Rev. Emlyn Jones was a regular guest at Durban North Presbyterian Church. He occupied the pulpit in such a way that despite his short stature he and his voice filled the entire church building.
I was in my early twenties when I first encountered him and I couldn’t help but pay attention. His warmth and personality somehow drew every eye and ear toward the pulpit for a poetic, personal, often funny, romp with all things practical and spiritual.
Emlyn preached to crowds, but for the listener, it was intimate.
When he preached it was as if I was alone with him and we were chatting over a cup of tea.
I felt like he’d done all his preparation just for me.
Emlyn Jones made God tangible, intimate, deeply caring.
As a listener I was momentarily transfixed and believed I could become something for this caring God, a God who wanted me, had a place for me, and who desired for me to take it.
His preached word wooed me out of my complex and confused self and showed me I could be part of loving, seeing, and knowing the world and have something to say to the people in it.
Emlyn Jones modeled love and wisdom.
I wanted to do the same.
I have never forgotten his pulpit manner, mastery, and presence, which I know has given me enormous respect for fine orators and, ironically, even as a young and complex man, a longing desire to be one.
The very idea scared but never left me.
A highschool assignment involving presenting to a group of peers had me planning my own demise. Yet Emlyn’s sermons, his pulpit manner, were wooing something, stirring something within my core into occupying a pulpit myself.
Emlyn preached a sermon about a self to live with and a cause to live for and it offered me a bridge into a future that, at the time, was beyond my capacity to imagine.
Even on leaving the building and making my way home, I knew something of my life’s trajectory had shifted.
Can terror, possibilities, and joy dance together?
I think so.
They augmented into a respectful rhythm, a waltz of sorts, of hesitancy, gratitude, and freedom.
Emyln Jones played music and I was a willing listener.
“Oh love that will not let me go…..”
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