What happens when the Church becomes aged?

When the “typical church” has more seniors (aged 65 years and above) than children and youth?

When the median age of its church members has crept above 40, 45, maybe even 50 years?

When you look around in the congregation each week and find more and more grey hairs?

We should not be surprised by this prospect for the church in Singapore, because the church is a subset of the country. The reality is that Singapore has been an “aged society” since 2017, and is set to be a “super-aged society” by 2026, when more than 1 in 5 Singaporeans will be aged 65 years and above.

Our resident population’s median age is currently at 42.8 years. For the moment, our seniors do not outnumber the youth and children: 18.9% of our resident population are youth and children, while 17.7% are seniors.

But with a total fertility rate of less than 1, and an increasing life expectancy, it is only a matter of time before this statistic flips.

Church demography vs Church vitality

When the whole church, and indeed the whole society’s demographic shifts to become super-aged, Christians must ask the existential questions with open eyes: Does this trend pose a grave challenge to the church? Could this also be a season for opportunity?

This is where the State of the Church in Singapore Study 2024 comes in.

The SOTC was first launched in 2022 as an annual collaborative research effort between Biblical Graduate School of Theology, Singapore Bible College, Trinity Theological College, and Salt&Light. SOTC study reports are meant to provide empirically-derived observations and insights to stimulate reflection and action, especially at the local church level.

All of this is done in the spirit of unity in Christ, in hope that the Church in Singapore can proactively identify and respond well to important trends together.

The first SOTC study examined the outlook of the Church in Singapore as we emerged from the COVID-19 pandemic.

The second study, conducted in 2023, was a qualitative examination of local churches that were attracting young adults.

This third study, conducted this year (2024), focuses on “The Church and Seniors”. In this study, we had two main research questions:

1. How is the church in Singapore experiencing the increasing agedness of our society? (This is a question of church demography.)
2. How is the church in Singapore engaged in the ministry of Seniors? (This is a question of church vitality.)
   

In all, 35 churches of various sizes and across denominations, representing over 50,000 Christians, participated in the SOTC2024 study.

7 initial findings from SOTC2024: The Church and Seniors

The full “State of the Church: The Church and Seniors” report, with detailed findings and figures, will be released on Friday 10 January, 2025.

But to give you a teaser of what we’ve found, here are some snapshots of our findings:

1. The Singapore Church age demography roughly mirrors the aged Singapore Resident population.
2. There are significant differences in demography across local churches, and also between language-specific congregations. This means that churches do not uniformly experience our aged-ness. 
3. Chinese-language congregations are more aged than English-language congregations.
4. A third of our churches are facing a looming staffing problem, as the majority of their staff are set to retire within the next 7 to 10 years. This challenge is more pronounced when we look only at Senior Pastors.
5. There is evidence of vitality among seniors, as we are seeing churches reporting more regular attendees and also baptisms among their seniors. We praise God that in some churches, baptisms exceeded bereavements.
6. 74% of churches studied have established ministries for seniors and have mobilised seniors to participate in various forms of ministry to others. This is an area that more churches may want to seriously consider.
7. Senior pastors shared a holistic range of ministry concerns and priorities related to seniors. Their main outlook towards pastoring seniors is that of “hope”.

Join us for the full SOTC2024 report release

To dive deeper into the findings, join us in-person at the SOTC2024 Report Release Gathering to be held at St Andrew’s Cathedral, at 9.30am on Friday, 10 January, 2025.

The Report Release Gathering is open to Pastors, church staff and ministry leaders, whether full-time or lay.

We look forward to a time of prayerful reflection and discussion of the findings.

Register here by 7 January: https://saltandlig.ht/sotc2024release

RELATED STORIES:

State of the Church in Singapore 2022

State of the Church in Singapore 2023