Lausanne World Pulse – Perspectives Articles – Brother Flack: Missionary to India Offers Insight to Younger Missionaries

By Chacko Thomas
June 2006

Fred Flack ministered to India for over forty years.

Brother Fred Flack will be one hundred years old in July 2007. He served for forty years in India with the indigenous church planting movement associated with Brother Bakht Singh. He and his twin brother are the oldest known twins alive in the United Kingdom today. Brother Flack is 98-years-old and still preaches without notes. The Bible he carries is typical; he is not yet in need of large print. He still travels from his home in Sidmouth in Devon (UK) to minister God’s word. He is happy that God still gives him “fresh manna” for the ministry. After hearing Brother Flack speak several times, I had the chance to interview him in February 2006.

Q. Are you excited about your 100th birthday and getting the Queen’s letter?

A. Well that is nice, but what is more important is that my name is in the lamb’s book of life. I look forward to serving the Lord to the end. Recently he reminded me how at the age of sixteen, when I turned my life over to him, I sang with great sincerity, “Jesus I have promised to serve thee to the end.” I think now I will make it. We could not serve one more worthy.

Q. How did you choose India for your mission field?

A. India was not my choice. While I was a student at the Missionary Training Colony (MTC), we were told about the Tuareg (people group) in the Sahara. A Colony man had been to them but he died there. I felt I could go to replace him. The Lord called me to his service overseas in August 1931 by Jeremiah 1:5: “Before I formed you in the belly I knew you, and before you came forth out of the womb I sanctified you, and I ordained you a prophet to the nations.” That call was so clear and arresting that I left my secular employment to prepare for it. At once I asked the Lord for two things. First, that he would give me a companion, because he sent his disciples two by two. And second, that he would give me a church like Antioch in Acts 13:1-3.

I was advised by some elders to go to the MTC in Upper Norwood. It was not a Bible school or seminary. It was like an army camp to train men as missionaries for the un-evangelised lands overseas. It was a two-year course in which time the mornings were devoted to Bible instruction and the afternoons to learning practical skills such as hair-cutting, shoe repairing, gardening, woodworking and cooking. The Colony did not provide any direction for the future; we had to seek that from the Lord.

I thought my future was to be in Africa among the Tuaregs of the Sahara. In preparation for that I went to Switzerland to learn French. While there, the Lord answered my prayer for a ministry companion. I received a letter from an elder in the fellowship in London (which I had begun to think was to be my “Antioch”) saying Raymond Golsworthy had spoken to them and that I would be hearing from him.  Raymond and I were together in the MTC for one year and I knew him to be a very fine, gifted and spiritual man. He was expecting to go to the Eskimos in the Arctic, so I never thought we would work together. But after I received this letter I became excited. Was Raymond to become my ministry companion? After waiting for some time I replied to the elder that no letter had come from Raymond, but that in my spirit I believed he was to be the ministry companion for whom I was waiting. Two days later Raymond’s letter came saying the Lord had shut the door on his going to the Eskimos and he believed the Lord was joining him to me. I was thrilled that this should be the Lord’s answer to my prayer. I returned to London and we prayed together, thinking our future was in Africa.

Chacko Thomas is coordinator of Missions Mobilisation Network (MMN). He is also a missionary with Operation Mobilisation, having served in India, and on three of OM’s ships, the Logos, Doulos and the Logos ll, in various ministry and leadership roles.