So What About Church Camp 2025?
We are days away from the much-anticipated GBC church camp 2025. After all, church camps only come around once every other year and are the stuff of sweet memories. It is also a rare opportunity to head north with a few hundred church members to get away, so some excitement is understandable.
More than that, this year’s camp has almost 400-odd campers signed up - GBC’s largest ever. We are also excited to hear from our former pastor and camp speaker, Ian Buntain, open up the book of Philippians as we think about “Church On Mission” together. We will also have GBC’s missionaries (or most of them) returning for a time of fellowship and relationship-building, which is another sweet blessing.
But what if we are unable to be at camp this year? Some of us may be feeling a bit sad or regretful that we did not sign up or just were not able to. In this article we propose some suggestions for how campers can prepare, and how non-campers can also participate in this important occasion in the life of the church.
First, and most importantly, you could pray that God would bless the hearing of His Word as Ian brings us talks from the book of Philippians. According to the ESV Study Bible, “the central theme of Philippians is encouragement: Paul wants to encourage the Philippians to live out their lives as citizens of a heavenly colony, as evidenced by a growing commitment to service to God and to one another. The way of life that Paul encourages was manifested uniquely in Jesus Christ; it was also evident in the lives of Paul, Timothy and Epaphroditus.”
Pray that the central message of encouragement to our church from this ancient word would not be lost amid the fun and enjoyment. Pray that campers would be convicted to be a “Church On Mission” and that we would spur one another on to serve God and the advance of the Gospel in Singapore, the region and beyond.
After the camp, you could reach out to campers to ask what they learnt from camp, what stood out to them, and how they were convicted to take practical steps of obedience to God, so that you can also learn from their time away.
We could also prepare our hearts to hear God’s Word this coming Sunday as Ian preaches to us about the parable of the Good Samaritan from Luke 10:25-37. Read the passage before Sunday, summarise what it is about, and list any unresolved questions you may have in your own little Bible study preparation. After the service, prepare to talk to others in church about your questions and reflections so that your meditations can also flow into encouraging fellowship with others.
Second, seek to know others, encourage them and practice hospitality to the many visitors, new friends and returning missionaries with us this time of the year. Whether we were or were not at camp, all of us have the ability to reach out to other church members and invite them over during the week for tea or have a meal near our workplaces with the aim of doing spiritual good to each other.
Many of us hope that through the church camp we will broaden our social circle in the church and get to know each other better. This is especially important as the church continues to grow and we find more and more new faces in our midst. Kudos to those who have made it a priority to better acquaint yourselves with others in the body to practice Christian love better!
One area often overlooked is personal and spiritual preparation - preparing our hearts to be brave, generous, warm, sacrificial and sincerely interested in others - we must put on love that binds all things in perfect harmony. Remember that love is not a feeling, but a choice to take action for the good of others. And love never asks to be earned - it is freely given and freely received. May the thousands of smiles, conversations, hugs and acts of service be motivated by the love of Jesus.
In particular we have the special opportunity to show love to our American friends from The Master’s University (TMU) who are helping out with the children’s programme, as well as our returning missionaries. You can write to brother Jimmy Tan for how to get in touch with the TMU students, or more broadly to Pastor Oliver and the church office to get in touch with any of these other groups. We can introduce them to some of our favorite haunts for food, and also share our lives, our conversion testimonies, and other ways that God is at work in us and our community to encourage their faith. Ours is the privilege to be walking exhibits of how God’s Spirit is working mightily in the world, and we can be an encouragement to others.
Third, we can also learn to sing the songs we are singing at camp. The camp committee, in particular, deacon Darius Ng has taken pains to prepare a Youtube playlist and a Spotify playlist of all the songs that we will be singing for worship here. If you are going to camp, you could listen to them ahead of time to learn the songs so the lyrics mean more to you when we sing them. If you are not going, use these songs to meditate on the truths of the Bible and share in solidarity with the rest of the body. Many of these carefully-chosen songs are part of our regular singing diet on Sundays.
The camp committee has also shared other ways that we can prepare for the camp here.
So what does success look like for Church Camp 2025? It would be a roaring success if each one of us came back with a Spirit-motivated desire to obey His Word and live together on mission from Philippians, looking to the year ahead with a sense of anticipation, zeal and eagerness. It would be a roaring success if our love for one another increased as our relationships were built up, and our visitors and returning missionaries return home edified and built up in Christ. It would be a roaring success if our Sunday worship, family devotions and quiet times were enriched by heartfelt, passionate singing about the Gospel.
As some of us from GBC go away to live together for a few days, may Deuteronomy 4:5–8 inspire us to be a “Church On Mission” - a people motivated, moved and guided by God’s Word, living obediently and faithfully according to Scripture, with the mission of making God known to our neighbours and the nations: “See, I have taught you statutes and rules, as the LORD my God commanded me, that you should do them in the land that you are entering to take possession of it. Keep them and do them, for that will be your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples, who, when they hear all these statutes, will say, ‘Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.’ For what great nation is there that has a god so near to it as the LORD our God is to us, whenever we call upon him? And what great nation is there, that has statutes and rules so righteous as all this law that I set before you today?”