Henry Alexander BROWN

BROWN, (HENRY) ALEXANDER (b. Darjeeling, India, 12 April 1900; d. Adelaide, SA, 2 March 1986). Children's evangelist and missioner of Scripture Union and the Children's Special Service Mission.

Alex Brown came to faith in Christ through the ministry of the noted CSSM evangelist R T Archibald in Darjeeling when he was six. His mother was widowed in 1913, and the family moved to New Zealand, where there was family support. Brown came to Australia in 1922 with the Open Air Campaigners, and impressed Edmund Clark, the missioner of the CSSM who in Dec 1923 invited him to join its work. The letter of appointment mistakenly offered him a salary at the rate of £20 per annum; it should have read £200, but Brown accepted anyway. This commitment was an earnest of the way he approached his ministry as a staff worker in NSW and later SA for the next 35 years.

He ran the first CSSM camp at Cronulla (on Sydney's southern outskirts) in the summer of 1924, and went on to the Katoomba Convention, taking charge of children's meetings. He had a way with children; tall and lean, he could use his face in a remarkable way to reinforce the effect he was trying to create and had a real understanding of how children felt and thought. Brown was an individualist, as straightforward in his teaching as in his own faith. He gave himself unreservedly to the children's ministry to which he had been called and sought from his hearers a clear commitment to Christ as Saviour. He was never discouraged by difficulties, put off by disinterest or thwarted by opposition. His genuine love of the Lord and steadfastness of purpose ensured that his work endured.

During the next three decades, Brown travelled throughout the country, everywhere conducting his missions thoroughly. He often spent three months in an area, visiting and revisiting schools and conducting services at local churches; in the late 1920s and 1930s, when family church-going was more common than in a later generation, this was an effective means of reaching a whole family. He generally spent eleven days holding a series of meetings before moving on, and often returned later. His ministry extended to all states, but was particularly concentrated on NSW and Qld. He m. 24 Feb 1934 Joyce Samways, who travelled with her husband in all his roving until the birth of a son in 1941. The Browns then settled in Sydney until an invitation came in 1949 to move to SA as organising secretary and missioner. A decade of solid effort in children's evangelism saw its culmination in his role of being in charge of children's counselling and follow-up in the Billy Graham Crusade of 1959.

Brown left Scripture Union in 1960 to become pastor of the Burnside Christian Church, later moving to a Baptist ministry at Cootamundra, where he was also superintendent of the Baptist churches of SW NSW. Following his wife's death he returned to SA, where he pastored Baptist churches at Millicent and Peterhead for six years, retiring at the age of 82. Four years retirement at Georgetown and Adelaide preceded his death in 1986.

J R & M Prince, Tuned in to Change, a History of Scripture Union in Australia, 1880-1980(Sydney, 1979); Ian Brown (son)

STUART BRAGA