Marching to the Heartbeat of God

By all accounts, the church camp this year was set for chaos. It was a fiasco waiting to happen, an inevitable debacle. The bumpy ride of planning and brainstorming before the camp was... bumpy, to say the least. The planning committee was comprised of nine people of widely different ages. Two people had no clue why they were in the camp committee, two weren’t even in our church anymore, one wasn’t going for the camp but was still included in the group, and it fell to four individuals to carry the camp forward – Aunty Siew Heng, Joe, Sarah, and me.

We weren’t exactly the dream team for organizing a camp, as anybody in our church can attest. The planning was muddled and disorganized, and by the week before the camp, tempers were flaring as there was so much that hadn’t yet been finalized. There were frantic phone calls and emails the last few days pre-camp. The worrying state of affairs had reached its climax when one of our speakers, Pastor Sivin Kit, told us he may not be able to make it for the camp because of a sudden crisis he had to handle.

To top it all off, the turnout was minimal. We had only 30-odd people signed up for the camp compared to the last camp in Tapah, which had 50 or so participants. The committee was discouraged and battled obstacle after obstacle. On August 20^th, D-Day, I’m willing to bet the committee woke up with no small amount of apprehension.

We were going to the Seminary of Theology Malaysia in Seremban. As it happened, we had arrived in Seremban in the middle of a water shortage. Taps and toilets were waterless – a major crisis for city folk who take water for granted. As the saying goes, the show must go on, and we went ahead anyway.

For such a small camp, we had a grand total of two speakers: Pastor Sivin Kit (the crisis passed, and he made it to the camp) and I’Ching Thomas. Both had been invited by David Tan, who gave them every recommendation and praise, and told us to expect nothing short of interesting and absorbing.

I’Ching conducted two workshops on worldviews, but she touched only the surface of a deep ocean. It was more of an introduction to a bigger picture, an appropriate one altogether, because our group consisted of both young and old. Language was really an issue in our group, and there was more than one occasion where I had to define words or ideas in simpler terms to a couple of other people.

Pastor Sivin Kit was, as gathered from an impromptu poll, the favourite speaker in the camp. He went through the whole book of Jonah – yes, the whole four chapters – in a way that caught the attention of the most inattentive. He raised issues about what church is all about, and definitely gave us all some food for thought.

Very early on, it had been agreed that fellowship and getting to know one another was to be one of the main themes of the camp. So as the official game master I devised an ongoing game that would make every camper acutely aware of his/her every move. The logic of the ongoing game was that every action is either for good or evil, and every action was going to be awarded with positive or negative points. As I couldn’t possibly watch every camper, I had appointed three other secret agents to keep an eye for good or evil deeds. The result was that since nobody knew who the other three agents were, everybody was extra helpful and friendly to everybody else.

A group could only win if the groups’ members won enough points to grab a victory. The catch was, nobody knew the winning number of points – except me. Not even my agents knew that, and I like to think it gave the camp an air of mystery and suspicion thus increasing competitiveness. And if that wasn’t enough, there were two questions campers had to ask three people every day. The questions changed every day, and the camp commandant, David Tan, would randomly interrogate people and ask them to tell who they talked to.

But the ultimate catch to the entire game was this – everybody lost. The “winning number of points” represents God’s standard, and no matter how hard you try as a group or individually, you’re bound to fail.

The groups may have failed to succeed, but the camp itself succeeded by God’s grace.

By all accounts, the camp exceeded expectations. The water shortage that had so alarmed us proved to be short-lived, and we had water up and running by the end of the first day. The speakers were excellent – for they managed to stir an interest in theology and worldviews in some, and prodded us to “think theologically”. If anything, the thing that made this camp enjoyable (as well as successful) wasn’t just the speakers, games, or flawless planning. It was the fellowship. We saw each other at our best and worst. Habits – the good, the bad, and the ugly – all came out as we lived in close proximity for three days and two nights.

But it was fun.

Not only that, but we all went home with some cud to chew on. Isn’t that what church camps are all about?

Click here for Dad's take on the camp.