G. Daniel Jones: dedicated pastor and leader leaves a legacy of faith and service

IT WAS an unusual approach to a pastoral visit, when our minister, Rev. G. Daniel Jones and his wife, Geraldine, came to call at our home, at dusk on a drizzly, early fall evening nearly five years ago.

Rev. Jones came to the front door and settled in to visit my husband, Acel, who had recently become paralyzed after back surgery. Our living room had been turned into a hospital - outfitted with medicine cabinets, sick-room supplies and special lifts to move the patient from bed to wheelchair and back.

I greeted him, then went outside, sat down in the driver's seat of his car, and turned to chat with Mrs. Jones, sitting in the backseat. For the next hour or so, she listened, soothing my fears and frustrations over the big, scary changes my husband's misfortune had wrought in our lives. She understood the challenge because, like Acel, she was paralyzed and wheelchair-bound. Early in her marriage, her car collided with a truck and she suffered injuries that left her a paraplegic. She never walked again - but that never slowed her down. Like her husband, she was fully engaged in life, devoted to her profession as a social worker, to her family, and to the church family they both ably served. She was an inspiration to my husband when he became paralyzed.

During Acel's nearly five-month hospitalization and through multiple surgeries, Rev. Jones visited with such regularity that I marveled at his generosity, and wondered how he found the time - for us, and for everyone else who sought his spiritual support and kindness. His counsel, the cards he brought and that other Grace Baptist Church members continue to send us to this day, were signs to me of belonging to a church family.

"Dr. Jones first visited me when I was still in pain and woozy from medication, and I expressed doubts of God's omniscient power," Acel says. "He assured me it was natural for all of us to question God. He said when you ask the question, the answer I would get would restore and deepen my faith - and it did. I felt I was in the presence of a man of God whenever I was around him: his humor, his kind words were subtle but powerful, yet he made you feel comfortable in his presence. You could be yourself."

Acel and I last saw Rev. Jones at his wife's bedside, when we visited her in the hospital on a chilly Sunday last fall. Ever dignified, and wearing the vested dark suit that was his uniform, Rev. Jones was confronting the reality caregivers inevitably face: that in the end, there is a limit to what we can do because those we love are in His hands, not ours.

We said a prayer and prepared to head home. As we departed, he turned to me and said quietly, "The Praise Dancers need you, at Grace - they miss you there." I nodded and thanked him; I have been an infrequent churchgoer in the years since Acel's injury, but I do love to dance. Rev. Jones' remark made me feel both remembered and appreciated, for doing something I love to celebrate my faith (and to get some much-needed exercise). His implicit message, I thought, was that as a caregiver, you must make time to do what gives you joy and to take care of yourself.

Weeks after our visit, Mrs. Jones died. Since then, soldiering on through his grief, I believe Rev. Jones had been doing what he loved: staying active and engaged, continuing to serve the community locally and nationally. In the days before his sudden passing on May 27, he was in Chicago to address the conclave of 33rd Degree Masons. On his last Sunday, he delivered a sermon to more than 1,000 who gathered for that meeting. He was committed and busy, and died peacefully at home in front of the TV while and paying bills that had accumulated during his travels.

My sister-in-law, Geraldine Fisher, a deacon and longtime member of Grace Baptist in Germantown, says always finding time for people was Rev. Jones ' trademark.

"So many people this week have talked about how Dr. Jones always would get to the hospital when people were sick or to the home when someone died. At all hours of the day or night, he and his wife would both show up, bringing flowers, or balloons," she says. "He gave personal service. He was dedicated and loving to his congregation."

It's important to note that Jones was no pastor on a pedestal, but a regular guy.

"He was a doctor of ministry, and some with that degree are full of themselves - but he was not that way," my sister-in-law Geraldine says. Grace Baptist choir director Pat Beech recollects that in his younger days, Rev. Jones often sported a wide-brimmed fedora, dark glasses and a trench coat - dashing attire that contrasted with the contents of the satchel he carried, filled with Bibles, notes and Sunday school lessons as he prepared for his weekly sermons.

The simple message that through faith all things are possible resonated through his life, and in his thoughtful and passionate sermons: That's one reason, I'm sure, that the members of Zion Baptist Church of Philadelphia called Rev. Jones out of retirement to serve as their interim pastor earlier this year.

Today, two congregations - from Grace Baptist of Germantown and Zion Baptist in North Philadelphia - will join family, friends and colleagues to say goodbye. The funeral will be held at Enon Baptist Church's huge Tabernacle on Cheltenham Avenue, graciously opened for the service by Rev. Alyn Waller, to accommodate the expected crowd paying tribute to Rev. G. Daniel Jones. I am proud and blessed to have known him.