Harnessing the power of film for good is often a dream of younger evangelicals. Welshman Dan Pugh is rare in having turned aspiration into reality.
Pugh has directed documentary films on Matthew Henry, Revival, and Welsh Awakenings. Further projects are in the pipeline. We caught up with him to find out more.
Pugh was born and bred in Caergwrle, North Wales. He was raised bi-lingual, speaking English at home and church and Welsh at school.
Welsh church history is in Pugh’s blood.
Godly heritage
His coal-mining paternal grandfather, Eifion Pugh, became an elder at Bethany Presbyterian Church in Ammanford, a significant chapel in the 1904 revival.
His maternal grandfather, Gwilym Roberts, left the Presbyterian Church of Wales in 1972 due to its liberalism. He became the founding pastor of Pugh’s home church – Caergwrle Evangelical Church. Roberts also chaired the council of the Evangelical Theological College of Wales (now Union), Evangelical Movement of Wales’s general committee, and the Associating Evangelical Churches of Wales.
Following his grandfather’s retirement in 1995, Pugh remembers, ‘he never stopped preaching every Sunday at chapels in the area until cancer took him to glory in 2020.’
Spiritual journey
Pugh’s father is a longstanding elder and his siblings trusted Christ through youth camps. But, as Pugh explains, despite a privileged family and national background, he was unmoved.
