The Tribune

By JEFFARAH GIBSON

Tribune Features Writer

jgibson@tribunemedia.net

SHE has been giving her all to Christian ministry for the past 62 years, but Minister Dr Barbara Brennen Williams is showing no signs of slowing down.

She answered the call to give her life to God many years ago and will be celebrated for being a fierce anointed minister of the gospel this Sunday.

The celebratory service will take place at the Church of God of Prophecy East Street at 4pm. It entails a thanksgiving service with songs and commendations from ministerial friends and colleagues.

Special music will be provided by the COGOP National Praise Team, the National Children’s Choir, Dr Trent Davis & Nu Voice, and the church’s Creole Ministry.

Members of the general public are invited to join the COGOP family as Minister Williams is recognised.

Minister Williams, born on January 2, 1943, was the first of Howard and Viola Brennen’s nine children.

She attended St John’s College on top of Market Street Hill and Government High School. She was among the first group of students who moved from West Bay Street to the then new College of the Bahamas campus, which was still under construction at the time. She also completed teacher training college and served for the three mandatory years in the primary division.

In the early years of her life, Minister Williams said it was evident that the “hand of the Lord” was on her.

“I accepted Jesus as Saviour in 1957 at the age of 14. I was saved with a call. I started in full-time ministry in 1968. Unsalaried from then to now,” she told Tribune Religion.

She counts among the major highlights of her ministry, her ability to win souls for the Lord, providing mentorship, making a generational impact, and being committed to excellence and uncompromising in the delivery of the word of God.

“I laboured indefatigably in the trenches many years in this nation and beyond. COGOP alone has 10 (churches) directly or by extension and the only one in Grand Cayman is resultant from the labours of a Bahamas team led by me 42 years ago. My fruit remains,” she said.

Answering the call to ministry did not come without its challenges. She had to balance ministry and life as a young mother. Later she had to deal with the grief of losing her only child, Nat, and having to be a mother her young grandchild. Through it all, however, she has remained faithful to the call.

“I have also dealt with difficulties, hardships, attitudes, comments, emotions and much more,” she said.

But those difficulties, she said, were not enough to distract from her path. Minister Williams said she will continue to “obey God and follow where he leads.”