Initiatives/Social Entrepreneurship

For the past 20 years, Chris Rice has worked with leaders in the US and globally to found and create transformative initiatives of social healing and spiritual renewal which break across divides. From Duke University to East Africa to Northeast Asia to New York City, these initiatives continue to have influence and impact.

Duke Divinity School Center for Reconciliation. Co-founding director, 2005-2014. The Center has become a significant presence in cultivating seeds of reconciliation both locally and globally. The Center connects scholars and practitioners through collaborative partnerships, cultivates new leaders in the work of reconciliation and transformation, and communicates truth and hope.

Christian Forum for Reconciliation in Northeast Asia. Co-founder with a team of leaders from Northeast Asia. The Forum’s mission is to forward the ministry of reconciliation in Northeast Asia by inspiring and educating Christian leadership, fostering community and healing across divides, bearing prophetic witness, and being a catalyst for collaboration and new initiatives. Started in 2012, the Forum held its 11th annual gathering in Taiwan in 2024.

African Great Lakes Initiative. Co-founder with Dr. Emmanuel Katongole and leaders from East Africa. The GLI is a network of Christian individuals and organizations working towards peace and reconciliation in seven countries of the Great Lakes Region of East Africa. The initiative held its 13th annual gathering in Kampala, Uganda in 2024.

Summer Institute for Reconciliation, Duke Divinity School. Co-founded with Dr. Emmanuel Katongole.

Word Made Flesh methodology. Co-creator of this transformative approach for building communities of reconciliation and restorative justice grounded in a Christian vision – at once theological, contextual, practical, and relational. The methodology is embedded into the African Great Lakes Initiative, the Christian Forum for Reconciliation in Northeast Asia, and the Americas Initiative for Reconciliation and Transformation. See my chapter “Word Made Flesh: Toward a Pedagogy of New We” in the book Conflict Transformation and Religion.

Over five years, designed and led Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) Korean Peninsula “two countries, one mission” approach – leading humanitarian teams into North Korea, initiating people-to-people exchange, and bringing North Korean diplomats to Canada, while living in South Korea and engaging in peace education with Christian leaders. In 2020 I co-convened a gathering of Korean diaspora Christian leaders, leading to a public statement of lament on the 70th anniversary of the Korean War. See my Christianity Today article on this theme.

MCC United Nations Student Seminar. Over three years, designed and led this annual three-day learning experience in New York City focused on faithful political engagement and the theme “Peacebuilding: Does the UN Matter?” Forty students from ten colleges and universities in Canada and the US engaged with diplomats and UN staff, members of the UN Security Council, and grassroots peacemakers.

MCC Global Peacemaker Award. Co-creator with MCC colleagues of this annual award, established in 2023, which recognizes courageous peacemakers across the world, with a prize of $4,000.

NGO Working Group on the Security Council. Served on the Steering Group from 2021 to 2024, facilitating private, bi-monthly meetings of thirty-five NGO members with UN Security Council ambassadors and high-level UN officials in New York City.

NGO Working Group on Korea. Co-founder of this coalition of NGOs and faith-based organizations which engages the UN community in New York, united in a common concern for healing, peace, and reconciliation on the Korean Peninsula. Our work included this 2023 remembrance ceremony marking the 70th anniversary of the Korean War Armistice and a divided Peninsula.

Deep Common Journeys. Led the design team for this innovative program of Blacknall Presbyterian Church in Durham, North Carolina. A Deep Common Journey is a divide-crossing, long-term partnership of mutuality between a congregation and an organization in mission, with the purpose of becoming more faithful disciples of Jesus Christ.

Durham Pilgrimage of Pain & Hope. Designed and led this 10-week Lenten program at Blacknall Presbyterian Church annually over three years, with church members crossing divides in our city and seeking to be transformed by places of brokenness and signs of hope.

Lausanne Reconciliation Project. From 2004 to 2010 Chris served as Convener of this global network of 47 Christian leaders from 27 countries in common mission for Christian witness in a world of destructive conflicts. In 2004 they adopted the Pattaya Covenant and drafted a widely distributed document: “Reconciliation as the Mission of God: Faithful Christian Witness in a World of Destructive Conflicts” (download pamphlet versions in English, Korean, and Arabic). This work served as a catalyst for founding the Duke Divinity School Center for Reconciliation.