Gifted Christian writers do not always make great speakers. To read them is much more enjoyable than to hear them. As they get into their stride in the pulpit, we wish they had remained on the page!
Not so Geraint Dean Fielder, whose death in May aged 80 has been mourned by the Christian community across the UK and especially in Wales.
Geraint belonged to that rare breed who are equally effective in the spoken as in the written word. Indeed, so impressed was Francis Schaeffer with Geraint’s work as his ghost writer for what became Escape From Reason, published in 1968 by IVP, that Schaeffer offered him a role at L’Abri.
The Swansea University post-grad historian and theologically trained student worker, turned Schaeffer down because it was to pulpit storytelling that he was supremely called and uniquely qualified.
Historian and preacher
Geraint was a chronicler. His historical training and eye for observational detail made him ideally suited to write accessible histories: Excuse me Mr Davies, hallelujah!, a retelling of the story of the renewal of church life in Wales, through the IVF student movement; Lord of the Years, a related but wider angled look at the history of British UCCF; and his last major work Grace, Grit and Gumption, which chronicled the story of Welsh church revival and decline, from the early 20th century onwards .
But it was in his sermons that Geraint’s skill as a chronicler found its most natural environment. Long before narrative preaching was rediscovered in certain quarters of conservative British Evangelicalism, the Bard from Gorseinon was rehearsing his stories. Sometimes outrageously, often humorously, always tellingly.
Pastor with a voice for radio
The other feature that allowed Geraint to operate well across all types of media was his ‘made for radio’ voice! Sonorous and warm, if he hadn’t been a full-time writer or speaker he might have been an actor.
In fact he moonlighted for several years with BBC Radio Wales, broadcasting religious programmes for them and the wider BBC network. One of his published books, Lifelines, is a collection of his scripts and showcases his eye for the parabolic sermon form.
Geraint’s theological training at the Presbyterian College in Aberystwyth and his subsequent five years as a Travelling Secretary with UCCF meant that his eventual pastorates in Whitfield Presbyterian, Abergavenny (1969–1980) and Highfields Church, Cardiff, (1987–2000) were fulfilled by a well-rounded man.
To listen to Geraint was to hear a person at ease with relating to and communicating with young as well as old. He was comfortable referencing current affairs and Calvin’s Institutes; he could draw on illustrations from the arts, along with the kitchen sink.
Conversion
Converted under Billy Graham in 1946 aged 11 and personally counselled by the great evangelist after he came forward for salvation, shaped by his musicality – he was a fine church organist, inspired by his passion for historical theology: the Christian community in Wales benefited from a servant of the gospel and the church.
He was a man equally able to write a theological article for the Theological Students’ Fellowship (TSF), which he chaired in the 1960s, as speak to an old people’s fellowship, give a lecture, do a children’s talk, or be a member of a panel for a school Christian Union.
It was in that last context that this writer first heard him. And, as a relatively new convert, what impressed me was how believable and human he was.
Modest and self deprecating to a fault, Geraint would often describe himself as a jack of all trades – pastor, academic, evangelist – but master of none. Yet that very balance produced healthy churches and disciples who were themselves balanced.
Networker
Given such life experience and formation, Geraint was a well read, well travelled Welshman, and temperamentally suited to the role of bridge builder and networker.
He managed to stay longer than most evangelical ministers in Welsh Presbyterianism without losing the gospel. He helped create the DNA of Highfields in Cardiff as an inclusive church culture where together baptists and paedobaptists loved each other because they loved the Saviour.
He was a director of Evangelicals Now from 1993–2012, providing with others, at the invitation of Bob Horn and Fred Catherwood, a print platform where the tribes of the evangelical independent and Anglican Church could do business together. He was instrumental in the conception and delivery of Word Alive; and he navigated countless committees through tricky waters.
All this made Geraint a mentor to many, a man for all seasons and an evangelical statesman. He wanted to draw the lines where the gospel did, no wider or narrower.
He was helped in all this by Mary, his wonderful wife of 50 years. To her and to his children, like so many other families of significant Christian leaders, the church owes a huge debt of gratitude. He was greatly loved and is greatly missed. Soli Deo Gloria.
