The findings of the 2025 General Household Survey<\/a> on religion is sobering for the whole church \u2013 but it hands our seniors, and seniors ministry, a calling we cannot miss.<\/p>\n \u201cThe 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\u2019s share of Singapore\u2019s resident population after four decades of uninterrupted growth,\u201d wrote Pastor Edric Sng in his response to the findings.<\/a><\/p>\n In this season seniors may be one of the Church\u2019s most strategic assets.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n 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 \u2013 every age cohort fell.<\/p>\n That matters. Our seniors are not the reason the graph is bending, and they are not merely the church\u2019s departing past, while the \u201creal\u201d mission goes to the young.<\/p>\n The truth is closer to the reverse: In this season seniors may be one of the Church\u2019s most strategic assets, and this wake-up call is as much for them as for anyone.<\/p>\n 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 \u2014 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.<\/p>\n The Gospel says what the culture cannot: Our worth is received, not earned.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n In that climate, faith comes to feel optional. And, tellingly, so do the old.<\/p>\n The same culture that sidelines God offers only two stories about growing old: Decline-and-burden, or \u201cstay active, stay productive.\u201d Both measure a life by usefulness \u2014 and the second has slipped into the church too, dressed up as \u201csuccessful ageing\u201d with a Bible verse attached.<\/p>\n The Gospel says what the culture cannot: Our worth is received, not earned. We see it most clearly in the repentant criminal beside Jesus, who produced nothing and was welcomed home that very day (Luke 23:43).<\/p>\n A senior who lives from that truth \u2013 who has made the costly move from Producer to Elder \u2013 becomes a living contradiction of all that culture believes about worth, usefulness and age.<\/p>\nThe perception of worth<\/span><\/h2>\n
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