Dr. Robert Jaffray, Missionary publisher

When it came to missions, Robert Jaffray and his publisher father did not agree. His biographer AW Tozer commented, “Age, paternal authority and the strong leverage of economic pressure – all were on his (dad’s) side, while Rob had only his vision, his crusader’s zeal and his dogged determination to obey God rather than man.” 

Jaffrey, at age seventeen, had been profoundly impacted by his mentor A.B. Simpson’s prophetic call to go to China as a missionary.  His politically powerful father however was outraged!  Senator Robert Jaffray had already decided that his son Robert would carry on the Jaffray dynasty as the next publisher of the Globe newspaper in Toronto, Canada.  Threatening to disinherit his son, he cut him off financially, saying that the only money he would give was for a return ticket back to Canada.  Robert Sr. even begged his son to become a respectable Presbyterian minister in Canada, anything but an overseas Alliance missionary.  Ironically, said A.W. Tozer, the two conflicted Roberts were very similar in temperament.  Both “showed the same courage, the same dogged cheerfulness under opposition, the same inability to know when they were beaten.”

Jaffrey Jr. was an unlikely missionary candidate as in his childhood, he suffered from obesity, heart disease and diabetes.  All sports requiring physical effort were prohibited because of his health issues. While his obesity disappeared in adulthood, he continued to be plagued with heart problems and diabetes.  Because he was a fighter like his dad, he never gave up.

Not even his dad’s opposition could stop young Jaffrey in 1897 from attending Nyack Missionary College before becoming a pioneer missionary in China, followed by Vietnam, Indonesia, and New Guinea.  A.W. Tozer, the Alliance Witness/Life editor, called Jaffray “an explorer, an adventurer obsessed with the urge to discover new peoples and hidden tribes.”  His passion was to make indigenous disciples, not to turn Asians into Westerners. 

In October 1907, the Alliance missionaries in Wuchow/Wuzhou had received an outpouring of the Holy Spirit that resulted in many of them, including Jaffray, speaking in tongues. The Alliance Weekly magazine reported another Alliance missionary saying: “When but a few of our company were gathered together at the hall for prayer on Friday night, the power of God fell upon me and while prostrated upon the floor, a new revelation of the glory of my risen Lord was granted me…”  The Baptism of the Holy Spirit for Jaffray was about deeper surrender and power for service. While Jaffray valued how this experience deepened his love for the Bible and evangelism, he was never divisive about the gift of tongues. As late as 1926, A.B. Simpson’s successor Paul Nader publicly said, “Why not be willing, if the Lord sends it, to speak in tongues?”

As soon as a few Chinese converts formed a church, Jaffray began a Bible school in Wuchow (later called The Alliance Seminary in Hong Kong). In order to create Chinese-language literature for his students, he became a publisher in 1913 of the Bible Magazine (currently China Christian Daily). He initially printed his own lectures for wider distribution in China, later turning them into books. Despite the earlier family conflict, he proved to have his father’s publishing gift. Like father, like son. Tozer noted, “Believing in the power of the printed page, Jaffray kept the presses rolling, turning out tons of Christian literature for distribution throughout the Orient…He had been reared in an atmosphere never free of the smell of printer’s ink. The talk around the table had been of newspapers, the power of printed ideas and the influence of the press for good or evil, and he had not forgotten anything.” 

Against all odds, Jaffray started the South China Alliance Press through generous support from friends in North America. There was no press available, no building to house the printing press, no pressmen to operate it, and no provision in the budget. But God made a way again and again. This innovative Chinese-language magazine was not only read by Chinese Christians of every denomination in China, but even by Chinese Christians in San Francisco’s Chinatown. In his missionary magazine, The Pioneer, Jaffray said that just as Pharoah held God’s people in bondage in Egypt, too many people around the world are being held in even worse bondage. A.W. Tozer fittingly entitled his biography of Jaffray “Let My People Go.”

Tozer described Jaffray as “a missionary general, a strategist and tactician of undoubted vision.”  His workday typically began with prayer at 4am each day.  Prayer and work for Jaffray were deeply connected through his intentional daily practice of God’s presence.  He was known for his missionary maps that helped him focus his prayers and his strategizing.  His humility made him approachable to other missionaries.  Everyone knew that Jaffray really cared. He deeply loved people and sacrificially invested in other missionaries, using his considerable family inheritance. He also had a great sense of humour, loving to tell stories and crack jokes.  

In 1916, Jaffray was elected to the C&MA chairmanship of the South China missionary field.  Even when funds and volunteers were unavailable, Jaffray found a way to break new ground in unreached areas. In 1929, he even started the first indigenous Chinese mission agency, Chinese Foreign Missionary Union, which sent Chinese missionaries to unreached parts of Asia, including Indonesia, Malaysia, and Borneo. Jaffray was always encouraging others to “lengthen thy cords! Enlarge! Spread out! Break forth!” In 1934, he cheerfully reported, “No less than 4,347 souls (in Indonesia) have accepted the Lord Jesus, have hurled their idols and fetishes to the bats, and have confessed their master in baptism.”

Missions for Jaffray was spiritual warfare which delivered people from their chains. Jaffray was a missionary Braveheart, similar to the Scottish warrior William Wallace. Only one generation removed from Scotland, Tozer noted, Jaffray “still had all his Highland courage and all his inherited love for hardships.  Lust for action was strong upon him…It took disaster to wake the Scot in him and bring out his fighting spirit.”

When captured by ruthless bandits, Jaffray fearlessly shared the gospel with them.  After the bandits demanded ransom money, he responded, “We are missionaries. You have no right to demand a toll from us.  Come now, be reasonable. Give us an offering and let us go.” When the bandits set him free in hopes of a future ransom, he said to them, “Don’t forget that Christ loves you.”

Being out on the Asian mission field for Jaffray and his workers involved praying for people to be healed and even delivered from evil spirits. Jaffray told a story how one of his workers, while praying for a demonized person, was almost strangled with chains.  As he stood his ground, the person was set free, and the local area was now open to the gospel.  Jaffray also told of an incident in Bali when during a plague where the witch doctor was unable to heal the people. The witchdoctor reluctantly gave permission for Jaffray’s worker to pray.  Miraculously the sick were healed, and the epidemic was ended.  

In 1938, with the Second World War approaching, Jaffrey, his wife Minnie, and adult daughter Margaret chose to return to Makassar, Indonesia after his sabbatical in Canada: “If I do not go back now, there is little likelihood I can ever go back at all. I must return to the Far East. I want to die out there where my life has been.” Eighty Alliance missionaries and forty-five of their children were imprisoned. Once back in Indonesia, he refused to leave “while one missionary is in the field.” Sadly, on July 29, 1945, Jaffray the unstoppable missionary publisher was captured and later died of starvation in a Japanese internment camp. Even in his dying, Jaffray never gave up on his passion to set his people free in Asia. 

We thank God for his daughter Yu Zizhen/Margaret who picked up the missionary torch, preaching the gospel in Asia.  In his memory, the Canadian C&MA since 2016 has sponsored The Jaffray Project which so far has raised over a million dollars to send international workers to least-reached people groups.  Thanks to Jaffray’s pioneering leadership, the Christian & Missionary Alliance in Vietnam today has more than one million members, over 550 ordained pastors, and over 2500 churches.

What would it take for each of us to be a little more like Dr. Robert Jaffray in his missionary passion for the lost?