Keeping Focused on World Evangelism During Tough Financial Times

The following is written about Robert Jaffray, missionary to China.  His example is a great encouragement about what to do regarding world evangelism during difficult financial times.

The evangelization of the South Seas had not been long under way when the great financial crisis of the early 1930s—felt around the world and known through several long, hard years as the Depression—hit the industrialized world. Millions of men were unemployed, and the earning power of the fortunate ones who could work was cut to a fraction. No matter how good the intentions, no one could give to missions money that they did not possess. The consequence of this was greatly decreased income for foreign missions. Boards struggled through some tough years, never knowing what the next month would bring.

Jaffray was in the East Indies when the crash came, but he felt the shock soon enough. Letters began to come from various parts of the world telling of the decline in income among people who had been generous donors to the work. Some may have suggested that Jaffray accept the gloomy economic situation as an indication of God’s will for the time and curtail his activities in the islands. For any who felt that way, he had an answer, strictly typical of him: “Do you ask, ‘In view of the terrible economic depression of today, do we dare go forward into these new fields and commence new work?’ Yea, rather may we ask this—‘Dare we, in the face of the command of the Lord Jesus and in the face of the encouraging miracles He is working on our behalf, hesitate for one moment?’ ”

Here we have Jaffray in essence. It was this habit of getting the Word of God into his projects and then confirming the whole thing by an appeal to divine providences that made him indomitable.