The Rice movement, best known for large-scale rallies that have built the faith of mostly Asian youth, and have brought hundreds to Christ has a new passion. “It really is important for us to step into the next 20 years of Rice – it’s been 20 years so far” evangelist Steve Chong the leader of Rice told a re-launch gathering this week. “We’re feeling ready for a new thing.”
Convinced still that people are lost and need Jesus as saviour, Rice was to become more effective in reaching the lost.
“Here is the biggest need of the church today – the first words that Jesus spoke ‘”‘From that time on Jesus began to preach repent, the kingdom of heaven has come.'” Chong said pointing out a need for new urgency for an old message. “No vision is really new as every vision that any church or any organization is always really a product of what Jesus said he was on about.”
“Comfort has distracted us making us forget that eternity matters. Some of the church has been lulled to sleep. Our prayers have stopped having an urgency for the lost. Bold expectant faith is rare. We want to step up into the gap.”
“You see, Jesus has told us straight up, the issue we have is that we have a harvest that is ready. We have a harvest that is plentiful. But we’ve not got enough workers, not enough people to go into that harvest,
Setting out the next stage for Rice, Chong says “We want to be a catalyst movement that mobilizes the next generation.” Speaking to the mostly young mostly Asian audience “We believe that you guys are the ones that are going to be able to reach [the ones we want to reach.] We want to catalyse you to reach your generation for the kingdom. We want to get you guys on mission.”
Naomi Chong tells the story of living through a renovation in her father’s house. They renovated during the tough times of a Covid lockdown. Then she related it to a parallel story about Rice. “And yet, what happened to us over Covid, over the past few years, some really difficult seasons, is that it became very clear that we needed a renovation, of what was still in the same house. But we said it wasn’t quite functioning in its most effective way.”
“Okay, God, okay, we still believe in the same faith, we’re still making this generation, we still believe that, that God loves the loss, we still believe that this generation is the best equipped to reach them. But perhaps we haven’t been doing in the best or most effective way.” They did a “super renovation” of the house. They want to do the same with rice.
From cooked rice to a padi
“So we had lots of gathering for the first 20 years,” Steve Chong says, describing Rice’s original main game of large-scale rallies. “I think the next 20 years, [there will be] a lot of scattering, a lot of sending, of a lot of sowing of seeds.
“But I wonder whether if God gave me the choice, I’m not sure if he is doing that but if he if he gave me the choice and said ‘Do you want 5000 people in a room? Or do you want 50 Young people who would do anything to Jesus? 50 Young people who would be like, ‘I will I will live and die for Jesus Christ I will give my whole life unlimited, not just the beyond the weekend, I will give everything.’ Which what would you take?'”
He goes on to explain that he never understood there were two words for rice in Chinese. “I’ve always been explained the rice as the word for cooked rice and I didn’t realize that there are actually two words for rice and the root word that we have in our logo is actually raw rice. Thanks for laughing guys.
“Cooked rice is like, you know, come and get hit by a big rally just come it’s all produced, plated already to go. But actually the name of this movement is actually a grain, a grain of rice or raw seed of rice. It’s time for God to scatter seeds. It’s time for God to go into play. It is time to move to multiplication.”
And the symbol for rice in the logo is now surrounded by a square – it is the symbol for a rice padi – the field filled with water that nurtures rice, from seed to seedling to a new plant.
David Wraight, former International President of Youth for Christ (YFC) has been mentoring Steve and Naomi Chong through the changes to Rice. He told the story of how YFC had lost its way, and of resetting itself as a youth movement. Allowing youth to lead it had been vital He told the story of a dying movement in Taiwan that had dared to back the vision of a young woman to set up a virtual digital world, years before Facebook. In trusting young leaders whole new regions of YFC were set up in Central Asia and North Africa, once regarded as unreachable.
Wraight led pastors and Rice’s board in commissioning Steve and Naomi Chong. Eleanor Kaw, a young member of Rice, was commissioned to set up a new branch of the movement in Malaysia.
A great opportunity
Demographer Mark McCrindle addressed the unique opportunity that young Asian Australians have, “Why Rice Movementt is so important at this time.”
• Australia is now a migrant-majority nation with people being born oversea or with parents born overseas. More Australians have been born in Asia than in the UK.
• After getting to eight billion the world is also at “peak youth” because population growth is slowing currently there are more young people than ever, but also more than there will be in the future.
• A globally connected generation has great opportunities to share faith.
McCrindle picked up a vision of “The global Christian Asian movement in more countries. As the nations come here, so we can empower them so that if they can get back to other countries from Sydney, Australia impacting the world for Christ … preaching the gospel in unreached places in this unique global window of opportunity with this movement, connecting across the nations with young people. What an opportunity you have!”
Next steps for the next generation
Rice wants to create opportunities alongside the church, rather than rival it. For example “Rice Padis,” short, intensive training in evangelism, with a mentor, that leads to an evangelistic project, A “send mi/me” conference to recruit (“mi” means raw rice). And ten short-term mission trips that might be over the summer or on a gap year.
Rice is out of its comfort zone. Explore more here
Image: Steve and Naomi Chong get commissioned for the new stage for Rice