By ADOLFO FLORES

FORT LAUDERDALE — The first time Terry Durham preached, he wasn’t in front of a group of people or even inside a church. His first sermon was in the bathroom of his grandmother’s home in Fort Lauderdale, where he spoke surrounded by toothbrushes, soap and towels. He was six years old.

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

“They say, ‘How can you be a preacher when you’re so young?’” said Terry, 11, who was ordained shortly after giving his bathroom sermon. “But when they listen to me, they’re shocked.”

“God just put his spirit upon me,” said Terry, who wore the kind of outfit he usually wears on Sundays: a baby blue suit with matching snakeskin shoes. “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.”

Terry’s youth and his preaching prowess have taken him well beyond Florida. He has delivered sermons in Allentown, Pa.; Brooklyn, N.Y.; Milwaukee, Wis.; the Bahamas; and the Turks and Caicos Islands. In February he is scheduled to travel to Jamaica.

During the week he still finds time to attend fifth grade at Liberty Elementary School, play Uno with his friends and attend choir practice — though he hasn’t gotten around to driving the go-cart he got for Christmas. Terry, who said he gets A’s and B’s, does homework and reads the Bible every day in addition to studying theology through classes offered by an online university.

For more photos, click in the image above.

Terry said that he enjoys the activities of a typical 11-year-old, such as playing football on a youth team, but that he is happiest when he’s preaching.

“When I’m in the pulpit it’s like something turns over me,” Terry 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 photographed in his Sunday clothes and bearing the words “Little Man of God.” Sitting on a large red and gold couch that made him look smaller than he is, he tapped his shoes against the floor and explained how he prepares for his sermons.

He doesn’t 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.”

Terry and his twin brother, Todd, were born Nov. 19, 1997. After their parents broke up, the boys were raised by their father and grandmother.

His grandmother, Sharon Monroe, said that when she gave sermons when Terry was a baby, she would sometimes carry him in her arms. One day, when he was older, she recalled, Terry climbed into her seat on the pulpit and chanted, “Go, Grandma, go!”

It was Monroe who heard Terry preaching in the bathroom, and when the boy told her he wanted to be a minister, she decided to give him the chance. He gave a test sermon at her church, and then she ordained him.

Monroe said she’d had a vision in which a child joined her at the pulpit. “I never thought it would be Terry because he was so sickly,” Monroe said, recalling that Terry had been born prematurely and had been connected to a heart monitor. “But Terry has a certain thing about him.”

Turning the pulpit over to a youthful minister like Terry is not unusual in some black churches that are not beholden to strict oversight from a central body, said Professor Christine Gudorf, chairwoman of the religion department at Florida International University.

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

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

Cynthia Spokes, a Bible studies teacher at Terry’s church, has been instructing the boy for two years and said she has been impressed with his questions and insistence on taking adult classes.

“It’s just amazing to watch this child give a sermon,” Spokes said. “He moves me. He just lifts me up.”

Terry said the most powerful experience he’s had as a minister was during a sermon in which he said he healed a young man who had an injured foot. As he prayed for him to be healed, Terry said, the man stood up and walked without the aid of his crutches.

“That was the first time I healed someone, and from then on I asked God to give me the power to heal people,” Terry said, adding that laying hands on worshipers with ailments is something he does regularly.

Among the pastors who have met Terry on his travels is Donna Morgan, a pastor at Tiaise Temple Ministry in Allentown. Terry has preached at her church twice.

Terry appeals to adults, she said, because he inspires them to transcend their perceived limitations.

“People listen to him and say, ‘My God, look at what the Lord can do when we are willing to be used by God to speak his message,’” Morgan said.

She was also a young minister, ordained at age 14. Now 48, she said she understands the challenges Terry faces.

“It’s a balance because you want to make sure that the child is a child, but also make sure that the ministry is able to come forth,” Morgan said. “It’s so important not to shelter, but to groom them.”

Terry’s father, Todd Durham Sr., said he cannot explain Terry’s gift for preaching. He said he was as surprised as everyone else when he first saw him in the pulpit.

“He’s not a child; he transforms into this adult,” he said. “Just give him a microphone and see what happens.”

On a recent weeknight, Terry walked into choir practice, moving quietly to the back of the church. But the moment he grabbed the microphone, his voice soared as he swayed to the rhythm of the song.

“Lord, I worship you because of who you are!” he said.

Terry said he dreams one day of visiting Israel and going to the temple in Jerusalem where the Bible says Jesus preached to a group of teachers when he was 12.

“I feel like since Jesus was young, I could still preach to adults,” Terry said.