Anyone who has qualms about climbing into the pulpit to preach might want to take a page from this tyke:

The first time Terry Durham preached, he was not in front of a group of people or even inside a church. He was in the bathroom of his grandmother’s home in Fort Lauderdale, delivering his first sermon surrounded by toothbrushes, soap and towels. He was 6 years old.

Five years later, Terry is an ordained minister who preaches almost every Sunday at True Gospel Deliverance Ministry, a 20-seat nondenominational storefront church that his grandmother founded in 2000.

“They say, ‘How can you be a preacher when you’re so young?’ ” said Terry, now 11. “But when they listen to me, they’re shocked.”

“God just put his Spirit upon me,” said Terry, who wore a baby blue suit with matching snakeskin shoes, the kind of outfit he usually wears on Sundays. “He said, ‘I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh.’ But he didn’t say how old you had to be or anything like that.”

During the week, Terry attends fifth grade at Liberty Elementary School, plays Uno with his friends and attends choir practice. Terry, who said he earns A’s and B’s in school, reads the Bible every day in addition to studying theology through classes offered by an online university.

But Terry said he was happiest when preaching.

“When I’m in the pulpit, it’s like something turns over me,” he said, “and I just turn into a man of God. And when I’m out of the pulpit, I just turn into a speechless kid.”

Terry sat in a living room decorated with three posters of him in his Sunday clothes and bearing the words “Little Man of God.” Sitting on a large red and gold couch, he tapped his shoes against the floor and explained how he prepared for his sermons.

He does not write anything down, he said. He simply reads the Bible the day before the service and waits for the Spirit to move him. “I don’t plan to say those things,” he said, “but when God gives them to me, I say them right away to be obedient.”

Turning the pulpit over to a youthful minister like Terry is not unusual in black churches not overseen by a central body, said Prof. Christine Gudorf, chairwoman of the religion department at Florida International University.

In these churches, she said, age is not an issue, and seminary training is not necessary.

“It’s God who chooses the minister, and the Holy Spirit gives charismatic gifts, especially gifts of preaching,” Professor Gudorf said. “The community recognizes that gift and confirms the person in a ministerial role.”

You can read more at the Times link.

PHOTO: by Oscar Durand for The New York Times.