he has been transformed from a child who was physically scarred, teased and rejected by playmates, and trapped in Special Education, to a passionate spiritual and community leader whom God continues to use to transform the lives of many. That same grace has enabled him to come full circle by returning to California, the home of his birth.

Since 1986, he has been married to Rhonda Hamilton (MD), of San Francisco, CA, and is the proud father of two children—Jonathan, age 20 and Lauren, age 7. He loves spending time with his family, keeping up-to-date with the latest technological gadgets, and playing video games with his son.