Pastor Jamal Bryant, who assumed leadership of New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Lithonia, Georgia, over five years ago as a single, divorced father, revealed on Sunday a significant personal development: his engagement to Christian motivational speaker Karri Turner.
“I can’t tell you how happy I am, how happy my family is, how happy my children are, and I hope my church is happy for me,” Bryant shared his congregation in a live-streamed recording on Facebook.
“I wanted you to know from me … why it is that I wanted to marry this woman. It’s not just because she’s beautiful, but because she’s brilliant, because she’s anointed, and she makes me a better man, and I’m grateful,” Bryant beamed as he waxed poetic about his new fiancée as the congregation cheered with excitement.
“I wanted to marry her because I wanted her to be the moon, because I don’t want there to be a night that I don’t see her. I wanted her to be the sun, to be a reminder that the dark season of my life is over. I wanted her to be a rainbow, just to be a reminder that God’s promises are still good for my life,” he added. “And I wanted her to be the rain, to let me know that the harvest is coming.”
He acknowledged that even though he’s been leading the church as a single man since he took over in 2018, “going forward, for the rest of my days, you gon’ have a first lady.”
According to her website, Turner “is one of the nation’s most vibrant, promising and emerging leaders.”
“Karri is passionate about women and girls and her life’s pursuit is to use every single part of who she is to love, inspire, motivate and draw women to Christ! Karri desires to aid women in finding a deep and meaningful relationship with the creator so that they live life according [to] God’s purpose and design in ministry + marketplace!” the website says.
Bryant divorced his former wife, Gizelle, in 2008 after she accused him of cheating.
In 2016, Latoya Shawntee Odom, a then 34-year-old California woman, alleged that Bryant fathered a son with her a year earlier after encouraging her to have an abortion when he first discovered she was pregnant. Odom alleged that the then-Baltimore preacher was also not consistently maintaining monthly $1,100 child support payments.
That same year, months after Bryant broke his silence on the allegations, he introduced popular R&B singer Charlene Keys, known by her stage name Tweet, as his “last lady” on the now defunct “The Preachers” talk show. That relationship reportedly ended in 2018.
Just days before he officially took the helm of New Birth, Bryant was forced to dismiss a claim from an Ohio businesswoman that she was pregnant with his child.
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