The two men were held under the command of a Myanmar army colonel and moved between the towns of Hakha and Thantlang. Local sources say both were tortured before they were killed on June 4, without trial or any semblance of due process. Word of the extrajudicial killing spread slowly through a region where communication is dangerous and often cut off; a funeral for Rev. William was finally held on August 26, and international watchdog groups reported the killing in the days since, calling on the United States and other governments to respond.
Rev. William leaves behind a wife and five children. His church has already paid a price once before: soldiers ransacked and burned the Chungcung Baptist Church building in October 2021, months after the February 2021 coup that overthrew Myanmar's elected government and installed the military dictatorship now in power. Chin State is home to roughly half a million people, more than ninety percent of them Christian, and it has become one of the deadliest places in the world to hold a pastor's title. Watchdog groups report that more than three hundred forty churches and Christian buildings have been destroyed since 2021, with at least five clergymen killed and others still in custody.
A shepherd who did not run
Here is the part of the story that ought to stop you cold, my friend. When the soldiers came, the men with William had the sense to run. He alone stayed. Twenty-five years of walking with that congregation had taught him something about staying put when the sheep needed him — and he trusted a laminated card to buy him mercy from men who had already decided mercy was not on the table. It didn't save his life. But it tells you exactly what kind of man he was. That is the turn this story asks of us. A government in Naypyitaw can burn a church building and think it has silenced a congregation. It cannot touch what actually made that congregation dangerous to it — a shepherd who would not abandon his post even at the cost of his own neck. The Lord Jesus described exactly this kind of man two thousand years before Colonel Hluan Moe Naing ever wore a uniform.
"I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep." (John 10:11)
William did not choose the manner of his death. But he had already chosen, years before, the manner of his life — and that choice is what a firing squad in Chin State could not undo. The junta can kill the body. It cannot make a coward out of a man who has already given his life away to Christ before anyone came looking for him.
You and I are not likely to face a colonel's soldiers at the edge of a village this week. But every one of us is asked, in smaller ways, whether we will stay when staying costs something — whether we will keep loving a difficult neighbor, keep telling the truth to a family member, keep showing up at a bedside nobody else visits. The size of the sacrifice differs. The character required does not.
Nam Ceu died the same day, for the same accusation, at the same hands. Scripture does not rank martyrs by their title. A pastor and a layman went into the ground together, and heaven does not ask what letters preceded either man's name.
"Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life." (Revelation 2:10)
Pray for the widow raising five children in a land where the government that killed her husband still stands. Pray for the congregation meeting where a church building used to stand. And ask what it would cost you, in your own comfortable corner of the world, to be as faithful to your calling as a Chin pastor with nothing left to lose but his life — and who gave that too.