This International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church joins believers across the globe in prayer for the millions of Christians who cannot live out their faith free from discrimination, ostracization, and antagonism. For them, faith is a double-edged sword, a source of both unwavering hope and unrelenting persecution. But Jesus has made a sacred covenant with humanity: “there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or lands for My sake and the gospel’s, who shall not receive a hundredfold now in this time” (Mark 10:29-30).
We present here some of Jubilee Campaign’s projects through which we hope to play our small part in bringing the Lord’s love, provision, and abundant blessings to our persecuted brothers and sisters in Christ in Pakistan. And, more importantly, by joining with churches and ministries the world over, we can bring the ‘hundredfold’ promise to fruition for those who need it most.
Brick Kiln Rescues
Thousands of impoverished Pakistani Christians are suffering a reality many of us can hardly imagine. A small loan taken out by one desperate individual decades ago—to purchase medicine and daily necessities, pay for school tuitions, or offset expensive emergencies—becomes an insurmountable debt which forces generations of family members to labor in swelteringly hot brick kilns while the majority of their wages are withheld to pay off their lineage’s debts which have accumulated exorbitant interest. Children today continue to suffer the consequences of their grandparents’ deception by exploitative brick kiln owners, who took advantage of their illiteracy to obtain signatures on repayment agreements whose terms and implications they could not understand. And the nightmare never ceases; entrapped families are often in the dark about how much debt their labor has settled, whether by employers’ manipulation or neglect of financial records. Eventual liberation through their own work is an unknowable and, frankly, improbable goal.
This is where Jubilee Campaign comes in to bridge the unconquerable gap between perpetual servitude and a life of freedom and dignity. Joseph Janssen of Jubilee Campaign Netherlands visited Christians in Sadiqabad, Punjab, to pay off families’ debts and release them the shackles of inherited insolvency. Cognizant, however, that without any savings of their own they are still vulnerable to financial scams, we have gone a step further to provide them with motor rickshaws to start their own businesses and travel freely.
We recognize that despite our successes, there remain many families who are in desperate need of similar interventions, which we hope to continue in 2027. For a deeper look at Jubilee Campaign’s work freeing Pakistani Christians from brick kilns, please watch this video.To read more about the crisis, please consider checking out the following resources:
- All-Party Parliamentary Group for Pakistani Minorities, Exploitation of Bonded Brick Kiln Labourers in Pakistan: The Unseen Modern-Day Slavery
- Pakistan National Commission for Human Rights, Unveiling Exploitation and Abuse in the Brick Kilns of Punjab
Building Churches and Schools
Education is the foundation of opportunity. For the Pakistani Christian children laying bricks, many below the age of 10 years, schoolbooks seldom grace their calloused hands, and the closest thing they have to a mathematics class is counting the number of bricks they make against the daily minimum quota. The few fortunate ones who are able to attend classes have testified to being mistreated or discriminated against by teachers in comparison to Muslim students. Classrooms fail as sanctuaries of learning and instead become microcosms of the social ostracism faced by religious minorities across the whole of Pakistan.
When Joseph Janssen visited the debt laborers in Punjab, the second most common plea among the adults—behind freedom for their families from the brick kilns—was education for their children. To ensure that these kids receive the comprehensive education necessary for a life of dignity and self-reliance, and that they have the ability to study and practice their Christian faith, we are currently constructing a small school and church complex for the community’s approximately 70 children to learn, worship, and enjoy the blessings of an adolescence free from bonded labor and social intolerance.
Shining a Light on the Stolen Girls
In the United States, parents can send their teenagers to school, sports practices, or on minor errands with reasonable confidence that they will return with little to no obstacles. For Pakistani Christian and Hindu minorities, raising a child—though rewarding—comes with a unique set of anxieties unfamiliar to us who have the privilege of living in safe communities. Instead of worrying over their child’s grades in school or classroom behavior, for example, Shahbaz Masih and his wife have for more than a year agonized over their 13-year-old daughter Maria’s safety in the captivity of her kidnapper-turned-’husband’, 30-year-old Shehryar Ahmad.
Last July, the young girl was abducted from the safety of her home, forcibly converted to Islam, and married against her will. And, despite her parents’ endless efforts to appeal to authorities for intervention and rescue efforts—they ultimately filed a case with the Federal Constitutional Court, providing Maria’s birth certificate and other proof of her minor status—their daughter remains a child bride, forced to ‘play pretend’ as a wife to a man more than twice her age.
Unconscionable as it may seem, Maria’s case is not an anomaly. This summer, we published Stolen Girls, a report documenting 210 girls who find themselves at the same dangerous intersection between forced faith conversion and underage marriage on one hand, and a corrupt justice system which fails to deliver accountability and begets impunity on the other. We have been fortunate to have the opportunity to present our report and bring the testimonies of these endangered girls to important stages such as the European Parliament, the Geneva Press Club, and the United Nations Human Rights Council.
Prayer Points
- Please PRAY for the Pakistani Christian families entrapped in the brick kiln industry, that they will be relieved of their exorbitant and unfair debts, and that they can achieve self-sufficiency through entrepreneurship.
- Please PRAY for the children working in brick kilns, that they can enjoy a proper and safe education through the school we are building, and pray that we can continue to construct more churches and schools for the Pakistani Christian community.
- Please PRAY for the stolen girls, that they will be rescued and returned safely to their families, and that perpetrators will be held accountable for their criminal actions. Please PRAY that their hearts will be filled with repentance.
- Please PRAY for Jubilee Campaign, that we can continue our projects in Pakistan in the coming years, and pray for the safety of our staff who embark on risky brick kiln rescues and confront court officials to obtain case documentation on stolen girls.
- Please PRAY for the government of Pakistan, that it will fulfill its human rights obligations to protect and preserve the rights of faith minorities, including Christians, Hindus, and Ahmadi Muslims.