The findings of the 2025 General Household Survey on religion is sobering for the whole church – but it hands our seniors, and seniors ministry, a calling we cannot miss.
“The 1.8-percentage-point dip in the overall percentage of Christians (Protestants and Catholics combined), from 18.9% to 17.1%, marks the first recorded decline in Christianity’s share of Singapore’s resident population after four decades of uninterrupted growth,” wrote Pastor Edric Sng in his response to the findings.
In this season seniors may be one of the Church’s most strategic assets.
Pastor Edric is right. As he says, there is no sugar-coating the numbers, and the church is right to do some hard soul-searching. But one line he writes deserves a second look. The decline, he notes, cannot merely be attributed to death by ageing – every age cohort fell.
That matters. Our seniors are not the reason the graph is bending, and they are not merely the church’s departing past, while the “real” mission goes to the young.
The truth is closer to the reverse: In this season seniors may be one of the Church’s most strategic assets, and this wake-up call is as much for them as for anyone.
The perception of worth
Consider what is actually driving people away. The steepest losses are among the young and the highly educated. People are not, for the most part, being argued out of faith; they are being quietly crowded out of it — by a way of life that treats career, success and independence as the things that make a life count. Worth is measured by what you produce.
The Gospel says what the culture cannot: Our worth is received, not earned.
In that climate, faith comes to feel optional. And, tellingly, so do the old.
Read Full Article At Source
