New Student Rebecca Liow – A heart for Japan, Led to EAST
Rebecca (second from the left) with her EAST Mentoring Group
Below is a brief introduction of a new student Rebecca Liow, a Singaporean who has a heart for Japan. She is enrolled in Master of Arts in Intercultural Studies and she is a member of Covenant Evangelical Free Church in Singapore. She shares about being led to study at EAST, the EAST Aleph immersion experience, and her plans after her studies.
What led you to study at EAST?
The straightforward answer is that the Lord called me to study in this season and He opened the EAST door for me.🙂 I had been in discussion with my coordinator regarding the possibility and necessity of going through a minimal 2-year programme at a registered bible school and really only came to a definite conclusion on the last week of May or first week of June. I knew that the start of the new academic year will be in July and I assumed that there would not be a chance for me to get enrolled this year. So my very first email to EAST was to request for an application for January 2027 intake.
Dr Alvin Tey: Missiological Implications From The Singapore General Household Survey 2025
The post below is written by Dr Alvin Tey, an EAST Resident Faculty in Intercultural Studies. He concurrently serves with Operation Mobilisation (OM), where he leads the People and Organizational Development team in OM East Asia.
Missiological Implications From The Singapore General Household Survey 2025
The latest General Household Survey in Singapore (GHS 2025) [1] was released on 30 June 2026. It revealed that the overall percentage of Christians in Singapore declined from 18.9% in 2020 to 17.1% in 2025. This was the first quantitative decline of Christianity in Singapore since the Department of Statistics of Singapore started collating religious statistics in 1980. Of note, the percentage of Protestant Christians in Singapore declined from 11.9% in 2020 to 9.5% in 2025, while the percentage of Roman Catholic Christians in Singapore actually increased from 7.0% in 2020 to 7.6% in 2025.
There have already been good articles [2] written to examine the decline of Protestant Christianity in Singapore, and I shall not repeat the analysis of these articles. Instead, I shall suggest three learning points and implications from the missiological perspective for the wider Church in Asia.
New Student Ai Tam’s Faith-filled Journey to EAST
Ai Tam is second from the left.
How did the initial rejection by the immigration authorities to study in Singapore become a spiritual exercise of faith affirming God’s call for one’s life? Ms Do Thi Ai Tam, a Vietnamese new student with East Asia School of Theology (EAST) Master of Divinity (MDiv) program, shares of her eventful and faith-filled journey of His provisions coming to EAST.
Reflecting on the year 2025, I cannot stop giving thanks to the Lord for every milestone I have gone through. I have truly experienced His faithfulness in my academic journey to EAST and Singapore. Earlier on, I applied to join EAST as a program student and was duly accepted. I then applied to the Singapore immigration authorities for my Student’s Pass in April 2025. I had not expected any problem as I have a high level of confidence in my qualification and education. After submitting all the needed documents, however, my application was rejected. This left me greatly disappointed and confused. It also raised a question of whether God wanted me to pursue theological education at all.
Climate Change: A Theological Primer
Climate Change: A Theological Primer, by Rev Dr Jarred Jung
Why are we concerned with climate change? I think that a large part of climate change today is man-made climate change as our planet is warming too fast as a result of greenhouse gases. Now, I see the results are coming to fruition and do not think the correlation is just a coincidence.
With the rise of carbon dioxide omitting from things such as vehicles, cars, factories and airplanes, we have more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which leads to rising temperatures. I am not a science or climate change denier. I believe it is a big issue, which is one that Christians, in particular, need to take seriously.
How did we get to this place to where climate change is an issue? By this, I do not mean “why is there global warming?” What is at the root of this need to deal with an issue like man-made climate change? To discuss this, we are going to look at the Bible.
Alumna Cynthia Oh: EAST and My Writing Journey
I (Cynthia) love to write but I had not imagined myself to be a published author.
The story started in 2013 when I began taking up courses at EAST. With encouragement from my EAST mentor Dr Kwa Kiem Kiok and classmate Ms Boo Hui Ling, I plucked up the courage to do a MDiv in Intercultural Studies, instead of taking courses at random. When I made that decision I had no concrete plans except to equip myself should the Lord call me to missions. I remember that afternoon, having lunch with them at the KKH food court, sweating in my seat thinking,“ What am I getting myself into?”.
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