Persecution Blog

VOM Radio: Meet A House Church Pastor in China

“Enfu” is the Chinese word for “blessing.” When we went to China to secretly interview a Chinese house church pastor, he suggested Enfu as his pseudonym.

Every time Pastor Enfu and his congregation meet together, it is illegal. Listen this week as he shares the challenges of being a pastor in a nation cracking down on the church. Some of the challenges will seem obvious. Others will be ones that Christians in free nations may have never thought of, like handling church finances when the church doesn’t legally exist. How does his church train new leaders? How do they prepare Christians to stand strong in the face of persecution? We’ll hear answers to those questions, and Enfu will share with us specific ways to pray for Chinese Christians—and encourage us with the fact that they are praying for the church in America as well. You’ll be encouraged as you come with us to China this week to meet “Pastor Blessing.”

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Meet a Bible Smuggler Inside China

Come with us on a visit to China and join in a conversation with one of VOM’s Bible smuggling partners. He is working alongside others to deliver Bibles into every province of China, but that work comes with great risk. All the workers know they could face arrest, interrogation and three years of imprisonment for their Bible-delivery work. Yet they are not intimidated!

Listen as our brother shares about growing up in a family of persecuted Christians. He’ll tell us the story of his first arrest, and the thoughts on his heart as he went through that testing and ministry. He’ll also help explain the differences between registered and unregistered churches in China, and equip you to pray for that nation and our spiritual family there. 

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China Prisoner's Wife Speaks Out

Her husband is currently in prison in China. His legal work representing Christians and other oppressed people was considered a “threat” by China’s government, and today he’s serving a five-year prison sentence.

But “Sister Wong” refuses to be silenced. This week on VOM Radio she shares her story, including how her husband advised her to pray when she was finally able to visit him in prison. His prayer request wasn’t for himself, but for the church in China.

She also shares some of the passages of Scripture that are carrying her through this challenging season in her life. Your faith will be challenged and you’ll be better equipped to pray for China this week on VOM Radio.

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VOM Radio: I'm With You Always, Even During Torture

In one of the most-listened-to episodes of VOM Radio from 2016, "Sister Amber" shares how Christ was with her even as she was being tortured and abused in Tibet.

After more than a decade in Tibet, Amber watched as God orchestrated a great ministry breakthrough: people who'd been totally closed to the gospel message were now asking to learn more about Jesus. But just days after that breakthrough Amber experienced persecution as police came pounding on her door.

Listen as she tells the story, including how God ministered to her in the most painful moments of her suffering. You'll hear how God showed her that her persecution wasn't the end of the story. You'll also hear how God laid on the hearts of people around the world to pray for Amber, including one who drew a remarkably-accurate picture of Amber and the policemen in the interrogation room--and how God’s plans included those policemen.

Your faith will be challenged as you hear Amber's thoughts on what the New Testament calls the "honor" of being persecuted.

 

Listen to the complete interview with Amber here: Part 1 and Part 2.

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China: We Are Light And Salt

Bob Fu is a former prisoner for Christ in China. He is also the founder and president of the China Aid Association and one of the most knowledgeable and widely-heard voices speaking out on behalf of persecuted Christians in China.

This week Bob will share with us about an ongoing crackdown against Christians and churches in China, a crackdown that includes Christians in prison, church buildings destroyed and even Christian children prevented from pursuing their education. But Bob will share good news, too: in the midst of that persecution, God is at work. One fruit of the current campaign against the church is a newfound unity among believers from different backgrounds and denominations.

Bob will also share an update about Gao Zhisheng, a Christian human rights attorney who has been terribly abused and persecuted, but has found God faithful even in the depths of human suffering. (Order a copy of Bob’s outstanding book, God's Double Agent).

Finally, we'll hear an update on brand new developments in the case against Asia Bibi in Pakistan.

 

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Against All Odds: Amazing Tenacity

Those who work with persecuted Christians realize we have a lot to learn from them. One of the lessons recently impressed on my mind by the underground church in China is their tenacity to carry out the task of global evangelism. At a recent gathering of mission leaders, mission teachers, and missionaries I heard a presentation by a Korean missionary who works with the underground church in China to prepare missionaries who will be sent out by the Chinese underground church. His main role is to help train Chinese missionaries who will be sent cross-culturally within China and also into neighboring countries in Asia and beyond. He said that there is no shortage of candidates from the underground churches desiring to go out as missionaries.

Some of the motivation to go out as missionaries stems from missionary movements within the Chinese underground church.  The “Back to Jerusalem” missionary movement, which began in the 1980s, is a movement to send missionaries to all the Buddhist, Hindu, and Muslim people who live between China and Jerusalem, for example. Similar indigenous missionary movements continue to inspire and motivate Chinese Christians to serve as missionaries and have so for a century.

As the Korean missionary spoke, I was struck by the profundity of it—that in spite of being under restrictions, harassed, and sometimes persecuted, the underground church is looking beyond its borders to carry the gospel cross-culturally. It is recruiting, training and sending out missionaries. Apparently this is not new. Scott W. Sunquist, Dean of the School of Intercultural Studies and Professor of World Christianity at Fuller Seminary, wrote that even though the early Jesus movement [the early church] was fragmented and persecuted, it managed to retain its zeal for missions.

An article titled “The Chinese Church: The Next Superpower in World Mission?” by Kevin Xiyi Yao reports that Operation World lists 20,000 cross-cultural missionaries from mainland China. This is probably a very conservative figure since it is hard to gather all the information from the underground church. The article also reports that a survey done by a Korean missiologist reveals that 90% of urban and rural ministers in China are concerned about missions. Over 40% of believers in urban churches are preparing to participate in mission. The writer says: “Chinese Christians have ample experience of persecution and suffering, and they are more ready to endure harsh conditions.” I would doubt whether the countries these missionaries are going to will welcome them with open arms. Their experience helps prepare them for difficult assignments.

As the missionary movement slowly dies in the West, those persecuted Christians with just about everything going against them (from the Western viewpoint) are picking up the mantle and seeking to fulfill God’s mandate—against all odds. How ready are we to accept the difficult assignment? Does our present situation make this prospect unlikely? What are we going to do about it?

Roy Stults, PhD, is the Online Workshop Coordinator and Educational Services Coordinator for The Voice of the Martyrs. He graduated from Olivet Nazarene University (BA and MA), Nazarene Theological Seminary (M.Div.), Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (Doctor of Missiology), and The University of Manchester (England) with a PhD (theology). A Vietnam veteran, Dr. Stults served as a missionary for 19 years and pastored U.S. churches for eight years. Prior to joining VOM, he was a Professor of Religion at Oklahoma Wesleyan University.

New York Times Covers China Cross Removals

In the front section of the New York Times on Sunday was a story on the ongoing destruction of churches and removal of crosses from church buildings. The article says as many as 1700 crosses have been taken down in the past two years in Zhejiang Province; Bob Fu, president of China Aid Association, told VOM Radio the number may be even higher.

A portion of the Times article explores the pressure being brought to bear on China’s Christians—even those who are part of the State-sanctioned, registered church:

As the authorities pressed the campaign [to remove church crosses], prominent Protestant and Catholic leaders across China, including senior figures in the government’s religious affairs bureaucracy, spoke out against it in sermons and on social media.

One of them was Gu Yuese, the pastor of one of the biggest churches in the Chinese-speaking world, the Chongyi Church in the provincial capital of Hangzhou. As one of the best-known Protestant leaders in China, Mr. Gu was influential, and his criticism resonated beyond the region.

“These actions are a flagrant violation of the policy of religious freedom that the party and the government have been implementing and continuously perfecting for more than 60 years,” he wrote in a statement released on official government letterhead.

Then he was silenced. In January, the police detained Mr. Gu and charged him with misusing church funds. A few days later, another pastor in Zhejiang who had also spoken out was detained on similar charges.

“It’s a method to make us pay attention,” said the pastor of a government-run church in Wenzhou. “None of us have financial training, so if you send in an accountant, they will probably find something wrong.”

Several clergy members in the region said they were under pressure to demonstrate their loyalty to the Communist Party. Some churches, for example, have begun extolling Mr. Xi’s campaign to promote “core socialist values” — a slogan meant to offer a secular belief system that bolsters the party’s legitimacy.

Other churches have begun displaying their building permits, implicitly endorsing the government’s authority to approve or reject church construction, including crosses.

“We have to show that we are loyal Christians,” said an employee of the historic Chengxi Church in Wenzhou, “or else we could face trouble.”

Please pray for our Christian brothers and sisters in China, that they will remain faithful to Christ in spite of the threat of trouble. Pray also that government leaders and local officials will come to know Christ in a personal way.

Honoring a Martyr

This post first appeared on the blog of our sister mission in Korea, VOM-Korea. It is written by Dr. Eric Foley, the CEO of that ministry.

I want to tell you about one of the great men of North Korea ministry upon the occasion of his martyrdom in Changbai, China this past Saturday, April 30, 2016.

His name was Pastor Han Chung-Ryeol (한충렬).

He was 49 years old.

He was married, with one son and one daughter.

He was ethnically Korean but Chinese by birth and citizenship.

He was a pastor in the Three Self-Church.

He graduated from the East-North Theological Seminary in Shenyang, China.

When he was finishing seminary, elderly people called him to come visit Changbai to preach because they had no church. So he went there to preach a little bit. But he never stopped preaching there. He planted Changbai Church in 1993.

Changbai borders North Korea. And in 1993, North Korea was gripped by famine. North Koreans flooded across the border, looking for food, clothing, money, anything. It was rumored along the border in North Korea that if you went to a building with a cross on top, they would help you there.

In Changbai, there was one building with a cross on top. That was Pastor Han’s church.

Pastor Han never sought to start a North Korea ministry any more than he sought to start a church in Changbai. He simply responded faithfully to whatever God gave him to do. So as North Koreans knocked on the door of his church, he gave them food, and clothing, and Christ. When North Koreans began to knock on the doors of the homes of people all over Changbai, Pastor Han trained ordinary people how to help North Koreans also.

There was a time when it was possible for Korean Chinese people to visit North Korea to see their relatives. Pastor Han’s wife did. She even went to jail in North Korea for evangelizing North Koreans. But providentially in the same jail cell with her was a fellow prisoner, a kotjebi, or North Korean orphan, whom she and Pastor Han had once helped in China. The kotjebi was wearing layers and layers and layers of clothing, because every time the kotjebi needed to buy something, off would come a layer of clothing as payment. So the kotjebi provided Pastor Han’s wife with enough clothing to stay warm in the cold prison cell, as a way of saying thanks.

What North Koreans always said about Pastor Han was that they could see his heart. That is far rarer in ministry than you might imagine, and it is especially rare in North Korea ministry. You can share food with North Korean people. You can share clothing. You can share the Gospel. You can give them lots of money and rice cookers. And you can throw big parties for them. But unless North Koreans can see your heart, unless the gospel is embodied in your life and not only your words or your business cards, they will never cross over the scary, shaky rope bridge over which we each of us must cross in order to move from the ideologies that enslave us, to enter the Kingdom of God.

Pastor Han was devoted to helping North Koreans enter the Kingdom of God, not the Kingdom of South Korea. He insisted that the North Koreans that he helped should return to their homes and their family and their country, not abandon them. He told us, “Whether this person dies or not, they have to go back. If they die, God will honor them. But if they go to South Korea, they will turn their backs on God.” I believe this is why the Chinese authorities continued to permit Pastor Han to help North Koreans, no matter how frequently the North Korean government complained about him. Pastor Han was not a broker, not a human rights activist, not a guest on radio programs, not a speaker in pulpits. He was a pastor, and all he was doing was pastoring anyone who came to him. And then he would send them home.

In this and many other ways he was a wise man. Frankly, most workers in North Korean ministry end up losing their souls in this work. Bitterness inevitably corrodes their insides after they are betrayed by North Koreans and other North Korean workers enough times. They come to hate the North Korean government and start praying for its collapse and for North Korean officials to die. After a while they stop praying at all. They have to spend all their time on the phone, talking to North Koreans who need help, raising money, doing radio interviews, and, eventually, trying to cover up the sinful behavior they fall into because the work eats them up. They stop talking about the Messiah to North Koreans and instead become a messiah to the North Koreans they agree to help. Paradoxically, these North Koreans then become their god, because they serve them every waking moment as faithfully as a person can serve any idol, hoping to gain some sense of peace from placating the idol’s wrath.

But Pastor Han did not fall into this trap because he started each day in morning prayer. He said that if he didn’t pray, he couldn’t do the work. God gave him a piercing sense of discernment, and people often commented about his sharp eyes. Those eyes kept him focused on Christ, and this kept him alive for a lot longer than anyone else could have survived in his situation.

Pastor Han was our partner in Changbai, and over the years he helped many other North Korean ministries as well. But I also appreciated that there were people whom he would not help. He would not help North Koreans defect. He would not help governments with their spying. And he would not accept money from ministries or individuals whose motivation was to “buy” testimonies and stories from him that they could use for fundraising purposes. This happens a lot in North Korea work, and I note sadly that one of the people whose money Pastor Han consistently refused is already making the rounds this week, seeking to raise money ostensibly to help Pastor Han’s family.

There was only one disagreement I ever had with Pastor Han, and I always wonder if I should have pushed it further with him. One of Pastor Han’s deacons was kidnapped from inside China by North Korean agents in November 2014, taken back across the border to North Korea, imprisoned, and interrogated. I told Pastor Han that my experience with North Korean work has been that the best thing we can do in such a situation is to bring things to the light as quickly and loudly and broadly and publicly as possible. We go to the Lord, to the media, to the governments, and we say, “Remember our brother who is in chains!” It’s part of our Voice of the Martyrs heritage that we try to keep prisoners alive by advocating for them publicly. We never pay bribes or cut deals to get our workers out of prison.

But Pastor Han thought it best to try to deal with the situation quietly, through private channels. He knew that if we went public with the news about the deacon, his North Korean work in Changbai would have to close down or be transferred to someone else. I know he prayed about it. And I know he told us he would handle things himself. But he did agree to a whole new set of security precautions on which we insisted. He agreed not to drive along the border, not to go meet North Koreans alone who crossed the border and called, asking for his help.

When back inside North Korea the authorities started rounding up the North Korean people Pastor Han had helped in Changbai, we knew that information about the work had leaked. The last time we met in Korea, over the Chinese New Year holiday, we knew that North Korea had issued an order for Pastor Han to be kidnapped, brought to North Korea, and interrogated. But Pastor Han was his usual self. He talked soberly but without fear about returning to Changbai at the end of the holiday, and he was quite cheerful as he hung around our office and caught up on his phone calls. I can still recall him standing there, staring out the window in my office at nothing in particular as he talked very casually on the phone.  

On Saturday, April 30, 2016, at 2PM, Pastor Han left his church building in Changbai.

At 8PM, his body was found on the China side of the Changbai mountain, mangled nearly beyond recognition. There were multiple knife wounds on his stomach from repeated stabbings, and his head was chopped by an axe.

All of his belongings were confiscated, including his phone.

The North Koreans who killed Pastor Han returned to North Korea, as everyone who encountered Pastor Han always did. They reported their story about their encounter with him. I am sure their superiors were eager to receive this report, in every detail.

But all over North Korea tonight, there are others, countless others…

They are the North Koreans who every day since 1993 encountered Pastor Han. Kotjebi. Sex-trafficked women. Soldiers. Professors. Housewives. The famine-starved. They heard a story from Pastor Han and saw his heart. And this enabled them to accept his invitation to cross the rickety rope bridge in their mind that led them to the Kingdom of God. And this enabled them to return to North Korea with the story about their encounter with him. They shared it with their friends and family members, who I am sure were eager to receive their report, in every detail.

It is the story that is continued.

As Pastor Han would describe it, it is a story about how though you may die, God will honor you.

A story about how God never turns his back on you.

A story about how even when at last you are compassed on every side by your enemies, bloodied, and left to die in this world

The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot put it out.

VIDEO: VOM Worker Visits Martyred Relatives' Grave

In 1934, John and Betty Stam were kidnapped and killed by communist soldiers in China. Today their distant niece, Dory, works at The Voice of the Martyrs.

Recently she was part of a VOM team visiting China, and while there she attempted to visit the place where the Stams were buried. Watch the video below to see the story:

 

Dory also spoke with VOM Radio about her visit to China and the Christians she met. Listen here.

Chinese Christians: Persecution is "Part of the Package"

For Christians in China, persecution is just "part of the package" for those who follow Christ. Dory, part of VOM's newsletter staff, just returned from China, where she met Christians who face arrest and imprisonment for following Jesus Christ. This week she shares stories from her trip on VOM radio. Listen to hear how:

• One of her meetings with a pastor had to be cancelled because the pastor was arrested before she could meet him
• How a pastor shared after his wife was arrested that they’d been prepared for arrest, but they thought it would be him that was arrested, not his wife
• Dory traced back part of her own family heritage to a martyrs' graveyard in China
• God used the VOM team to provide something to a gospel worker there…a gift that left the worker in tears because it was exactly what he’d prayed for
• God used Dory’s unique background as an MK (missionary kid) to encourage a mission worker

Your faith will be challenged and encouraged as you hear Dory’s stories from China.

 

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