According to Voice of the Martyrs Korea Representative Dr. Hyun Sook Foley, the meetings are a sign that government controls on all Chinese churches should be expected to increase. 

“Think of the charges against pastors, the imprisonments, the church closures, the seizure of church assets, the restrictions on gatherings of both state-sanctioned and unregistered churches that our organization and others have been reporting in the last few years. The Chinese government’s response to all these punishments is, ‘Not enough!’,” says Representative Foley. She points to the Chinese government’s “Measures on the Administration of Religious Activity Venues” which went into effect on September 1, 2023, as “the turning point in which the Chinese government began legally requiring churches to be communist first and Christian second”. 

“Since that time, it has no longer been sufficient for Chinese churches to refrain from criticizing communism; now they have to receive training to become communism’s biggest cheerleaders,” says Representative Foley. “Article 27 of those measures says that church leaders must ‘love the motherland and support the leadership of the Communist Party’. Article 39 says, ‘The content of preaching and sermons should be suitable for our country’s national conditions and characteristics of the times, integrate excellent traditional Chinese culture, and reflect the core socialist values.’ The July training event shows how seriously the government is committed to enforcing this in every church.” 

The July meeting is the first large-scale training of pastors of government-sanctioned Protestant churches under what the government is calling its “strict governance of religion” initiative. Officials from the Central United Front Work Department were present to oversee and monitor the training class. The event was organized by the National Conference of Chinese Protestant Churches, or “Lianghui,” which oversees the Three-Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM) and the China Christian Council (CCC), the two main governing bodies of state-sanctioned Protestant churches in China. 

Reports on the event obtained by Voice of the Martyrs Korea’s partner, US-based China Aid, indicate that the senior pastors at the training event committed to “take the lead in abiding by laws and regulations, and to respond actively” in order to create “a cleaner and more upright social image for Christianity and for promoting the healthy inheritance of Christianity”. 

Representative Foley says that while the July training event and the new “strict governance of religion” initiative focus on state-sanctioned churches, the impact on unregistered churches will be even more significant.  

“With the state-sanctioned churches receiving ‘strict training’, we should expect to see unregistered churches get hit with even stricter punishments than they have already been receiving,” says Representative Foley. “If the government thinks the state-sanctioned churches aren’t yet strong enough in ‘loving the country and the party’, we can only imagine how harshly they will judge the unregistered churches in this regard.” 

Still, Representative Foley says she believes the unregistered churches will remain true to their calling to glorify God alone. “In the last few years, we’ve seen congregations like Early Rain Church in Chengdu and Zion Church in Beijing withstand every attack by the authorities, from house arrests to building confiscation to beatings to jail time,” says Representative Foley. “They are still standing because the Lord Jesus is able to make them stand. He shows continual care to all those who stand on his name alone, and his church will continue to advance in China.” 

Individuals interested in learning about Voice of the Martyrs Korea’s work in partnership with the house church Christians of China can visit https://vomkorea.com/en/china/.