Grace Jin Drexel

Thank you so much, John, for having me.

Really an honor to be here.

Yes.

So Father Pastor Ezra Jin is a pastor in China.

He leads one of the largest underground or independent church in China, which means that they didn't want the Chinese Communist Party to have a say in the very sacred decisions of the church like

who gets baptized, who becomes a pastor, what kind of sermons are preached, etc.

And those were pretty much the only things that the church was really advocating for.

But because of its size and its influence, the fact that it grew to become one of the

largest nationwide church in China in October of 2025.

My father, along with initially 28 other church leaders and now 18 leaders, including my father, are in detention or in jail or prison today for just their role in the church.

After the Cultural Revolution, especially during the Cultural Revolution, there was such crackdown on the church that many people had to hide inside houses only to worship.

And in the early 1980s, 1990s, and the early 2000s, we saw an opening up of China generally.

And so even the churches started to open itself up.

And so we had these bigger churches opening in public.

but that were still, again, kind of like my father that said, we want the church itself to be making these sacred decisions instead of being under the Chinese Communist Party's control.

So they grew out of these house church movement, but became a rather unique thing that was very open.

So my father's church was founded in 2007, and at the height of our physical location, which was shut down in 2018,

We were hosting Sunday services of 1,500 people coming in weekly and having like five services each Sunday.

But again, in 2018, our church was shut down and we were not allowed any location to worship.

And my father did not want to be persecuted.