Church raided in Shandong, China

China Aid Association (CAA) reported this week that the City Glory Gospel Church in Yantai, Shandong province was raided by authorities on the morning of September 20. Three believers were interrogated and church property, including Christian literature, was confiscated. Below is an excerpt from one church member’s firsthand account of the experience:

Shandong Church Member Account of Persecution
Posted Oct 01 2008
Facts and How the Incident Happened
September 28, 2008

We are members of a house church in Yantai, Shandong province (City Glory Gospel Church) and our church was founded in May 2007. From the beginning of 2008, we began to rent the meeting room on the fourth floor of the guest house of Bureau of Machinery of Yantai. Currently, we have about 60 people on every Sunday. We planned to hold special gatherings on September 20 and September 21, 2008 (Saturday and Sunday) as we would invite Pastor Liu and his wife from Bread of Life Church of Taipei to give us a sermon on how to pray, group training and parent-child relationships, etc.

At 9:30 on the morning of September 20, 2008, about 20 law enforcement officers in plain clothes broke into the meeting room without permission. Section Chief Sun Jing from Yantai Municipal Bureau of Religion and Director Sun Liping from Zhifu District Bureau of Religion showed their identifications. Other people include deputy director of the Municipal Bureau of Religion, people from the Public Security Bureau and Bureau of Security. Four of them were holding camcorders and cameras. They said that they had been tipped that people from outside the area were conducting training here. Without our permission, they took out the hard disk of my notebook computer and copied all the content there. They also registered all the people who were attending the gathering. After the registration, they demanded that we immediately leave the site.

Pastor Liu, his wife and I were taken to a different room for an interrogation that lasted over two hours. The two levels of people from bureaus of religion interrogated us, made a written record and signed the documents. Another person from the Public Security Bureau who never showed his/her identification asked me about matters concerning the invitation of the Taiwanese pastor. The interrogation was also recorded in the written form and signed. They demanded that Pastor Liu and his wife must not have contact with me. They later left Yantai peacefully…

You can read the rest of this account and the full CAA report here.

Pray that the Lord will continue to strengthen his faithful in China to act as salt and light to those around them—even those who seek to do them harm and stop them from gathering together to worship Christ.