“Point to yourself and repeat after me: Devote yourself to prayer,” she said, as the people in the pews obeyed. “Lay hands on your head and repeat after me: Devote yourself to prayer. Then point to heaven and say: Devote yourself to prayer. Amen.”
She later added: “Our call is not to these denominations that we love so much but our call is to become the praying people of God.”
Gilkes said Cecelia Bryant made a point of bringing women together for conferences, such as one at Princeton Theological Seminary for Black women in ministry that was organized by Renita Weems and Prathia Hall, then PTS doctoral students, in 1983.
“She was like the mother hen that had brought this group of women who became significant leaders and still are significant leaders,” Cook said.
The Rev. John Thomas III, editor of The Christian Recorder, said Cecelia Bryant’s emphasis on prayer included her desire for it to be understood in the languages of the countries where she served in ministry.
“On several occasions, she asked me to help translate prayer calls, and once, I was her interpreter for a sermon in the Dominican Republic at an AME meeting,” he said in an email to RNS about his translations of her English prayers into Spanish. “She was formidable and pushed people to understand how the Holy Spirit moved within them.”
This article originally appeared here.