Called and Transformed

by Jeff Finley

A.J. Hicks received his call to ministry as a young adult in his hometown of St. Louis, Missouri.

“It happened instantly when I gave my life back to the Lord. I went back to my old neighborhood, back to my gang buddies, back to my dope-selling buddies and said, ‘Hey, I gave my life to the Lord. I’m saved now. I’m out,’” recalled Hicks — now a Free Methodist church planter launching WOW Church Chicagoland in Griffith, Indiana — during a Light + Life interview. “I started telling everybody I know about the Lord.”

A year after his rededication, he went to his pastor and said, “Hey, I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m feeling this, and I keep hearing the Lord, and He wants me to preach.” The pastor replied, “Well, I was wondering what was taking you so long.”

The journey to that moment was not easy despite Hicks being born into a Christian family.

“For as long as I could remember, my mom walked with the Lord. I remember growing up in church from the age of 2 or 3 years old clearly like it was yesterday,” Hicks said. “I remember being 5 years old going on a trip with the church. In the condensation and fog on the window, I wrote the name Jesus. I really had a basic understanding that He was God, He was our Lord, and we were supposed to obey and follow Him.

Hicks said he went to the altar at age 12 during a Sunday night church service, and, around that time, he “constantly felt like God was calling me. I couldn’t explain it, but I knew it.” A week after going to the altar, he listened to a Christian music radio station and “literally I was dancing with the Lord in my room, and there was a light that was shining in my room that was brighter than the sun.”

But then his family life changed dramatically.

“What happened was the enemy basically launched an attack against our family,” Hicks said. “My mother ended up allowing the enemy to trick her. She ended up backsliding — going back and living a worldly lifestyle, back into the clubs and getting drunk, smoking marijuana, then … crack cocaine. It tore our family apart.” 

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“She no longer cared about me. She no longer cared what I did anymore.”

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His mother previously was “overprotective,” he said, but “she no longer cared about me. She no longer cared what I did anymore.” That led him to explore his troubled neighborhood on St. Louis’ West Side.

“Everywhere around the ghetto was drugs, gunshots every night, people getting killed,” Hicks said. “Anything you wanted to find was right outside of our door. … There really is a strong demonic force that hovers around that area.”

He immersed himself in gang culture and began drinking beer. Hicks said, “I was a young teen alcoholic at 13 years old.”

Unexpected Encounters

When Hicks was a young adult, his mother experienced a spiritual awakening. 

“Thank God; my mother turned her life back to the Lord,” he said. “My mother introduced me to God. She’s also the one who led me back to God.”

Hicks had moved from St. Louis’ West Side to a safer neighborhood on the South Side, and his mother came to live with him.

While his mother recovered from addiction, Hicks had his own drug issues. He used and sold marijuana while taking college classes and working at a McDonald’s restaurant.

“I was trying to move a lot of drugs at that point,” he said. “I sold everywhere I went. … I was working a full-time job, and I was going to school full-time, and I was scamming and selling drugs.” 

His mother tried to help her son return to faith in Jesus Christ.

“I would come back from the club drunk and high. She would put a big old Bible in front of the door,” Hicks said.

He unexpectedly encountered other Christians, such as another commuter at a MetroLink train station who shared a tract with him.

Hicks was proud of his long hair that made him look like one of the rappers in the popular group Bones Thugs-N-Harmony, but he felt a strong urge one day to get it cut. During the haircut, he told the barber, “If you ever need some weed, let me know.” The barber replied, “I used to do all that stuff too, man, until I got saved.”

The barber shared a testimony of finding faith while in jail and being set free from drugs and gang involvement. Hicks was surprised to learn the barber also served as a pastor despite wearing stylish clothes, shoes and jewelry unlike anything Hicks had seen on the pastors at his strict childhood church.

“But I could tell by the way this guy’s talking, he’s telling the truth,” Hicks recalled.

Hicks realized that the haircut caused him to miss the bus he needed to get to his McDonald’s job. The barber said he didn’t have any other appointments for the day and offered to drive him. During the car ride, the barber/pastor played a cassette recording of one of his sermons.

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“God, I don’t know what’s going on, but if You’re calling me, this time I’m coming back to you.”

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When he reached the restaurant, Hicks’ co-workers were surprised by his transformed appearance. He went in the bathroom and prayed, “God, I don’t know what’s going on, but if You’re calling me, this time I’m coming back to you.”

Hicks said that two weeks later he attended the barber/pastor’s church with his brother, and “God got ahold of me in that service.” His brother also went to the altar with him, and they rededicated their lives to the Lord. They called their mother afterward and told her, and “she dropped the phone. She’s shouting and dancing and running through the house. … After a few minutes, she comes back to the phone. She says, ‘Praise God! I’m so happy I don’t know what to do. I’ve fasted for three days that God would save all of my sons, and today is the third day.’”

Pastor and Planter

Hicks said he never returned to the drug and gang lifestyle. Instead he became a pastor and planted a nondenominational church in University City, Missouri. After nearly five years, he felt led to close that church. He preached at other churches while sensing a call to the Chicago area. He and his wife, Angela, visited northern Illinois and searched unsuccessfully for housing and jobs. They began praying with other Christians for direction.

“We received a clear-cut word that said God had one last assignment for us in St. Louis and that He would not release us to go [to Chicago] until we had finished that assignment,” Hicks said.

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“God sent all the right people to us.”

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They moved to Ferguson, a St. Louis suburb that made national news in 2014 when a White police officer shot and killed Michael Brown Jr., an unarmed Black teenager.

“We ended up getting a house in Ferguson, so we realized that’s where God wanted us. A year after the Mike Brown Jr. incident, we were there on the ground,” Hicks said. “God sent all the right people to us. He sent the head chaplain of the Ferguson police to us.”

They launched WOW (World of Wonders) Church St. Louis in Ferguson and connected with community leaders, such as a councilwoman who later became Ferguson’s first Black mayor.

“We worked with her and did a lot of work in the community and did a lot of work with other community organizations, and it was just great,” Hicks said. “We got involved with the community first, and then we started Bible studies.”

As WOW Church St. Louis grew, church leaders looked for a new location to meet. They connected with Pastor Shanella Marzuk about potentially sharing the building of Ministries United, a Free Methodist congregation in the nearby community of Florissant. Hicks told Marzuk he wasn’t familiar with Free Methodism.

“She told me this great story that they were for the abolishment of slavery, and they were for women’s equal rights all the way from 1860,” said Hicks, who began researching the denomination and meeting with Gateway Conference Superintendent Ben Tolly. “I picked Ben’s brain for six months, and we had some great meetings, and we talked about everything.”

WOW Church St. Louis merged into Ministries United, which allowed Hicks to travel more for evangelistic work. Hicks told Free Methodist leaders that the merger meant his assignment in the St. Louis area might be complete, and he believed God wanted him in the Chicago area.

Angela applied for teaching jobs in the Chicago area, and she received an offer to start a position in August 2020. The Hicks family moved into a hotel room because they didn’t have time to find housing.

Tolly connected Hicks with Wabash Conference Superintendent John Lane, who invited Hicks to meet with him while Lane was in the area for the final service of the closing Griffith Free Methodist Church.

The family attended the service, and Lane invited them to move into the vacant parsonage and launch WOW Church Chicagoland from the Griffith church building.

Hicks acknowledged “it’s been really tough for us” to plant a church in an unfamiliar area during a pandemic. The Hicks family has encountered other challenges that have ranged from church building maintenance woes to a deer damaging the family vehicle as they drove to the Wabash Annual Conference.

Hicks said he has learned from his previous church plants to ensure family remains a priority in the midst of ministry.

“I have a big family, for today’s time, with five children. We have two adult children; our three youngest live in the house. Then we have temporary custody of my little grandson, so there’s four children 12 and under living in the house,” he said. “I really believe in balancing time.” +