China: Evangelist arrested for preaching Gospel to ethnic minority group

by Karen Faulkner, Worthy News Correspondent

(Worthy News) – A street evangelist in China has been arrested for sharing the Gospel with the De’ang people, a predominantly Buddhist and animist ethnic minority group living in Yunnan province, International Christian Concern (ICC) reports.

Evangelist Chen Wensheng was arrested on March 5, in what was just the latest of numerous detentions that Chinese authorities have subjected him to for sharing the Gospel.

Chen, who is from Hengyang City, Hunan province, had traveled to Wenshan Zhuang and Miao Autonomous Prefecture in Yunnan province on an outreach to the De’ang community of about 6,000 people last month, ICC reports. There are no known believers among the De’ang.

On March 5, the evangelist posted a social media message from Yunnan calling on Christians to participate in ministry to China’s ethnic minority groups, ICC reports.

“The Lord teaches us clearly in the Bible that the gospel needs to be preached to all creation,” Chen wrote.

“The Chinese official account is that there are only 56 ethnicities in China, yet according to scholars, there are more than 500 ethnic groups, mostly belonging to the ‘unreached people groups’; may God help us win their souls in this new year!”

That same day the evangelist then went out and placed signs with Gospel messages by the roadside, ICC said. He handed out masks and talked to passersby about Jesus; one woman prayed with him. Later that morning, Chen sent a message that the police from both Yunnan and Hunan had caught up with him.

Chen was arrested six times last year alone, ICC said. Chinese authorities have also threatened to ban his granddaughter from becoming a teacher or civil servant and to ensure his daughter-in-law loses her job at a school if he does not stop evangelizing. China ranks 17 on the US Open Doors Watch List 2022 of top 50 countries where Christians are persecuted.

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