FAIRFIELD, Ohio (BP) — The exhibit hall of the SBC Annual Meeting is known as a giver. Whether T-shirts, pens, buttons, books or other emblem-adorned knickknacks, people leave with more than when they arrived.
It’s going to be hard to top Jerome and Brenda Byrd’s experience, though.
She was Brenda Harris in June 2023, representing American Heritage Girls at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center in New Orleans. She had been in touch with members of Good News Baptist Church in Colerain Township, Ohio, and invited them to stop by while in the exhibit hall.
“They were so warm and welcoming,” Brenda said. The church was actually only two miles away from her home, so they invited her to a service.
After the group left, a coworker made a remark about the pastor. Handsome, appeared to be single. Brenda said no, as she had spotted a ring on his finger.
“Well, it would be good for you to go check out the church,” said her coworker. “You’d have a good-looking pastor preaching.”
It was a ministry ring, not a wedding band. Brenda Harris would become Brenda Byrd 13 months later.
This courtship, however, needed a mother-in-law’s nudge to get going.
A visit and a phone call
Jerome Byrd attended Southern Baptist Theological Seminary from 1984-87. He earned his Master of Divinity and had a neighbor in his apartment complex named Al Mohler.
After graduation he planted Good News Baptist Church with his wife, Carolyn Jean, who everyone called CJ. The couple would go on to have eight children, five of them through adoption. Their 38-year marriage ended with CJ’s death from breast cancer in 2020.
In the summer of 2023, Good News Baptist Church had a visitor. She was the lady a few of them had met in the exhibit hall earlier.
“I loved the congregation and Jerome’s preaching,” said Brenda. She had been invited to give a presentation on American Heritage Girls after the service and so was “mobbed a bit” by those wanting more information.
An elderly, white-haired woman stood by patiently. She asked for Brenda’s phone number. Before Brenda got home that afternoon, she had called three times.
Carolyn Moore was a longtime observer of her son-in-law as a pastor, husband and father. She had seen him walk alongside her daughter in the cancer battle. He was a good man, a godly man.
He and the woman who had talked at the church needed to meet.
Brenda decided to call her back the next morning. Carolyn began by introducing herself as Jerome’s mother-in-law … and her daughter had died in 2020 … and Jerome was ready to start looking … and she could tell Brenda was someone who loved Jesus, and … was she married or dating anyone?
A courtship begins
Brenda started laughing. She had never been married. It had been at least 10 years since her last date.
Excited, she gave Carolyn her number to pass along to Jerome. Carolyn gave the number to Jerome and asked if he wanted to talk to Brenda. Jerome nervously said he’d be happy to talk to Brenda, but wanted to know if Carolyn thought that Brenda wanted to talk to him.
That led to their first lunch date on Aug. 17, 2023, at a Culver’s. Both had cheeseburgers and fries. He drank a Mountain Dew while she sipped a root beer.
Brenda saved her cup and wrote the date on the bottom. It wound up displayed on a table at their wedding reception.
“From there, we couldn’t stop talking to each other,” she said. “It was really prayerful, getting together and having dates.”
Those dates took place at restaurants and a few church concerts. Three months in, Carolyn asked Jerome if he had given Brenda a kiss yet.
“I hadn’t even held her hand yet,” laughed Jerome, adding that the first for both took place outside a Cracker Barrel that December.
Brenda turned 60 on Feb. 24, the day Jerome proposed at a large family gathering at a Mexican restaurant. Jerome turned 67 on July 13, the day they were married.
Michael Byrd, Jerome’s son and a fellow Southern Baptist minister as youth pastor at Oxford Baptist Church in Oxford, Ohio, led the service. Robert Smith, Jr., professor at Beeson Divinity School and a friend, led in the prayer time.
“We were like two kids at play,” said Jerome of their wedding day. The couple returned this week from their honeymoon in Bonita Springs, Fla.
Delays ≠ Denials
“He is a Jesus-loving man,” said Brenda on what drew her to her husband. “There is no compromise in him. He isn’t fake and is genuine in his personality.
“Carolyn told me that what you see in the pulpit is how he is every day.”
“I’d been praying that if there was someone else God had for me, that He would lead that person to me and allow us to meet,” Jerome said.
“I was praying for a godly woman,” he added with a pause, “but also a nice-looking woman.”
Their first meeting happened in New Orleans despite Brenda’s proximity to Jerome’s church. And even though she had been part of the exhibit hall since the 2021 annual meeting, New Orleans was Jerome’s first to attend since St. Louis in 2016.
This Sunday marks Brenda’s first attending church as a pastor’s wife. With so many things new, she can’t help but dwell a little on the past, in one sense.
“I waited for so long, but just prayed and waited on God,” she said. “Dr. Smith said something in the prayer time that was striking. He said that God’s delays are not God’s denials.
“This is a new beginning, entering this season of marriage at 60. God didn’t deny that wish I had prayed for. It’s just amazing.”
