Rev. Jesse F. Williams, Jr.

Jesse Franklin Williams Jr. was born on August 3, 1927, in the coastal town of Wilmington, North Carolina. His father was a building contractor, and his mother, Anne, was a seamstress. Though they were not really a family of faith, young Jesse was sent to a Baptist Sunday school through his early years. But at the tender age of sixteen, providentially, he encountered the apostolic message. He was baptized in Jesus' name and received the Holy Ghost in 1943.

Feeling his call and beginning to preach, Brother Williams received his first ministerial license with the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ in 1945. Drafted into the United States Army at the end of World War II, he served as a medic and x-ray technician with the Occupation Forces in Japan, 1946–47, and upon discharge married his sixteen-year-old sweetheart, Sue Collins. Back in civilian life and beginning his family, he continued to work as an x-ray technician from 1947 to 1951, during which time his sons, C. Patton and Michael Jesse, were born.

Trained in engineering, Brother Williams was employed by the Babcock & Wilcox Company in 1951, served in management there until 1965, and taught evening classes as a part-time instructor at a local community college. Having affiliated with the Assemblies of the Lord Jesus Christ at its inception, he served as assistant pastor in his home church during those years.

In December 1965, now the father of four, two sons and two daughters, Sue Ann and Fay Elizabeth, life took an extraordinary turn, when Brother and Sister Williams left family and friends to plant a church in Fayetteville, North Carolina. He became a member of the United Pentecostal Church in January 1966, and a new era began.

A bi-vocational Home Missionary pastor, he was employed as plant engineer for Hercules Steel Company until he left their employment and became a member of their Board of Directors in 1972. Plunging into the work of what was then an emerging district, Brother Williams served North Carolina as Sunday school director, then district superintendent.

Various tenures as an executive presbyter, assistant general superintendent, and chairman of the Urshan Graduate School of Theology Board have marked his forty-one years of service to the United Pentecostal Church International.

He passed from this life on August 27, 2014.