This year’s theme for church camp was Shine Righteously, a posture that our main speaker, Senior Pastor Christopher Chia of Adam Road Presbyterian Church, showed how we can live out in practice – in the communion with God and with each other, as well as in the use of our sexuality and money. It was sobering teaching that culminated in the giving up of our idols on the final day, expressed symbolically in the discarding of notepaper on which we wrote their names.

Holiness, being set apart for the Lord, was the point.

Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God – this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is – his good, pleasing and perfect will. (Rom 12:1-2)

In the same spirit, we joined in the worship by dancing with flags. Why flags?

In common usage, a flag can mean several things – a state symbol, a way of signalling, or a king’s standard and banner. As a prophetic act, we wave these flags to proclaim the government of Jesus in our lives, to lift up a standard against the enemy and to gesture that His banner over us is love. In the natural, I can see how such acts can seem unnecessary, even foolish. But as we flagged with our hearts burning on those days, I know the Spirit was very near.