(Huaiyuan, Anhui Province – January 14, 2025) According to reports, Pastor Shen Shaochun of the “Living Water Fellowship” in Huaiyuan, Bengbu, Anhui Province, was released from prison at the end of 2024. His wife, son, daughter-in-law, and grandson traveled to the Xishuangbanna Prison in Yunnan Province to pick him up.
The Sentence
Pastor Shen was sentenced to seven years in prison in 2018, with a term until September 2025, for “organizing illegal border crossing” after establishing “Living Water School” and serving as a volunteer teacher in Wa State, Myanmar. He was released 9 months early and has safely returned to his home in Nanjing.
Upbringing and Background
Pastor Shen Shaochun was born in 1966 in Huaiyuan, Bengbu, Anhui Province, to parents who were both preachers. In the early 1990s, Shen began his training at a seminary. After graduation, he split his time between farming and serving at the local seminary, where he was invited to teach at various seminaries, primarily focusing on Biblical Hermeneutics. In 2006, Shen received his calling to begin full-time ministry. From 2016, like Pastor John Cao, Pastor Shen volunteered as a teacher in Myanmar’s Wa State, where he established the “Living Water School.”
In 2018, four seminary students teaching at the “Living Water School” were arrested by Myanmar police and transferred to Chinese authorities, who then traced their investigation back to Pastor Shen. He was arrested on September 30, 2018, and charged with “organizing illegal border crossing.” In court, Pastor Shen rejected his lawyer’s advice and refused to implicate anyone else, hoping only for the release of the four seminary students. He fully admitted guilt and accepted punishment, ultimately receiving a 7-year sentence for “organizing illegal border crossing.”
A Missionary Family
Pastor Shen Shaochun is the only child of his parents. His parents were house church preachers who moved from Bengbu, Anhui Province to Nanjing, Jiangsu Province for missionary work and church planting over twenty years ago, establishing and shepherding four churches. The entire family serves in the church. In July 2023, Pastor Shen’s 83-year-old father passed away, regrettably without seeing his son released from prison. This was the first news about him that reached the outside world in his five and a half years of imprisonment. In early 2024, there were reports about concerns over Pastor Shen’s health, but from photos taken on the day of his release, his state appears good.
(Reported by Special Correspondent Ningmeng for ChinaAid)