Chinese ‘Mayflower Church’ Celebrates One Year of Freedom

One year ago, a group of 63 exiled Chinese Christians ended their tumultuous four-year journey to find a refuge where they could practice their faith without fear of Chinese Communist Party persecution. The congregants and their pastor, Pan Yongguang, touched down at Dallas-Fort Worth airport on Good Friday, one of the holiest days in the Christian calendar, and finally breathed a sigh of relief. 

“After all these years of fleeing and running away from the CCP, what we realized that we were seeking is a higher level of freedom – not the American dream, not a Chinese dream, but a dream from heaven,” Pan told RealClearPolitics through a translator in a recent interview. “Being able to worship freely with an extended community of believers and being able to live with my congregation, everybody interacting without fear – this is what we longed for.” 

Just days before, their lives were hanging in the balance in a crowded Bangkok immigration detention center. The congregation had left Shenzhen, China, in 2019 after CCP authorities began aggressively questioning Pan and his wife, Fang Wang, about his underground Christian church and dropped in for an “inspection.”

The Chinese police had recently closed another larger underground church, Chengdu’s Early Rain Covenant Church, and arrested all of its members. The CCP also detained a friend of Pan’s, another underground Christian leader, eventually convicting him of inciting subversion and sentencing him to nine years in prison. 

Pan’s congregation initially had been hiding out on Jeju island in South Korea. When they hit a dead-end, they moved to Thailand for seven months, armed only with 15-day tourist visas. It was a precarious existence. The group was trying to stay under the radar of Thai authorities, who have a troubling history of working with Beijing to round up and return fleeing refugees to China. 

Throughout their four-year exile, Deana Brown, a Texas native, lifelong missionary, and founder and CEO of Freedom Seekers International, had visited the group, providing resources, encouragement, and assistance in navigating the international asylum paperwork process.

But in March 2023, Thai police located the congregation, quickly rounding them up and arresting them. If deported back to China, the group face immediate imprisonment and perhaps torture or even death.

Back in Washington, D.C., religious freedom advocates were working feverishly on their behalf. Bob Fu, a Chinese American pastor who founded ChinaAid, an organization providing legal services to Chinese Christians, and the Religious Freedom Institute’s David Trimble were desperately calling members of Congress and pressing the State Department’s Office of International Religious Freedom. U.S. officials were weighing whether to offer the members of the group refugee status and entrée into the country, as they done for tens of thousands of Afghan refugees over the previous two years.

Yet time was running out. Then, the State Department finally kicked into gear, agreeing to offer asylum to the congregants, including 35 children and 28 adults, who became known as the Mayflower Church, a name inspired by the Pilgrims who left their homeland for the New World four centuries ago. 

Coming from all over Texas, some driving as many as five hours to witness this exciting and emotional sojourn, religious freedom advocates and other supporters brought signs and balloons to greet the weary Mayflower church members on the final leg of their journey to their new home. RealClearPolitics editor Anne Welty was on the ground at the airport to chronicle the momentous arrival in an article, “Easter Miracle: U.S. Welcomes Exiled Chinese Christians.”

Reflecting on the past year spent in the safety of the United States, Pan, sporting a tie emblazoned with the American flag, beams. 

“My time in Texas has been the best time of my whole life,” Pan tells RCP. “We have a lot of freedom. We can worship God the way we want to. There are a lot of churches and other Christians supporting us.” 

In December, the church moved from Tyler, Texas, in the eastern part of the state, to Midland, in the western region, after a generous gift of nearly 300 acres from the Midland Bible Church. Pan says he hopes to build housing and facilities to form a Chinese Christian community able to welcome other Christians fleeing persecution in China. 

“First of all, we’ve focused on learning English and interacting with American Christians, the brothers and sisters in Christ, because it’s slightly different here,” he said. “The congregation is also working very hard to contribute to the Texas Christian community.” 

The group is also working on transitioning their children to Texas public schools. Pan said he is especially grateful for the resources the school and community have provided to help their children adapt and learn English. The congregation’s children previously attended an underground Christian school in China, an attempt to avoid what they characterized as the public school’s “brainwashing” with atheism and Marxism. 

Pan’s 15-year-old son Paul has also spent the past year chronicling their years-long saga of escape from the CCP in a book titled “Mayflower Paul,” which was published earlier this month by Kernel of Wheat Publishing House. Paul Pan describes his final days in China as living in constant fear of arrest. 

“During this time, I finally grasped the true meaning of persecution,” he wrote. “A brutal act, driven by state power – a fierce battle between God’s kingdom and evil.” 

During the four years of exile, Paul describes his shifting adolescent perceptions and his transformation from a diminutive 11-year-old boy to a six-foot-tall 15-year-old teenager. He refers to the church’s years-long overseas exile as its “exodus,” a reference to the Jews’ harrowing escape from Egyptian slavery, the years they spent wandering in the wilderness and the series of events credited with creating the Israelite people and forging their bond with God.

Paul also documents the group’s turbulent emotional journey when confronted by the onset of COVID and the extended limbo it created, as well as his reaction to watching his father refereeing numerous disagreements among the group of families risking everything to escape the long arm of the Chinese Communist government. 

When the U.S. embassy in Bangkok handed out their documents allowing entry to the United States, Paul says he was “overwhelmed with emotions as I held that paper.” 

“It symbolized our sought-after freedom,” he wrote in the book. “We shed tears and offered countless prayers for this document. Now holding it felt like the parting of the Jordan River for the Israelites.” 

As Pastor Pan and his congregation transition to life in the United States, he has a message for other believers around the world under siege or living in fear for practicing their faith. 

“Be persistent, be brave, believe in God,” he said. “There are a lot of people praying for you, and we are walking through this journey with God together.” 

“The American Mayflower refugees held a strong faith in their core beliefs and values, and their descendants held onto those beliefs and practiced them in their daily life,” he said. “We want to follow their model – and cherish this new freedom.” 

The Mayflower Church celebrated their one-year anniversary last weekend at Stonegate Fellowship church in Midland, Texas. Bob Fu delivered remarks, and the church members sang the words of Psalm 126, a triumphant song of hope and gratitude. These were the same words they sang on the steps of the Thailand immigration prison when they were released to board their flights to America a year ago.

“When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dreamed. Our mouths were filled with laughter, our tongues with songs of joy,” read the opening lines. “Then it was said among nations, ‘The Lord has done great things for them.’”

In late January, the International Religious Freedom Summit, an annual gathering in Washington, D.C., of nearly a thousand advocates for faith-based liberty from around the world, opened its three-day sessions with a video testimonial to Pastor Pan and the Mayflower Church. 

As Pan and his wife stood under a spotlight on the stage, a video voiceover delivered his heartfelt message to the gathering: “For us, touching down that night in America was validation for years of struggle to escape the suffocating grasp of the Chinese Communist Party. On behalf of my congregation, I want to thank the International Religious Freedom community and urge them to keep fighting for those still being persecuted around the world.” 

“You are a powerful force, a voice of truth in the storm of repression,” he concluded. “Keep fighting for us. We need you.”