Irwin was a second generation Seventh-day Adventist. He was educated at Battle Creek College, and in 1882, when he was only 20 years of age, was licensed as a minister in Michigan where he labored for two years. His next call took him to the state of Kentucky where he served until 1891. During his work there he was ordained in 1886.

He again returned to Michigan and served as conference president from 1891 until he became president of the General Conference Association in 1987. His next assignment was in 1899 when he became president of the General conference Mission Board.

In 1900 Evans was sent to Europe to settle the business problems of the Christian Publishing House which was facing bankruptcy.

The following year he began a four year-term as manager of the Review and Herald Publishing Association. There he met a young lady by the name of Adelaide Bee Cooper. She was born in New York State in 1870 and began working at the age of 13 at the Review and Herald Publishing House at Battle Creek, Michigan, serving as proofreader and copy editor under Uriah Smith, G. G. Tenny, and T. T. Jones. In 1899 she became editor of the Youth’s Instructor, a position she held until 1904. At this time she resigned to marry Irwin H. Evans. He was called to be the Treasurer of the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventist Denomination from 1903 – 1909.

Adelaide busied herself in writing books for young people. Some of them were The Bible Year, Early Steps in the Bible Story, The Children’s Friends, Men of Might, Stories of the Kings from David to Christ and The Story of Esther.

There was a need for someone with strong leadership ability to fill the position of president of the Asiatic division. So in the year 1909 the Evanses sailed for China. This was a time for great expansion in that field. Many new missionaries joined the small working force. The China Mission, as it was called, was more fully organized in 1907, with three local missions, KwangTung, Honan, and FuKien.

The general headquarters were to be established at Shanghai. Committees were formed to foster the Sabbath School, Publishing, and other phases of the work. And a general financial plan was adopted.      “Actions were taken to maintain high standards for baptisms and church membership and the training or national workers. Urgent calls were placed with the Mission Board for workers. (John Oss, Mission Advance in China, p.109) Plans were also laid at this meeting, which was the first general meeting of the workers in China and held from February 10 – 20, 1907, for a well-developed organization that could deal with local problems and with various details on the spot, instead of referring them to the General Conference Committee at Washington, D. C. as heretofore.

When Elder I. H. Evans arrived in Shanghai the groundwork had already been laid. It was his task to see that all of the resolutions were carried out. The brethren in Washington felt they needed Evans more than China did, so from 1913-1918 he was president of the North American Division. But China got into his blood and from 1919-1930 he was president of the Far Eastern Division of which China belonged at that time of world organization.

His great concern for China was to raise up leaders among the nationals. One time when he and Elder Ezra Longway were on a field trip he expressed his plans for the progress of the work. He could see the unrest among the Chinese people and felt soon no American could work in the country. What would be the results to the work if that situation should happen and there were no nationals to carry the torch?

In 1919 the two Chinese unions were discontinued, and 6 smaller union missions were organized that became more directly responsible to the Division. At this time the work in the Chekiang Province, lying immediately south of Shanghai, was made into a mission under the leadership of G. I. Wilkinson, a mission was established at Chinchiang. J. N. Andrews, grandson of the first S.D.A. worker overseas, opened a dispensary on the borders of Tibet, at Tatsienlu, Sikang.

A man from the Miao tribe in the Western Regions of China came to Chungking to learn more about the truth of the S. D. A. church and was later baptized.

At the eastern end of China the Manchurian Union Mission was organized. According to the statistical report, by the end of the year 1919 there were 3,255 S. D. A. in China.

In 1922 advanced training for Chinese and foreign workers was offered in China through the facilities of the Far Eastern Branch of the Fireside Correspondence School ( Now Home Study Institute ). And in 1925 another step in the development of the educational work was taken when the training school was moved from Shanghai to Chiaotoutseng,  40 miles from Nanking, under the leadership of Dr. Denton Rebok. In 1928 C. B. Miller and Dallas White opened the first station in the western province of Yunnan, in the city of Kunming. At the same time a station was opened at Kueiyang, in neighboring Kweichow Province. Also in 1928 the Far Eastern Division office moved into its new building at Shanghai.

Another point of interest was that a Russian Mission was established in 1920 at Harbin by 2 Russian workers from Canada. They were Theophil T. Babienco and Max Popow.

By the year 1930 the church work in China had greatly advanced under the leadership of Elder Evans. While in China he and Mrs. Evans took a great interest in the children of the missionaries. Most of them lived far up in the interior of China. In their busy program they still took time to write letters to them which added a lot of joy to many young lives. One time when Elder Evans was attending a meeting in Chicago, Ill. In 1926 he wrote this letter to one of the teenagers, “ Dear Miss Florence, and all the family: We are in receipt of your kind letter under date of May 24, and Mrs. Evans and I have been much interested in all that you write. Mrs. Evans remarked at the time your letter came: “Well, Florence is improving all the time, and she certainly writes a very nice letter!!......Now Florence, it does seem to me that you have done remarkably well to work the way you have, without a teacher, and to have made your grades in the work you have undertaken. I think this is splendid. I am sort of proud of you, that you have done so well…

“Well I should like to see you. I wish you might be here, or we there, for a day or more, to have a good visit with you and all the family. I must not write you a long letter today, for I am very busy, and have Miss James, my secretary, with us only couple of hours. With kindest regards and wishing you every blessing from the Lord, I am sincerely yours in the Master’s service, I. H. Evans.”

What an encouragement this was to this young person who at the time was living under heavy war conditions.

Mrs. Evans wrote two more books while in China. One was Really Trulies, and the other, Strange People’s and customs. These are full of stories about missionary children and the people they lived among. Elder Evans also authored four books for the ministers. He was also to a considerable extent responsible for the development of the Church Hymnal and wrote the hymn “Welcome, Day of Sweet Repose. “

They left China in 1930 and returned to Washington serving as vice-president of the General conference until 1936, and as Field Secretary from 1936 until his retirement in 1941. He passed to his rest in 1945, at 83 years of age. May God guard his resting place.