Part I
[ Go to Part II ]

The sleepy little town of Downer in Gloucester, southern New Jersey, is only a memory in the minds of the oldest residents. But to the multiplied thousands in many countries who first h

Richard Gant Flexon (1895–1982) made a vast contribution to the holiness movement and especially to God’s Bible School. This is the first of a two-part account of his fascinating life.

eard the gospel from the lips of R.G. Flexon, or from those whom he helped to send, this obscure country town is a hallowed spot, for “this man was born there.”

The majority of those who witnessed the response to his “altar-calls,” or listened in amazement as pledges at the missionary convention or camp meeting rose into the tens, then hundreds of thousands of dollars, or sat awestruck at the close of the Silver Anniversary of IHC, as the “few remarks” he stepped forward to give suddenly became a fountain of anointed exhortation, knew nothing of the years “on the backside of the desert” where God had prepared and tested His man.

Early Years

Richard Gant Flexon was one of six children born into a Methodist minister’s home. Converted at the age of six, he won his first soul to Jesus Christ within the next twenty-four hours. He was soon received as a member of the Methodist church and when twelve years old was given a class of boys to teach in the Sunday school. At this early age he found it necessary to make some decisions on his own. Parties that were popular among the young people and church suppers for profit were two activities in which he felt he could not take part.

Frightened when God called him to preach at the age of thirteen, he told no one of the call for three years. His father’s response to the news was not encouraging, “Prove you have some ability to preach, and then I will believe you are called.” Three weeks later, his father asked Richard to “fill in” for him. There were eleven seekers at the altar, and his father changed his mind about Richard’s call to preach.

In his early teens he heard his first sermon on holiness and was soon seeking the experience. This earnest pursuit of God was not looked on with approval by Richard’s older brothers and sisters. His father was much displeased when he felt led to identify himself with a small and despised holiness group in the area. The rift widened when Richard made known his intention to enroll at the Apostolic Holiness University at Greensboro, North Carolina. None of the family offered to help. He arrived at the school penniless and began working five hours a day to meet expenses.

After only two months he was called home because of the illness of his brother. He received no pay for the winter’s work, and no help was offered when he prepared to return to school; but the Lord supplied his need in a most unexpected way.

Trying to make up for lost time, Richard worked seven hours a day and carried seven subjects besides preaching on Sunday at a Friends church, holding two street meetings on Saturday night, and conducting jail services on Sunday afternoon. His health broke, and he returned home where the doctors said that it was “only a matter of time.” The diagnosis was advanced tuberculosis.

“One of the men who came to pray for me said that God was able to heal me. That night I looked up from my bed and asked God to take my case. Five nights later Jesus Christ entered my bedroom and touched my lungs.”

Richard Flexon returned to school and began working in the printing office seven hours a day. This paid for board and tuition but not for clothes and school supplies. Stubs thrown away by other students were his pencils, and paper for school work came from the waste can. Clothes were dyed and mended. “The going was not easy but God helped me.”

Widening Responsibilities

The attraction between Richard Flexon and Emma Hunter began when he testified in a tent meeting where she was the organist. Her faithful friendship steadied him in the hard years of estrangement from his family. Shortly after their marriage, they were assigned to pastor a newly-organized church. The parsonage was a two-room butcher shop behind a storeroom, and the salary—$10.00 a week! World War I was on, and prices were high. One Monday morning they found themselves with no groceries and no money, as their salary had not been paid. The only food in the house, a loaf of bread and some cocoa, was rationed throughout the week. Saturday morning Richard and Emma each had a half slice of bread and a glass of water. “We thanked the Lord, got blessed, and ate it like we had a full meal. Before night some neighbors brought us a basket of vegetables.”

After several years of pastoring and evangelistic work, the Flexons were asked to go to Shackelsford, Virginia, to pastor a strife-torn church and rescue a school that was struggling to survive. They sold their furniture and borrowed the $10.00 they still needed for moving expenses. The accommodations that greeted them were bleak indeed.

“The room in which they placed us had no window or door casings, not a curtain at the windows, not a rug on the floor. Furniture consisted of an old iron stove and a chair, each with one leg, and an old enamel bed minus most of the enamel. Wife placed baby Beatrice on the corn shuck mattress and began to cry, ‘You will have to take me out of here at once.’ We stayed twelve years.

Holy Aggressiveness

Within one year Richard Flexon was installed as president and began to “push” for the school. A holy aggressiveness characterized him. In three years, boarding school students increased from fourteen to eighty-seven. A new dormitory was built, and they were beginning to turn out workers for the Virginia District of the Pilgrim Holiness Church. Richard and Emma Flexon were both teaching in the school. He was acting as president as well as pastoring the local church, operating a small farm and a good-sized broom factory, and serving as superintendent of the Virginia District. For this the Flexons received room and board at the school, plus $10.00 per week! In their twelfth year at Shackelsford, a fire destroyed the school. Nothing was insured. The Great Depression of the thirties had begun. Certain debts remained; and since no one else seemed able to do so, the Flexons assumed responsibility.

“Digging out” Churches

Sixteen new churches were organized in the ten years of superintending the Virginia District of the Pilgrim Church, and twenty-seven were “dug out” in the seven years Flexon served the Pennsylvania / New Jersey District. Reflecting on his home life in the midst of these strenuous labors, he opens his heart:

“You do not sit at home and dig out twenty-seven churches in seven years. In the seventeen years I served as district superintendent, I had been home only 365 days. Though my wife’s life was a very lonely one, she never complained but urged me on in the work of the Lord.”

A striking occurrence during these years of pioneer evangelism helps to explain the intensity of his ministry. While en route to a meeting in Philadelphia, he was taken violently ill and returned home immediately. The doctor’s verdict was, “We can give you temporary relief, but you will never preach again.” His oldest sister heard the doctor’s words and prayed, “Lord if Thou wilt take that disease from my brother’s body and place it in mine, I am willing to die in his place that he might go on preaching the Gospel.” God touched Richard Flexon, and he rose from his bed a well man. Six months later his sister died with the same disease.

“When I looked at her dead face in the casket, I said, ‘O God, if Thou wilt help me, I’ll never live another day, nor preach another sermon but for the salvation of lost humanity.’”

A couple who were newly converted heard him preach in a camp meeting in the coastal woods of Virginia in those early years. To them it seemed he “roared like a lion” as he pled for men’s souls!

“For Such a Time as This”

In 1946 Richard Flexon became Foreign Missions Secretary of the Pilgrim Holiness Church (now The Wesleyan Church), a move which opened the door to one of the greatest contributions he was to make to Kingdom building. His vision was far-reaching. The next twelve years were to reveal the depths of the commitment reflected in the statement that characterized his life,

“I care not where I go or how I have to live, nor how I have to suffer, just so I can win souls for Jesus Christ.”

His was not to be an “arm-chair” missionary administration. In Africa, South America, the Caribbean, and the Philippines, he subjected himself to the rigors of primitive conditions on the front lines of missionary advance. Richard Flexon was not strong physically. Lesser men would have pleaded inability to stand the hardships to which he subjected himself. He suffered silently, but he never turned back. A passion for souls consumed him, and the grace of God sustained him.

God brought R.G. Flexon into leadership of Pilgrim Holiness Missions at a crucial time. Interest in world missions grew rapidly after World War II. Doors were opening all around the world, and he believed God intended they should be entered. Armor D. Peisker, who served as assistant to Flexon for eight years, quotes in his memoirs from An Historical Survey of Pilgrim World Missions by Bill Thomas: “The war unleashed economic forces that scattered Christians to new places. Missionaries and native Christians were coming into contact with unevangelized groups.” He recalls words from Flexon’s message to the General Conference which revealed the key to his outlook on the harvest field, “God does not open doors for naught, but to be entered. He has promised to underwrite whatever we will undertake by sincere faith, for He has declared, ‘According to your faith, so be it unto you.’” Peisker observes that in the years 1946–1954 Pilgrim Holiness missionaries opened ten new fields, at the same time extending their borders on established fields.

[ Go to Part II ]

Anita Brechbill, a freelance writer and editor of Ropeholders, lives in Mifflinburg, Pennsylvania