On Sunday 7 July police raided a gathering of young Christians belonging to Beijing Zion Church (logo pictured), which was Beijing’s largest house church until it was banned in 2018. Since the ban members of the unregistered church have continued to gather but they must constantly change venue to try to evade police.
During the raid police questioned everyone present and then took several Christians away for further inquiry. By around 3 pm most had been released from the police station, one after another, but a young woman named Zhou Sirui, who is in her late twenties, was detained and a week later her family still had received no news of her.
The day after the raid senior pastor Jin Mingri and the pastoral team from Beijing Zion Church issued a prayer letter in which they stated, “At about 10 am on July 7, while a group of young members were gathered in Haidian District, Beijing, for a Sunday service, more than twenty police officers and law enforcement officers stormed the site. All the people present were questioned and their names were recorded. Several members were taken to Ganjiakou police station for inquiry in the afternoon.”
Zhou Sirui grew up in a Christian family and became involved in a student fellowship, reportedly devoting herself to serving others. After she was detained a church spokesperson commented, “Sister Zhou Sirui is a young member of the post-95 generation. She has believed in the Lord since she was a child. During her college years, she remained firm in her faith. She was enthusiastic about the church fellowship and actively participated in the services. For this reason, she was also often questioned by the police. However, she did not flinch because of intimidation. She was not only firm, but also encouraged young members who were weak and shaken in persecution. We are grateful to have such a young woman as a good witness in this land!”
Senior pastor Jin Mingri prevented from leaving China
On 5 July, two days before the raid, the senior pastor of Beijing Zion Church, Jin Mingri, was intercepted at customs when trying to leave Macau. He had been under a five-year border control which was due to end on 22 March 2024 and he planned to go abroad to reunite with his wife and children, who live in the United States, once his border control period expired. Customs police asked Pastor Jin to contact an officer named Zhang in Beijing and gave him the officer’s phone number, but when he called the number it turned out to be invalid.
Pastor Jin is of Korean ethnicity and became a Christian in 1989. He immediately began serving the church and became very influential in China’s new generation of urban house churches, leading a congregation of up to 1,500 people. (He is pictured, third from left, with lawyers Li Xiaoming, Yu Wensheng and the latter’s wife Xu Yan.)
In 2004 Pastor Jin, also known as Ezra Jin, took the lead in establishing the Beijing Pastors Joint Prayer Meeting, a prayer initiative for church revival and mission, and the following year pastors in Beijing conducted a prayer walk around eight districts in the city. Since then the prayer network has expanded beyond Beijing and in November 2020 it was investigated by the government.
Pastor Jin and Beijing Zion Church have been under government surveillance for many years and on 9 September 2018 more than seventy government personnel raided the church and sealed and forcibly closed its venue. The Beijing Chaoyang District Civil Affairs Bureau announced the same day that Beijing Zion Church was “banned according to law”.
The notice issued by the Civil Affairs Bureau stated: “The Beijing Zion Church has not been registered and has arbitrarily carried out activities in the name of a social organization, violating item 1, article 3 of the ‘Regulations on the Registration and Administration of Social Organizations,’ as well as article 3, article 9, and item 1, article 11 of the ‘Interim Measures for the Banning of Illegal Non-Governmental Organizations.’ It has been decided to ban the Beijing Zion Church and its subordinate institutions and confiscate the church’s illegal propaganda materials.”
Since the ban Pastor Jin has been summoned for holding Christian lectures, and on 18 August 2022 he baptised famous human rights lawyer Yu Wensheng and his wife Xu Yan (pictured above). China Aid suggests that this may be one of the reasons why he continues to be under border control after the five-year period elapsed.
Pastor Jin’s daughter and two sons left China to study abroad and the pressure of circumstances led his wife to go with their sons when they left in 2018. The couple needed to sell their property in Beijing to support their children’s education but when Pastor Jin was handling procedures the property was restricted from being bought or sold. They later sought legal assistance to resolve the issue.
(Bitter Winter, China Aid, Pray for Beijing Zion Facebook page)
Photo credits: Beijing Zion Church logo from Pray for Beijing Zion (Facebook); photo of Li Xiaoming, Yu Wensheng, Jin Mingri and Xu Yan from China Aid/Yu Wensheng’s Twitter)