Adolf was the son of black­smith Olof Hult, one of the ear­ly mem­bers of the Swed­ish col­o­ny in Mo­line. Adolf grad­u­at­ed from Au­gus­ta­na Col­lege in 1892, then earned his Ba­che­lor of Di­vin­i­ty de­gree at Au­gus­ta­na The­o­lo­gi­cal Sem­in­a­ry. Or­dained June 11, 1899, at the syn­od­i­cal meet­ing in St. Paul, Min­ne­so­ta, he be­came pas­tor of the Mes­si­ah Eng­lish Lu­ther­an Church in Lake View, Il­li­nois, where had served a year while a stu­dent. Dur­ing his pas­tor­ate, mem­ber­ship grew from 226 to over 450, mak­ing it the third larg­est Eng­lish Lu­ther­an church in the Chi­ca­go area.

Hult pur­sued post­grad­u­ate stu­dies at the Un­i­ver­si­ty of Chi­ca­go, and taught He­brew for a year at the Chi­ca­go Lu­ther­an The­o­lo­gical Sem­in­ary. He con­trib­ut­ed num­er­ous ar­ti­cles to the Lu­ther­an press, and in 1905 was chief ed­it­or of I’äk­tar­en, a re­li­gious pa­per pub­lished in Chi­ca­go. As of 1908, he was as­so­ci­ate ed­it­or of The Young Lu­ther­an’s Com­pan­ion, pub­lished se­mi-month­ly at Rock Is­land, Il­l­inois.

In May 1907, Hult be­came pas­tor of the Im­man­u­el Swed­ish Lu­ther­an Church in Oma­ha, Ne­bras­ka.

• Olson & Eng­berg, pp. 294-95

1. Jesus, Thy Name Hath Pow­er to Bless