Francis Arthur Allum was a minister, evangelist, and administrator in China and in Australia. As a result of hearing a mission talk on China in his native England at the age of 14, Francis dedicated his life to Christian Mission service and planned to go to China as a missionary. Later he and his family moved to Australia, where a missionary-minded woman acquainted them with the Seventh-day Adventist beliefs. With his mother and sister he was baptized in 1900.

Afterward he attended Avondale School (1901-1905) and upon completing the course of training, he engaged in tent evangelism in New South Wales. In 1905 the Mission Board invited him to join the pioneer workers in China. But it could not provide him with fare to reach his post. He earned passage for himself and his young bride, Eva Osborne, by colporteur work in New Zealand. Upon arriving in China his first station was in the province of Honan. In 1908 he was ordained in Shanghai by Elder I. H. Evans.

It was in 1910 that Elder Allum with Elder Pilquist pioneered the Adventist message in the big city of Nanking. It was just at the time when the Chinese National Exposition was taking place. National colporteurs joined them and sold much literature to the tourists who were visiting China. Also evangelistic meetings were held in the city. Thus it was possible to give the message to many people who might never have had the opportunity of hearing it.

In 1911 Brother Allum and Esta Miller opened up the first Seventh-day Adventist chapel in the province of Hupeh, near the Yangtze River, where some Chinese believers from Changsha had scattered Seventh-day Adventist literature in the city of Hankow, often called the “Chicago of China.” Across the river from Hankow is Wuchang, and over the narrow Han River is Hanyang. The smoking furnaces and factory chimneys on the skyline gave a modern appearance to this region, with its population of over two million people. By 1913 there was an Seventh-day Adventist church of 40 members in that city.

Hankow in recent years became the headquarters of the Central China Union. The mission offices were within a walled compound outside of the city. There was also a street of foreign- style homes which housed the Union and Hupeh provincial missionaries. The Hankow Intermediate School and dormitories filled the further end of the compound.

Early in the spring of 1914 M. C. Warren and Elder F. A. Allum left Shanghai to take the first trip made by Seventh-day Adventist missionaries to the far distant province of Szechuan. They traveled mostly by boats a distance of more than two thousand miles which took them over two months.

They left Shanghai on March 3 and did not arrive in Chungking until April 17.

“May 1-15, 1915, at the general meeting of the Asiatic Division in Shanghai, Bro. Allum gave the following brief report of our work in Chungking from the arrival of our missionaries until that time.

“After our journey of three weeks in the houseboat, Bro Warren and I had to remain a further three weeks on the houseboat under the frowning walls of that ancient city, which looked so forbidding to us as day after day went by, and we still failed to secure a suitable building for our chapel. But finally, in answer to earnest prayer, we were led in a remarkable way to secure a building near the Tung Yuen Gate, which is the most important gate on the land side of the city. It opens to one of the largest and most interesting highways found in China. It is wide, well paved, and busy and leads from Chungking, over mountains and through valleys, to the capital of the province, Chengtu, about 500 miles distant. Anyone coming into Chungking from this highway must pass our chapel door. “The principle work conducted at this station is evangelistic. We have also a small dispensary, and a night school was conducted for several months during the summer.” Two national workers and their families were left to carry on the work. They were Dju Dai Ih and Shi Yung Gwei.

“Although we have been at work here only a few months, the results are encouraging. We now have an organized Sabbath School, which has grown until there are five regular classes with an attendance of about 40. We also have one school with eight students, and a church of ten members.”

During the World War Ⅱthe name of Chungking was known the world over. The little dispensary became a large hospital and cared for many  persons who were hit by Japanese bombs. Elder Ezra Longway was the president of the unoccupied China Division and G. J. Appel the treasurer, until they too had to flee the Japanese invasion of China.

Elder Allum was the superintendent of the North Central China Mission for two years and assisted in the supervision of the China Union in 1912. Then he directed the West China Mission the next year. He presided over the North China Union Conference from 1918-1919, and the Central China Union Mission from 1919-1922.

Ill health caused his return to the homeland after 16 years of service in China. In 1923 he became the secretary and in 1924-1926 vice-president of the Australian Union Conference.

He later served as president of the Victoria-Tasmonia Conference. He retired because of poor health and went first to Port Marquarrie and then to Warrawee, New South Wales, but he continued to carry on pastoral and evangelical work.

In retirement he designed and distributed Bible text cards, and he wrote several tracts on the Christian life and doctrine. He had a strong conviction of duty and a soft heart toward unfortunates. “Have faith in God” was his usual answer to problems presented to him by many whose lives he touched.