Israelites and Egyptians - Reflections of Soul Survivor

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Spirit, touch your church, stir the hearts of men
Revive us, Lord, with your passion once again
I want to care for others like Jesus cares for me
Let your rain fall upon me


I just came back from the uni church camp, that I personally had a hand in planning. The theme this time round is Soul Survivor, Outpour Outgrow Outreach.

What happened?

For me, the camp started some one month ago when I started to meet up with the rest of the camp committee to plan for the camp. I was in charged of the programme with SL, mainly for the activities that the people will be going through. From that point onwards, it was getting a bit of a mad rush, as we ran into difficulties, had to redo the programmes over and over again. It was tiring, to the extent that it started to affect my effectiveness in other stuff, the saddest of all is that I didn't get to spend enough quality time with the cg.

The camp started out for the rest at Escape Theme Park on Tuesday night 8pm where they built, in their respective tribes, their own Ark of covenant, which they wrote their own camp objectives down. Then they get to carry it, till 5am in the morning in the Moses' Challenge, which simulated the Israelites exiting Eqypt to go to the Promised Land (which was our campsite that no one other than the camp committee knew). The camp committee people played the Egyptians who were chasing the Israelites in various activities along the way. It was to frustrate, irritate the Israelites as far as possible, and to make them clueless regarding where they were supposed to go (Remember how the LORD your God led you all the way in the desert these forty years, to humble you and to test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands). This was the toned down version of our original 40 hours in the wild programme (Wenjiang even suggested we start at Pulau Ubin). It was a successful activity, albeit a tiring one. I was tired, shagged, and even had to modify the programme along the way to suit the conditions. Thank God there was no rain, cos there was no Plan B.

The next few days were a series of dun know how many teachings. They centered upon building a biblical growing church. And there were about 20 teachings to be covered in 5 sessions of teachings... we didn't manage to finish everything, only 10 of them but it was really spiritual cramming, with a lot to digest... almost suffered from spiritual indigestions...

Of course, there was the settling of logistics... we had to move from AMK to Nexus, to Queenstown in order to get all the logistics for the camp on tues afternoon... and we had to move from PA Pasir Ris to Queenstown to Nexus on Fri morning to return all the stores.... Almost didn't have time to gel with the cg... But then, thank God for the rest of the people who were there to help out.

Reflections

What have I gotten out of the camp? Pastor Jeff's sharing on the principle of Church growth really inspired me quite a lot, and it sort of confirmed my decision to really wanna rise up to lead my cg. I was touched by the need to grow in quality and quantity within the church. Growing is the church's birthright, and it definitely is, without a shadow of a doubt. I was looking at myself, and the cg, and I realised that as we enter into this season of harvest, we have to grow from within, then we have to grow from without. Quality will eventually breed quantity, and quantity will definitely reflect quality. Furthermore, Wenjiang's analysis that if we wanna grow, more people will have to rise up as leaders and shepherds means that we really need to grow in our quality, then will we be able to eventually take care of new believers. Indeed, this is so and therefore, I have decided to set for a direction for the cg to grow in quality, particularly in our shepherd's heart. While we were in cg just now, we set for ourselves a few qualities that we want to grow ourselves towards - unity, love and encouragement, fellowship. commitment, wisdom, prayer and faith. Certainly we want to grow ourselves towards these areas, grow ourselves to be a community that people will be attracted to.

I was influenced by Wenjiang's constant 'nagging' that we need to be the influencer... and indeed, it sort of got stuck in my head also. Indeed, leadership is all about influence, and as a follower of Christ, we are called to be the salt and light, the head not the tail, we want to be a positive influence to the world, to influence the world away from Mr. Tan Siang Ann. And this is connected to my first reflection point, that we will need to grow in quality and quantity. We also wanna grow in our influence to the world as well. After all, as uni students, we are the one who have the most potential in influencing how our society will be shaped in the future.

Exam results

I received back my exam results on the 26 May, a day after the uni camp ended. And it's as followed:

EC1101E A-
HY3209 B+
HY3244 A-
TR2201 A
TR3001 B+

CAP: 4.28

It came as a good one, the first sem where I didn't have any grade less than a B+. But I was a bit sian... when I saw 2B+, missing a score of 4.5 by 0.1. Nevertheless, I am quite happy, I got am A for my marketing module, easily the most enjoyable of the five so far, managed to scrap through a B+ for new product development, considering the kind of project writeup we submitted... A bit shocked to see an A- for EC1101E and HY3244, for different reasons. I more like expected an A for econs and something lower for biz history. Cold War met my expectation though I would wish it to be an A also. So how do I make up of all these? I believed that God has a reason in giving me such a result. He made my CAP increase so that I dun need to keep on hubbing on to doing well, and I can really focus more on ministry, and also be a testimony that serving God doesn't mean a result drop. On the other hand, he kept my score below that of a dean's list, to continue to humble me and prevent me from becoming complacent. Anyway, I'm satisfied with this, cos it's really God's grace that I can maintain my grades and improve my CAP despite a difficult semester with more commitments in ministry.

Epilogue

I just hoped that the people are refreshed and recharged by the camp, especially by the teachings and the Mose's Challenge. Well, it isn't easy planning for the camp, and there had been a bit of shortcomings. But the more important thing is our passion for God must continue to burn...

Till I write again, and my writer's block is gone...

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