A BTJ missionary school was officially closed down after police deemed it a threat to “social harmony” in China.
The details of the school cannot be disclosed because of security reasons, but the school has been in operation for more than a decade and supported by supporters of BTJ. The school provided educational opportunities for Muslims in western China and allowed Christians to serve the Islamic community.
“We have been having a huge impact on a broken community,” one pastor shared this week. “Many of the children in the Muslim areas do not have fathers because so many of them have been sent to prison for smuggling drugs in China.”
Many of the Muslim minority areas in China have turned to the drug trade to make money. Large numbers of men in certain areas of western China have been sent to labor camps because of their involvement with the drug trade, leaving many children without fathers.
“Our school was the only school in the city that provided a free education for children,” the pastor explained. The school also provided hot meals and a place to sleep for children that could not always return home in the evening.
Several of the children had become Christian through the missionary efforts of the teachers, prompting Muslim leaders in the area to protest the school. The police immediately took action and shut down the school to appease the Islamic clerics in the region.
“But we have not fully shut down,” the pastor added. “Though we are not officially opened, we are able to continue hosting illegal education classes for the children.”
BTJ is not able to release details about how or where the school is continuing, but when asked why the teachers would continue to run the school after it had been officially shut down by the government, the pastor in charge of the school simply replied, “we can’t just leave the children.”
