But Mother Prince, they agree, was unique, from the very first service she attended last fall when she sat down in what became her accustomed place.
"From the time she came, she brought a beautiful spirit," member Christie Hines recalled. "She exemplified how much she loved the Lord and how real her faith was in her life."
"I never, ever heard a negative word pass from her lips, and I can't say that about myself," said Pastor Eddie Mosley. "She had a smile that knocked you off your feet. And it was genuine."
Prince's son, Blake Flood, an Atlanta businessman, came to learn that the church members' love for his mother was genuine, too. The extent of it came as a bit of a surprise.
It was, he laughs, a case of "an old white woman in an old black church, and she just didn't care, and they loved her for it."
Flood had moved his mother south last July and located her in a condominium near his home so she could be closer to him and be able to see his young daughter. Flood knew she would want a church that would feel like family, an "intimate" congregation, not a megachurch.
After visiting a few churches in the area, he said, his mother "walked in to St. Paul one day and just felt at home."
That some days she might be the lone white face mattered not to him, to her or to church members.
"I was more concerned," Flood said, "with her finding some place she was comfortable going."
"Mother Prince," said Hines, "saw no color. That's what she taught."
Mosley said not every visitor to St. Paul takes to its style of service, which can be, he allows, "dramatic." But Prince, if she felt the spirit, might move up and down in the aisles, clap and praise God, even pass out.
Though small at about 5 feet and around 100 pounds, she was "bold," said Mosley's wife, Debra. She could discuss the Bible "like she'd been coming here all her life."
Flood discovered his mother's impact on St. Paul when, while battling emphysema this spring, she was forced to stay home and miss Sunday services. In the space of a couple of hours, four church members including Mosley called to check on her health and to offer to help however they might.
"At that point," he said, "I knew she was loved. It made me feel good: Someone else was looking out for her. In the last year of her life she found a community of people who loved her."
Now, on behalf of his mother, Flood is looking out for others. He is working with Mosley to set up a "modest" scholarship fund that will help a graduating high school senior from the community pay for college. His mother, Flood said, valued education.
"It seemed like a way to benefit the church in an ongoing manner in a way that would be meaningful to her," he said.
Through the scholarship fund, Iris Prince's name will live on at St. Paul. Still, there's no doubt the congregation will be thinking of her for Sundays to come when they look over to the seat she once occupied.
"I really miss her," Artie Gardner said last week. "Mother Prince was a great inspiration."
