Free to worship

Grace Jin Drexel grew up in China, where her father, Pastor Mingri “Ezra” Jin, founded Zion Church, one of the largest and most prominent underground churches in the country. Zion Church has 10,000 regular worshippers in nearly 100 branches in 40 cities.

In October 2025, government authorities arrested and imprisoned Pastor Jin and 17 other Zion Church leaders. They are being held incommunicado on charges of anti-­government online activities. Pastor Jin suffers from severe diabetes for which he reportedly is receiving medication.

Grace Jin Drexel moved permanently to the United States with her mother and siblings following a previous church crackdown in 2018. She is now an international advocate for her father and other Christians imprisoned in China for their faith.

Your father and the other leaders of Zion Church are accused of “illegally using an information network.” What is the real reason they’ve been imprisoned? They are being held because they did not want to join the government-sanctioned churches, as they feel that would infringe on their ability to worship God freely and wholeheartedly. There have also been other church leaders from many provinces detained recently, and my father’s case is an example of this new wave of persecution.

Chinese officials previously shut down Zion Church in 2018 after your father refused to install facial recognition cameras in the building. What happened after that? The government made it impossible to rent out any other space for worship. So because of that, the church started a hybrid model of meeting online and offline, and it holds services through various online media. That’s what the Chinese government now claims is illegal, saying that there are only specific legal portals and specific people who are allowed to use them, and charging the leaders with “illegal use of information online.” But our sermons are still on YouTube, and we’re still meeting, and you can look through it and see that it’s not even political. It is just the gospel message.

What contact have you had with your father? Right now, there are no direct family communications with any of the 18 detained. Several families are there in person, and they’re not allowed to meet them. They’re not allowed phone calls or even letters. We only have information through our lawyers, and the government has now begun harassing them and revoking their licenses.

Why do you think this new crackdown is happening? I’m personally baffled by how strongly they are persecuting people who want only to pray and sing and worship freely. We are not being anti-regime or anything. We just want to hold onto our own faith and make sacred decisions like, Who should be the leader of our church? What should we do with our tithing? How many people can be baptized?

Our songs are just hymns, but they’re not Communist Party songs, and our sermons are not about core socialist values. For the Chinese government, they feel like they can’t control it, and anything that they cannot control, they fear. They see church as ultimately a social organization that is able to gather people and mobilize. We also do a lot of civil society service, like helping with the poor and the vulnerable, and helping families. I think the Chinese government wants people to think that the Chinese Communist Party is the only one who can give those things, so people rely only on the Chinese Communist Party versus the church.

Estimates put evangelical Christians at 9% of the population, but because many attend underground churches, does anyone really know? Growing up, my friends didn’t know what a pastor was. I had to tell them my dad was a teacher and then a teacher of religion if they asked further. But now most people would at least know the basic idea of what Christianity is, and many people are searching for meaning in their lives. Money and fear only take you so far, and you need something else to ground your life upon. So Christianity is growing quickly in China. I believe persecution often makes the faith grow faster and firmer, because people realize that there is a cost to it, and they are willing to pay that cost—willingly and peacefully. That baffles people and attracts those looking for answers in their lives.

What do you wish people better understood about your father’s case? It strips away from the China you see on the surface with its skyscrapers and fast railways that make you think that it’s like America or a European country. But in the U.S. or Europe, we don’t detain a pastor for just wanting to preach.

How has this situation affected your personal faith? In some ways, it feels like we’ve seen this history of persecution over and over, especially in China. We see the martyrs spill their blood in China, from the early missionaries who came from Western countries to now when so many Christians are in prison or have been in prison, and you ask, “Why is this happening again and again and again?” So there’s some personal wrestling with that, and those feeling are echoed in ­certain Bible passages: “For how long will you turn your face from us? How long will you forget the people?”

But from my father’s letter and from encouragement from the church, we know that God is faithful, and God is using this for good. The night before my father was detained on Oct. 9, Pastor Wang Lin was arrested, and some suspected it would be a more widespread crackdown. Another pastor asked my father, “How would you feel now, if you knew they were coming for you tomorrow?” To his surprise, my dad just said, “Hallelujah, the gospel will spread even further!”

With your advocacy work, have you gotten any traction on this case? It already has made a difference in my father’s case. We heard in December that he received a Bible inside his prison cell, which is unheard of in the history of the Chinese regime! Since then, six other church leaders have also gotten Bibles. Recently several U.S. senators and congressmen sent a bipartisan letter to President Donald Trump, requesting he raise the plight of my father and other Christians at the upcoming summit with Xi Jinping.

How can Christians be praying for Pastor Jin? Pray for God to guard and be with the people in prison, to give them hope, and ultimately, for the miracle of their release. Please also pray for the family members, that we take comfort knowing our loved ones are being comforted and sustained by God’s power supernaturally, even inside prison.