Williams Awarded Honorary Doctorate from Lee University
Mark Williams, Second Assistant General Overseer of the Church of God, was awarded an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree from Lee University during commencement exercises held on May 8, 2010.
Williams, a 1986 graduate of Lee, was also the featured speaker at the commencement ceremony where 382 students received undergraduate and graduate degrees. The event was held outdoors on the university’s soccer field and was preceded the night before by a Commissioning service where six student speakers addressed their fellow graduates and every senior receiving a degree was given a Bible as a gift from the university.
Rev. Mark Williams (center) is awarded the honorary doctorate degree from Lee University President Dr. Paul Conn (right). Preparing to place the hood is Lee board chairman Darrell Rice.
“Since his graduation from Lee College, Mark Williams has emerged as one of the most important young leaders in the Church of God,” stated Lee president Dr. Paul Conn. “He has been a consistent and persuasive advocate for higher education in the church, and particularly for the strategic role Lee University plays in offering spiritual and intellectual leadership within our denomination.”
Williams currently serves as Second Assistant General Overseer of the Church of God. In this role, he is one of five executive officers who are elected biennially to guide and manage the activities of just under seven million church members in 145 nations around the world.
Born in Lubbock, Texas, Williams grew up as the son and grandson of pastors. His wife Sandra Kay is also a Lee graduate and they have two sons, Austin and Ryan.
While still a Lee undergraduate, Williams was recognized for his gifts in the pulpit, and spent the ten years following graduation as an evangelist. For the next ten years (1994-2004), he pastored congregations in Tampa, Florida (Riverhills) and, in Cleveland, Tennessee (South Cleveland). In 2004, he began fulltime administrative work, accepting a four-year appointment as administrative bishop of the denomination’s ministries in California and Nevada, before being elected to his current position in 2008.
In addition to his B.A. degree from Lee, Williams received an M.Div. degree from the Church of God Theological Seminary. Last January, the Lee University Board of Directors voted to extend to him the Doctor of Divinity degree which was awarded during the May 2010 commencement exercises.
