Transcript of The Pastor China Won’t Let Go New

Meditieren, Yoga, Joggen— nichts entspannt mich. Echt?

Mich entspannt meine Steuer total.

Steuer? Wie Finanzamt? Die Steuererklärung?

Ja, ich hab ganz locker über 1000 Euro zurückbekommen.

Hast du geheime Connections?

Nö, nur die WISO Steuer App.

Wow! Und das ist einfach?

Klar, die macht fast alles automatisch.

Plötzlich fühle ich mich so entspannt. Hol dir dein Geld zurück. Tiefenentspannt mit WISO Steuer.

For nearly 2 decades, Pastor Ezra Jin helped build one of China's most influential churches, drawing thousands of worshipers, even as the Chinese government cracked down on Christianity. After years of surveillance and the closure of his physical church, Jin was arrested last fall. He remains imprisoned in China, separated from his family and congregation. His daughter Grace joins us to talk about his current plight, how the Trump administration has responded, and how she has hope for his return. I'm Daily Wire executive editor John Bickley. This is a weekend edition of Morning Wire.

There's a reason so many Americans feel called to stand up for children right now, because in a culture that moves incredibly fast, kids deserve protection, guidance, and the chance to grow up without being pushed toward irreversible decisions before they're ready to fully understand the consequences. That's why organizations like Alliance Defending Freedom are stepping in. ADF is working to encourage major corporations to reconsider policies that provide coverage for so-called gender transition procedures for minors through employee health healthcare plans. This conversation is bigger than politics. It's about whether our culture is willing to slow down, protect childhood, and support families navigating difficult decisions with care and wisdom. And the reality is, public pressure matters. When everyday Americans speak up together, companies listen. That's why Alliance Defending Freedom is inviting people across the country to make their voices heard by signing their petition to corporate America. If you believe children deserve compassion, protection, and thoughtful care, this is an opportunity to take action. Visit joinadf.com/wire to sign the petition today. Again, that's joinadf.com/wire. Most of us already know we should eat more fruits and vegetables. The hard part is actually doing it consistently. Life gets busy fast. You're traveling, working long days, grabbing meals between meetings or family commitments, and suddenly realize your diet has mostly become coffee, takeout, and whatever's convenient.

That's one reason Balance of Nature makes sense. Balance of Nature takes whole food ingredients from fruits and vegetables and uses a special vacuum cold process to preserve the naturally occurring phytonutrients. These ingredients are then powdered and put into capsules, making it simple to add more whole food nutrition into your daily routine. The goal isn't to replace healthy eating. It's to realistically supplement the days when life gets hectic and your diet isn't perfect. Having something simple and consistent makes a big difference. Balance of Nature focuses on whole food phytonutrition, not some trendy miracle ingredient or complicated wellness fad. Just real fruits, real vegetables, and real ingredients. Why not add it to your daily routine? It gets shipped to your door, which makes it easy to stay consistent. And at the end of the day, that's what most health decisions come down to. If something's too complicated, we'll just stop doing it. But Balance of Nature makes it simple. Go to balanceofnature.com today and get an additional 10% off the fruits and veggies supplement subscription when you use discount code WIRE.

Joining us now is Grace Jin Drexel, Pastor Jin's daughter. Since her father's arrest, Grace has been working to raise awareness of his case and advocate for his release. Grace, great to have you on.

Thank you so much, John, for having me. Really an honor to be here.

Well, we love having you on. Let's start with your dad. Who is Ezra Jin?

Yes, so my father, Pastor Ezra Jin, is a pastor in China. He leads one of the largest underground or independent 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 2020, 2025, my father along with initially 28 other church leaders and now 18 leaders including my father are in detention or in jail, prison today for just their role in the church.

Yeah, I want to ask you, of course, about that, but first, can you give us a picture of how the church operates? So are these a collection of home churches, dozens of church leaders you said, it's nationwide. How does that operate exactly?

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 sacred decisions instead of being under the Chinese Communist Party's, um, control. So they grew out of these house church movements 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 5 services each Sunday. But again, in 2018, our church churches were shut down and we were not allowed any location to worship. And my father did not want to be confrontational for the sake of being confrontational, so he actually moved our services online. And beyond anyone's imagination, when COVID happened, the church and its model was the first of its kind in China, and it blew up.

And instead of the church being destroyed by the party, it actually became truly a nationwide church. We were having 100+ meeting places. And again, this hybrid model. We didn't think that it was healthy to just have people meet online alone, so he really encouraged people to meet both online and offline in smaller groups. But that really also angered the Chinese Communist Party, in which they wanted to control faith and they wanted to eliminate faith, but instead of being eliminated, we grew.

That's really amazing. So what should have been setbacks ended up really being used by God to grow the church tremendously.

Exactly, exactly.

Your father had opportunities to remain safely here in the US if he chose to, but he felt compelled to go back to China. Why did he feel the need to do that?

Yeah, my father had many opportunities to stay in the US, actually. First, when he came to the US in 2002 to study at Fuller Seminary, I grew up in the US for many years, and in 2007, he actually moved our whole family back to China to start the church, but before that, Since then he had the opportunity to stay and minister to churches in America, but he felt really this love for China that was placed into his heart. And again, in 2018, when the pressure was mounting, when the church was under severe pressure right before the shutdown, my family and my father had actually also come to the US with the church's blessing to see if that would de-escalate the pressure that was put on the church initially. When the head pastor is no longer there, maybe the government would be willing to negotiate, etc., etc. When he realized that that was not happening, then he went back by himself. And my mother and my brothers, who were also American citizens, and they were very young at that time, had decided to stay, remain in the U.S. starting in 2018 just to finish elementary and middle school, etc.

We didn't know that that would be the last time that we would see our father in person, and he has been under an exit ban since 2018, um, just because the fact that his church was continually growing.

So when he went over in 2018, he was not allowed to leave after that?

That's correct.

Did you ever try to personally talk him out of going or try to talk him into coming back, maybe sneaking out of the country somehow?

We've all known what could have happened. I think my father and my mother apparently had a conversation that's very Asian and vague, and they were like, "Do you know what's gonna happen?" And he says yes, and then, "Are you still gonna go back?" And he said yes, and then that was the conversation, apparently. But I think we are all extremely proud of my father and know that he truly feels like God's heart in China as well, and he knows that over and over again God had sent so many, including Western missionaries in the past as well, the best and the brightest, to go back to China and to minister to this land. He just felt this, like, yearning that he couldn't leave his church behind at a time of need. But now we also know that he hasn't been with his family for the last 7 years, and he wants nothing more than to just come to the U.S. and retire. And his church has many leaders under him that is willing to also take up the mantle, either with this church or start their own church, etc. So that is our hope and prayer for the situation right now.

Has the Trump administration been in contact with your family? Any movement from them on getting him released?

We're just so grateful. I mean, it was a miracle to know that the President of the United States knew of my father and such an amazing, like, story about America that the most powerful man in the world would know about my father's case and would be advocating for my father, a pastor in China, and bring it up to the second most powerful man in the world at such a consequential summit. And so for that, like, I just feel like what an honor to be an American, what an honor to like witness this as history. We've been told, just like many in the media, that the president raised the case and that Chairman Xi Jinping is seriously considering the release of my father. We are all waiting to see what would happen within China and see like another miracle. We've been praying for the softening of heart from Chairman Xi Jinping, and we know that he also has a daughter around my age, and we're hoping that he will hear the plight of the daughters and release my father to come to America.

Has your own faith been affected by all of this, watching your father go through this?

Since my father's detention in October, it's just— we've very much felt like been thrown into this. I haven't really thought much about what I'm doing per se, except that I need to get my father released. But like, as I am in this, just watching so many people come, like the whole church community, like my church community, my neighborhood, and just people that I've never like even known or met, um, come and help and lend a hand. Like, it truly seems like God is— like, God doesn't let you go through these things alone. And we're just so grateful, um, for the Universal Church, for the for the global church community as well. And like, at the same time, still knowing that this is both an earthly, like, battle but also a spiritual battle as well. Like, it's kind of unfathomable that Christians are being targeted. We were not a threat to the regime in any way. We were loving our neighbors and loving God, and that's all that we were asking for as Christians in China. So like, I think there is an element of spiritual battle in this as well, and so asking for prayers from people far and wide and hoping that we will also witness in our generation what God can do at this time.

Have you had any communications directly with your father? If so, when? When was the last time you talked to him?

No direct communication is allowed between family members. We weren't even allowed a phone call, this, like, like visitations are a definite no. We also weren't even able to give any, like, things to my dad. Like, in the winter, we wanted to bring him some blankets, and even his medication that the doctor prescribed him, we weren't allowed to bring those into the detention center or jail center at all. The only way that we were able to communicate with him were through the lawyers, and the lawyers are only able to meet with him sporadically as well. And obviously, with the limited time that they have, they also go through a lot of legal matters whereas for family members, all we care about is, like, how he's doing, whether he's being fed well, like, where is he sleeping, et cetera. And all of those information, we don't know too much about. We know that his prison condition is not great. He's sleeping in a cell that was meant for, like, maybe 16 people, but they're cramming in over 30 people sometimes. He's sleeping on the floor on some sort of a mat, and there's not even a bed for him.

Again, because he's not given medication that the doctor prescribed him. He has pretty severe type 2 diabetes along with an array of other health issues that kind of comes from that. And we're just worried that whether or not he is being properly taken care of, whether the doctor has seen him, whether he has given any sort of medication, we don't have enough information on any of these things.

Well, I cannot imagine. I honestly cannot imagine. Final question, what are the next steps for your family? Is this about raising awareness, maybe trying— affect the hearts of the decision makers in China, or does this come down to the Trump administration leaning on the Chinese government more? What are you looking to do?

Yeah, I mean, I honestly don't know either. I mean, I was very much thrown into this as well, and I have been so thankful that the Trump administration has raised this, and we're hopeful that there will be subsequent negotiations or goodwill gestures, especially as Chairman Xi Jinping is coming to the U.S. in September. So we're hoping that there will be some movement there. But like you said, we don't know how the miracle will happen. It could be within China, it could be other nations coming in and asking about my father, Pastor Ezra Jin, as well. We're also expecting our third baby any moment, actually. I am currently 38 weeks pregnant. And so my hope is that my father would be able to meet his third grandbaby soon in person, and really hoping that that will be very soon and not down the line.

Well, I truly hope so too. We'll pray for that. Grace, thank you so much for coming on.

Thank you, thank you, thank you for this time.

That was Grace Jin Drexel, daughter of Pastor Ezra Jin, and this has been a weekend edition of Morning Wire.