The text said that the other pastor had been detained while visiting the southern city of Shenzhen.
“Shortly after that, I got a call from my mum. She said she couldn’t contact my dad,” Ms Jin Drexel, who lives in the US, told the BBC.
Within hours her family realised that Mr Jin had also been caught up in what has been described by activists as China’s largest arrest of Christians in decades.
Some now fear that last weekend’s round-up of 30 Christians linked to the Zion Church network, which Mr Jin founded, marks the start of what could be a wider crackdown on underground churches.
They point to new laws passed in China which appear aimed at curbing underground church activity, and increasing pressure exerted by authorities on church members in recent months.
Despite being ruled by the atheist Chinese Communist Party, China has a sizeable Christian population. Government figures in recent years have stated there are about 38 million Protestants and nearly six million Catholics.
But this figure likely only accounts for members of churches registered with the officially approved Catholic Patriotic Association and the Protestant Three-Self Patriotic Movement, which emphasise loyalty to the China and the Communist Party.
Rights activists and scholars estimate that tens of millions more Chinese attend unregistered churches, also known as house churches, which do not follow state-sanctioned ideologies.
Many of these churches have been impacted by the Chinese government’s attempts to increase its control of religious groups over the years. Church buildings have been demolished and crosses removed from public view, while religious material has become more tightly policed, with some Christian apps banned in China.
In 2005 and again in 2018, the government revised and tightened regulations on religious groups, while in 2016, Chinese President Xi Jinping called for the “sinicisation” of religion.
Underground churches such as Zion were especially affected by the 2018 rules, which required government approval for worshipping in public. Many were forced to stop public activities and turned to holding online services, or simply shut down.
The following years also saw the arrests and sentencing of a few prominent pastors.
In recent months, there have been signs of Chinese authorities once again tightening the screws.
In May, pastor Gao Quanfu of the Light of Zion Church in Xi’an was detained on charges of “using superstitious activities to undermine the implementation of law”. The following month saw several members of the Linfen Golden Lampstand Church in Shanxi sentenced to years in prison for fraud, which rights groups have criticised as false convictions.
Then in September, authorities announced a new online code of conduct for religious personnel, which only allow online sermons to be conducted by licensed groups. This has been widely seen as an attempt to curtail underground churches’ online services.
In the last few months, Zion church members have also faced increasing questioning by police officers, said Ms Jin Drexel.
Many in Zion saw the stepped-up pressure as a prelude to a crackdown, but few anticipated it would be as large as it turned out to be, she said.
Last Friday and Saturday, Chinese authorities launched what’s been described as a sweeping crackdown across at least 10 cities, including Beijing and Shanghai. Besides Mr Jin who was taken from his main base in Beihai city in Guangxi province, they arrested other pastors, leaders and members of the congregation, according to the church.
