Pastor’s ‘other career’ is often a hairy matter

Think you’ve heard everything? Well, here’s another one for your not-to-be-believed files.    There is a caring and gifted pastor who balances a busy church schedule with a flourishing cosmetology career. Cosmetology, you ask?  That’s right — cosmetology!    Pastor Robert Hymon III of Antioch Baptist Church in Walls, Miss., also teaches cosmetology at Whitehaven High School. Not the usual “other career” choice of most pastors.    Manicures, pedicures, cuts, styling, hair design, finger waves, coloring, extensions — you name it, he does it.     Although, says Pastor Hymon, the two callings on his life are very different, they have both been “excellent arenas in which to reach young people who don’t know Christ.”     “My students at Whitehaven like to come down and visit my church. And I make sure our church van drives up and pick them up for Sunday morning service. Kids today need hope, and that hope will come when they develop a right relationship with God. I try to live in such a way that students at school look up to me.”      He says, his future did not always hold such limitless possibilities, especially when he worked a number of years as a forklift operator at Overnight Truck Line.    “One day when I was working, the Lord spoke to me and said, ‘Go back and do what I gave you the gift to do.’ I told my supervisor that day I would be leaving. That gift was doing hair. I left my job right then and there and stepped out on faith with not one customer and no salon.”    After a short time in cosmetology school, Hymon was told the training was “a waste of time for you” by an instructor who recognized his “natural giftedness.” He left school and studied for a state license on his own.    He easily passed his exams and began a flourishing career in a salon. Nonetheless, Pastor Hymon always knew his life journey would lead him to the pulpit.    “Back in 1991, I was a member at Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church back when Dr. Alvin O’Neal Jackson was there. I sat in the balcony every Sunday. He would be up there preaching, and I would envision myself preaching. God would say, ‘That’s what you’re going to be doing.’  I knew I was destined to be a pastor.”    But it wasn’t until 1996 that God began to prod Hymon about moving in his divine call.    In 1999, he transferred membership to Brown Baptist Church in Southaven, Miss., under the leadership of Rev. Bartholomew Orr. The next year, Hymon announced that he was ready to stop running from his call.    “I told my pastor I was called to preach. He asked me, ‘How do you know that?’ I told him God had given me visions. And my pastor believed me.”    From his trial sermon at Brown to his service as youth pastor at Hickory Hill Baptist Church, Pastor Hymon was led through a series of circumstances and by favor to the senior pastor’s post at Antioch.    In less than two years, membership numbers have more than tripled. And, says the energetic pastor, this is only the beginning for Antioch.    “We have something for everyone at Antioch: a senior’s ministry, couples ministry, single’s ministry, a care ministry for sick and shut-in, a greeter’s ministry, and a pantry offering food and clothing. Effective ministry must be relevant in addressing physical as well as spiritual needs.”    What’s next for the rapidly growing church body? A new Family Life Center, says Pastor Hymon.    For additional information, schedule of services, or directions, call the church office at (662) 781-0012 or email Pastor Hymon at .