Everyday, paid tours of Chinatown wind through its alleyways with guides telling stories of exclusion, opium dens, and fortune cookie factories. I’ve taken some of these tours; my favorite was led by Gordon Chin, whom insiders call the “Mayor of Chinatown” (because of his advocacy work that’s made San Francisco a model for community development nationally).

As much as I appreciated those tours, they lacked seeing Chinatown from God’s perspective and an invitation to receive the Kingdom. To that end, InterVarsity’s (IV) Chinatown program is the most Kingdom-integrative, immersive Chinatown program I know of. Click here for a short video describing this program. 

Chinatown immersions are the preferred introduction to Kingdom Rice’s training. By God’s grace, I’ve collaborated with two of IV’s Chinatown directors in creation and delivery to bring KR's immersions to a level well beyond what I could have done alone. Our focus is different than IV’s once-a-year program that targets Asian college students. Kingdom Rice offers its immersion year-round to very diverse groups: pastors & therapists in training, seasoned pastors, mainline churches, evangelical churches, different ethnic groups, gay-affirming & non gay-affirming groups, charismatic & conservative groups, the young and the retired from across the U.S. Let me share the context surrounding two of these immersions.