'An answered prayer'

They sang. They prayed. They danced at their seats, and they shouted to heaven .

A raucous crowd of 1,000 worshipers, most of them African-American, greeted the state's first African-American governor-elect with a rousing service last night celebrating Deval Patrick's history-making electoral victory.

"We are here to celebrate the election of one of our own," Bishop Gilbert Thompson, president of the Black Ministerial Alliance, said at the start of the two-hour service, which was held at Thompson's church in Mattapan.

And celebrate they did. They gave standing ovations to Patrick, to Patrick's wife, to Mayor Thomas M. Menino, to the singers -- of "Amazing Grace" and of the Declaration of Independence -- and to the many speakers, who cited the Bible, Martin Luther King Jr., pop music, and their life experiences.

Over and over, they alluded to the significance of Patrick's election for the struggle of black Americans, from slavery to the State House.

Patrick is the second African-American elected a governor in the United States; the first, Douglas Wilder of Virginia, plans to attend Patrick's inauguration tomorrow.

"Tonight we are experiencing an answered prayer -- prayers that were prayed by slaves . . . prayers that were prayed by folks in segregation," said the Rev. Hurmon Hamilton, senior pastor of Roxbury Presbyterian Church. Hamilton, to uproarious applause, then alluded to the late James Brown's lyric, "Open Up the Door, I'll Get It Myself."

"You are on the inside now," Hamilton said to Patrick. "Just unlock the door."

At the close of the service, after Patrick spoke, the ministers gathered around the governor-elect, and, eyes closed and heads bowed, placed their hands on his shoulders, a symbolic laying on of hands with which the clergy called on God to bless and strengthen him . Patrick, who grew up in a black church in Chicago, spoke for nearly 30 minutes .

"We are an enduring people, we are a lasting people, and we have been counted out for centuries, but we keep defying expectations," he said.

He called on the crowd to be patient as he tries to make change, and to understand that he will make mistakes.

"I am glad to be surrounded by prayer, and love, and understanding, and support, and I'm asking you to remember how you feel right now when the going gets rough, when the solutions don't come as fast as you like, when you don't like what I just said on some issue you don't happen to agree with," he said. "I'm not asking you to agree with me on everything. I'm asking you to understand that, even when we disagree, we have got to appreciate the fact that out there, in your neighborhood and mine, there are people suffering."

The prayer service, sponsored by the Black Ministerial Alliance, was held at Jubilee Christian Church , one of the largest Protestant churches in the state.

Many of the leading black ministers of Boston spoke at the service, among them several, including Thompson, who do not share Patrick's support of same-sex marriage. The issue was not mentioned last night, just hours after the Legislature had voted to advance a ban on gay-marriage toward possible placement on the 2008 ballot. Instead, speakers focused on the significance of Patrick's election to black history, and on the importance of Christian faith.

The Rev. Gregory Groover Sr. of the Historic Charles Street AME Church in Roxbury, referred to Patrick as "a son of slaves, who for all of his life has looked up to the hills from whence cometh his help."

T he Rev. Gloria White-Hammond, of Bethel AME Church in Jamaica Plain, addressed Patrick as "Brother Governor," and declared, "We are the promises that would not be lynched."

And the Rev. Michael E. Haynes, a former state representative and the retired pastor of Twelfth Baptist Church in Roxbury, recited a litany of black elected officials who preceded Patrick, urging worshipers to remember those who had worked to make the election of a black governor possible.

"Deval, did you ever sing that spiritual, 'My Lord's getting me ready for that great day'?" Haynes asked. "Divine providence has brought you to this point and to this time."

Patrick explained his faith in explicitly religious language.

"I'm going to make mistakes, because even after all the nice things said, I'm still a broken and frail human being," he said. "There is only one perfect example, and that's the one in whose sanctuary we stand right now."

Patrick is scheduled to attend another worship service, an interfaith prayer gathering at Old South Meeting House, tomorrow morning, and he is scheduled to speak at Temple Israel in the Fenway and to the Cape Cod Black Ministerial Alliance over the weekend leading up to the Martin Luther King Jr. birthday holiday.

Michael Paulson can be reached at mpaulson@globe.com.