Pastor says 100,000 people in China convert to Christianity each year despite ongoing crackdown

Despite the ongoing crackdown on Christianity in China, the number of Christians continue to increase in the Communist country, with one pastor reporting as many as 100,000 new converts each year.

Erik Burklin of China Partner saw the remarkable growth of the Church in the Communist country during his recent visit to the Union Theological Seminary in the city of Nanjing.

He was surprised that a person from the central government had donated nearly $7.3 million for a new chapel that is set to open at the seminary next month.

"I was just scratching my head, thinking to myself, 'How in the world is it possible that in China, where Communism still runs the country, a person in the Central Government would donate so that a local school — in this case, the national seminary in China — can finish constructing their chapel?' It's unbelievable," Burklin said, as reported by Mission Network News.

When he met with the leaders of the church for dinner, he proceeded to ask one of the pastors about the number of baptisms and converts they had last year.

"[H]e then gave us an overview of what God is doing in their whole province. He was proceeding to explain to us that they have up to 100,000 new believers on the average every year.... That's unheard of," Burklin recounted.

Burklin's group is currently focusing on reaching out to China's youth because many churches in the country do not have a youth ministry. He highlighted the importance of reaching out to the young people in China, who are spending most of their time on academics.

He said that his ministry is now trying to introduce new tools and programs to Chinese churches, such as modern worship style, sermons on parenting, and marriage counseling, to help them reach out to the younger generation for Christ.

China, which is still officially an atheist country, has been targeting underground Christians worshipping in unregistered house churches in its large-scale crackdown on religious belief.

Despite the persecution of believers, some have predicted that China will have the largest Christian population in the world by 2030.

Feggyang Yang, the director of the Center of Religion and Chinese Society at Purdue University, said that Protestantism in China is growing by more than 10 percent each year.

He noted that there were approximately three million Christians in China in 1980 and that number had grown to 58 million by 2010. He predicted that there could be as many as 255 million Christians by 2025.