Three friends were featured on Sunrise on 7 this morning (Sam Mak, Steve Chong & Adrian Tam). It was part of a feature on Kirkplace Presbyterian Church and the RICE Movement.
Praise God for opportunities like this! // Click here if you can’t see the above vid.
(h/t Kirkplace web)
I’m in the middle of a particularly busy time at the moment. (Sorry if I haven’t replied to your email!) Lots of good things going on at St Faith’s and Soulies as well as some external ministry opportunities. This blog post is a quick highlights package…
UNASHAMED – Friday night was great!! Over 350 young punks turned up to our northern beaches combined youth event! Awesome music by City Surrender (from St Paul’s Castle Hill) and a very sharp and pointy sermon from Ross Ciano. Approx 15 responded to the gospel with a bunch more recommitting themselves to following Jesus. Lots to thank God for, a few things to iron out if we do it again.
RICE – there were about 4000 young crew in at the Sydney Entertainment Centre for the rally. I really enjoyed the stripped back program… it actually finished early! Sam Chan gave an absolute cracker of a talk from Luke 19:1-10. I don’t know how many responded to the gospel, but there were hundreds… maybe 250-300? That’s a guess. I had the privilege of praying with 6 young guys afterwards. Such a buzz. Such a joy.
CONFIRMATION – I’ve really enjoyed the last month of Confirmation Classes with a bunch of year 10s and some older lads. We spent quality time learning the basics of Christianity from a John Stott outline and working through the catechism in the Anglican Prayer Book. Solid stuff. Sunday night was the confirmation service. Really encouraging. Killer sermon from the Bish (Glenn Davies). Packed house. Good vibe.
MORE MISSION – I’ve given 5 talks at universities across Sydney in the last week with 2 more to go this week. Lots of Christian uni students across the 3 campuses have been excited to be on mission together with many of them bringing guests to each event. I’ve had some good chats with people and know there have been a few respond to the gospel with many more keen to keep checking out Jesus. Rad.
Praise God for good gear going down.
3 of the 4 pics originally from here.
RICE Rally is back again this coming Saturday. God has brought many young people to himself through this ministry over the last 10 years. I wasn’t able to make it last year, so I’m looking forward to joining in the action again this year.
Still deciding whether to take your crew along? Do it. It will be epic. Check out the website for some rad promo vids, tickets and any more info.
Blog readers – pray for this sucker! Pray that 100′s of peeps will put their trust in Jesus’ death for their sin and resurrection to new life. Pray that God would keep using youth ministry to change the world.
Surge Conference 2011, run by RICE, is on in a couple of weeks. It’s a great conference for Christians aged 16 and above to help them think through how they can serve in their local church. They have an emphasis on helping people to find their gifts and how they can be used among the People of God.
Justin Moffatt and Steve Chong will be the main speakers. Jonathan Pratt, Tim Adeney, Greg Clarke, Murray Smith and Dave Miers will each be running electives.
It’s is on 4-6 February. Go check out the website for more info and to register!
See below for the blurb on my elective:
My good friend Steve Chong is currently attending The Third Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization with 4000 other Evangelical leaders in Cape Town, South Africa. He’s been churning out a number of video blogs each day. They are really worth your while. Some of his interviews include John Piper, former Australian Deputy PM – John Anderson and Bishop Glenn Davies. Steve was almost mugged by a dude at knife point!
He also had the opportunity to lead a taxi driver and security guard to Christ!! Seriously cool stuff happening. Vids definitely worth watching. Watch them on the Kirkplace website | Watch them on their YouTube channel | Also check out his tweets and twitpics
If you’re a Christian, pray that this congress would lead to more evangelism.
If you’re not a Christian, check this, this or this to see what all the fuss is about!
See below for two of the vids:
Continue Reading…
Rice Regenerate Rally 2010 is on this Saturday night. Paul Dale will be speaking (here’s a video interview with him) on living a life that brings God glory. Should be hottt.
Wesley Centre – 220 Pitt St, Sydney | Saturday 16th October
Doors Open at 7pm | Tickets: $15 (buy online)
Less than two weeks until the two big RICE Youth Events for 2010! Youth Leaders and Young Punks – get your butts along!! RICE Fever 14 August includes: Garage Hymnal; Chasing Light; Jake Nauta; Road to Canaan; Krosswerdz; and Sam Chan speaking. RICE Rally 21 August includes: New Empire; and Steve Chong speaking. Promo vid:
Get the full deets over at riceyouth.org
The crazy RICE season is fast approaching. (Pray for it!) I gave an evangelism seminar on Saturday at Leaders Day Out. It’s called “Local Missionaries”. Download below.
I kicked off in the Great Commission, encouraged the group to think like local missionaries and then gave a strategy for evangelism in youth ministry that doesn’t depend on big events. It was a bit rushed in the 2nd half, but I think it was useful. If you were there and want any of the stuff I spoke about, let me know.
Dave Miers “LOCAL MISSIONARIES” MP3 (right click to download)
Find out more about RICE Youth Sydney and the RICE Movement.
The young visionaries from RICE have just launched the Rice Revolution 2010 website.
These young punks are seeking a Jesus revival in schools throughout Sydney. Sweet!
RICE is good. Not just to eat, but also in the way that Jesus is being honoured through the RICE movement in Australia. First there was RICE Youth; then RICE Brisbane; then RICE Regenerate; more recently RICE En:trust Church Planting; and now RICE Surge. RICE Surge has just been launched with their website and the official announcement of their first conference in February 2010. Check out the promo vid:
Serving isn’t an optional add-on for the Christian life. Surge is seeking to encourage Christians to see that they have been “saved to serve”. There are plenty of conferences in Australia that encourage Christians to be involved in ministry. The unique thing about this conference is that they will be helping people “to work out how God has uniquely created them to be used for His Service”.
Sounds promising. Hit it up: www.surgeconference.org.au
Yo teenager or youth leader – hook up your crew with the following two events:
RICE Fever | Saturday 15th August @ Downes Pavillion, Sydney Showground
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RICE Rally | Saturday 22nd August @ Sydney Entertainment Centre
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MORE info: www.riceyouth.org (vids, pics, tix, sneak peaks etc…)
This is BIG news!! RICE have just launched their church planting arm. I’ve chatted briefly with Steve Chong and Eugene Hor and they have some exciting plans.
On Saturday there were two RICE events: RICE Revolution – a big gee up for high schoolers to be on mission to their schools; and RICE Youth Sydney Working Bee – a training and prep event for leaders getting ready for RICE Fever and RICE Rally.
I spoke to the Leaders in the morning about being the type of leader God wants from Mark 10. I ran a workshop in the arvo with the year 10-12′s about being local missionaries.
Here are the mp3s:
Rice Revolution 2009 – the Jesus Revolution… is coming. Website | Registration | Twitter
venue | moore theological college, 1 king street newtown
speaker | eugene hor – featuring | revolutionband
time | 10am-4pm saturday 18 july 2009 – price | $3
evangelism trainers | dave miers + dan au
Launch video below:
Rice Regenerate Praise – Surrender happened last weekend, and it was the goods! Trev Hodge and Deb Fung (and their respective bands) were thoughtful and passionate in the way they led us through stacks of singing. Pete Ko gave a great short talk on ‘Surrender’. Steve Chong led the night well and continues to make saying creeds cool!
Throughout the night a number of people got up between songs that had a word of encouragement from the scriptures to share. This was cool. I helped out with some counselling at the end of the night. It was encouraging chatting to one Christian guy about some areas of his life he needs to surrender to Jesus. I spoke to another guy who isn’t yet a Christian, but I believe he’s close to the Kingdom. It was encouraging to hear of his friend who invited him to start investigating the claims of Jesus about 8 weeks ago.
Go check out a couple of videos at the Rice Regenerate website.
Avid followers of this blog would know that I like RICE. I’m really excited how God is at work through this movement. This Saturday there’s some more RICE action up for grabs… and it’s not too late to get tickets for RICE REGENERATE PRAISE. Featuring Deb Fung and Trevor Hodge – it pomises to be the goods! Details below.
The 2009 Regenerate PRAISE Night, ‘Surrender’ hopes to encourage this vision of renewal through the gathering of like-minded believers to engage in a deeper praise and worship of our awesome Father. Consisting of congregational singing, musical items, testimonies, bible readings and more, our prayer is that God would use this night to transform lives through a reinvigorated desire and affection for Him.
Date: Saturday May 16th 2009
Time: 7pm – 9:30pm
Place: North Shore Christian Centre, 175 Lower Gibbs Street, Chatswood, NSW
Entry via Chatswood Business Park (Off Smith Street)
Tonight was the RICE Vision Night. Gold! The aim of RICE is to “convict, mobilise, equip, train and revitalise the next generation to serve Jesus.” It was exciting to hear the work that God has been doing through the RICE movement over the past 7 years.
Two new arms were launched: Surge (on about helping people to discover their gifts and desires to serve Jesus) and Phase 4 (Raising up leaders and the planting of churches). We spent lots of time thanking God for the work he has been doing and praying that God would continue to work as Jesus is proclaimed.
Below is my ongoing twitter commentary (in reverse chronological order):
We went to Rice Regenerate last night with 500 other 20-somethings. It’s the next phase of the Rice Movement growing out of the large Rice youth rallies. “RICERegenerate is a movement aimed to see a generation of lay leaders in our churches revived, renewed, and re-ignited in their passion to serve our great God and Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ.”
Mike Raiter spoke on the Parable of the Ten Minas (Luke 19:11-27). He smashed it! He spoke with great passion + soul-searching conviction from the Bible. I was challenged to be greedy to use my gifts to produce fruit for the Kingdom of God; not for the praise of men, but for the praise of God. An illustration on Adoniram Judson encouraged me to taste and see that the Lord is good even in the hard times.
We had a killer time last night at RICE Rally 2008! The music was great. We played the largest ever game of King Caractacus. Sam Mak and Steve Chong did a great job MCing. Mark Driscoll preached a cracker sermon on Jesus’ death and resurrection. 500+ teenagers claimed to put their trust in Jesus!! Check out our view of the 4000 teenagers gathered at The Sydney Entertainment Centre.
RICE is an incredible event and movement that has grown exponentially since its inception in 2002. One of the keys to the growth has been the involvement of so many leaders at the grass roots level. Praise God for the way he continues to work through this movement.
Saturday was an eventful day. I went to a surprise engagement party at 7am in the morning. The surpise was that the proposal only happened at 6:30am that morning!! Lots of fun. Good food with some good friends. Congrats Marty and Kartina!
Late morning I went to visit my sister and her husband in Newtown. That was nice and then I took my brother-in-law to RICE. (That rhymed!) He was involved in the walk-up evangelism team. RICE looks really good. I went in for about half an hour to check it out. Richard Beeston was playing some music, activities were happening all over the place and Pete Tong gave a great talk (1 of 3 during the day). The way it worked was that they had a big carnival/fete type of thing at homebush with over 1000 youth and then they will have a rally next Saturday night at Town Hall with Ray Galea speaking. It was good to get some ideas for what we could do with coast youth REVOLUTION in the future.
I raced home for a 3pm soccer match. We had to win to stay in the top 4 and won 7-0 to jump up into second! After that I went to watch the Mariners with my dad (after 1-1 they lost 5-4 on penalties… they deserved to win… but couldn’t score during normal time). Enjoyed some Pizza after that and fell asleep while pretending to watch 8 Mile!
Row was away for the weekend… glad she made it home alive.
How was your Saturday?
