The youths of City Harvest Church found friends in the midst of a “battle”.
CN PHOTOS: Michael Chan.
It was a funny sight: a long line of teenagers queuing up at the Singapore Botanical Gardens in the rain. Many onlookers stared curiously at the huge crowd of adrenaline-pumped youths chattering away excitedly despite the gloomy skies.
The event causing all the excitement was Man Vs. Machine, an event organized by City Harvest Church’s Emerge team. Emerge is CHC’s youth movement, involving those 25 and under. Held on Mar. 16, MVM brought 1,050 youths together for a time of fun.
Shortly after the registration, the youth were divided into two teams and assigned one of three ranks: Machine Gunner, Sniper and Flamethrower. And the battle between “Man” and “Machine” began. Rules of the game: Each player gets two life tags which must be stuck to the back of his or her T-shirt. “Man” runs, “Machine” chases.
The opponents challenged each other in a game of scissors-paper-stone while decided their “identities”. The winner (ie “Machine”) would spring into a furious chase of the loser (aka “Man”) determining to tear off his “life tags”. “Man”, of course, would for his life. At the end of the game, the team that managed to collect the most number of life tags won.
Collecting life tags, however, was only part of the game. The teams also each sent out 10 spies who were tasked with the mission of locating and seizing the other team’s flag. Once the spy entered the “flag zone”, he would challenge the rank of the other team’s flag guardian. If the spy’s rank was higher, he would walk away with the opponent’s flag. If the spy’s rank was lower, he would have to surrender both his life tags and lose.
The boisterous young people were seen running up and down the premises of the Botanic Gardens, trying to preserve their “lives” from the opponents who were hot on their heels.
Besides having fun, the youths also had a chance to form new friendships within their zone and from other zones and districts as well.
Wayne Choong, a zone supervisor and Emerge committee member, is the man behind this exciting event. He said that MVM aimed to reach out to secondary school, junior college and ITE (Institute of Technical Education) students, at the same time create an opportunity for the youths to have an awesome time of fun and to reach out to new friends.
The game was, indeed, not only just a game of chase; the young people put their heads together to come up with strategies to infiltrate the enemy’s base camp without revealing the spies’ identities. MVM engaged both brains and brawn.
It was the first time Isabelle Cheo from the zone led by Josephine Lim attended an Emerge event. She felt that MVM was a fun experience and she had enjoyed herself tremendously.
“When the game first started, I was a little scared and hesitant to engage anyone. After a while, I decided to give it a shot and started participating actively. Surprisingly, I had a great deal of fun! I would definitely come for future Emerge events,” she said.
After the event, Jermaine Goh from cell group W460, exclaimed, “Man vs Machine was awesome! Everyone had so much fun and tried their best! No one let the rain get in the way—they were all having loads of fun and it was nice seeing everybody come together!”
