By: HOGC Stories Team
Alex Low, a youth leader at Heart of God Church (HOGC) and co-founder and director of InterfaithSG, was invited this year to represent our church at the International Conference on Cohesive Societies (ICCS) 2025. At just 23, Alex stepped onto a global stage as a panelist — showing how when young people lead, they can spark fresh ideas, use them to tackle real societal challenges, and bridge divides through shared causes.
At ICCS 2025’s Cohesion Forward – Fireside Chat with Young Community Leaders, Alex shared a powerful thought: “When we unite in our differences, we can make a difference.” It reflected his passion for building religious harmony – a passion rooted in the values he’s grown up with at Heart of God Church.
How it all began
During the panel, Alex, a second-year History student in university, recalled how he began doing community and interfaith work at 16 years old after attending a Joint Blood Donation Drive organised by Heart of God Church, Khalid Mosque, and Geylang United Temple.
“I saw people of all races and religions lining up to donate blood — and it hit me: We all bleed red,” he said, recalling the words that Heart of God Church’s Senior Pastor, Tan Seow How, said during the launch of three joint community programmes with Khalid Mosque and Geylang United Temple in 2016. “Malay blood can save a Chinese man. The Hindu blood can save a Christian man. It didn’t matter what faith you belonged to — in that moment, we were just people coming together to save lives.”
“It lit something in me, so I got more involved in our church’s interfaith work,” he continued. “I joined our church’s Community Team, where we work with our interfaith partners to plan and run community events.”
Over time, that involvement birthed an idea: why not share the learnings with other youths and religious organisations? The words of our pastors, “Build bridges, not walls,” inspired Alex to co-found InterfaithSG, a community of youths advocating for interfaith harmony through action.
It was that same idealism that resonated at the inaugural ICCS in 2019, where Pastor How shared A Practitioner’s Perspective on Building Social Cohesion Among the Youth. Six years later, Alex was invited to speak as a representative of Heart of God Church.
“Being invited to speak felt quite surreal,” Alex says. “Heart of God Church is a youth church. Pastor How spoke in 2019. And then now, a youth from Pastor How’s church gets to speak! It’s proof that at Heart of God Church, that’s really what we are about. Raising leaders, training young people. Even in this aspect, in the community aspect, that shows.”
Taking a stand for harmony
At the panel, Alex recounted a pivotal moment where he and his Muslim friend Iman stood up for religious harmony. In 2021, after news broke that a radicalised Christian youth had planned to attack two mosques, the pair penned a joint letter to the Straits Times – a public statement of friendship and solidarity between Christian and Muslim Youths.
Reflecting on the experience, Alex shared at ICCS: “That moment showed me that youth have a voice, and youths can make a difference. We didn’t just sit there and allow the headlines to affect us, but we decided to do something.”
In a stirring moment, Alex urged his generation to learn from history and build true harmony, rooted in real friendships across faiths and cultures, starting with the people around us.
Youth leading the way for cohesion
In his closing address, Mr Edwin Tong, Minister for Law and Second Minister for Home Affairs emphasised that youths are crucial for building a cohesive society – noting how they were co-creating the conference’s programmes, designing the sessions, and leading the conversations.
As he put it, “The responsibility to shape and nurture this cohesive society—the society of the future—will increasingly fall on the shoulders of our young people, our young leaders, our young advocates.”
“Alex just now demonstrated what it meant to him, because he literally stood up to be counted,” he added. “And that’s what we need our young people to do.”
The picture is already coming to life through young people like Alex. For him, cohesion isn’t just about programmes, but people. It involves building bridges across faiths and cultures, with youth leading the way.
“I hope that what we do will inspire more youths in Singapore to build harmony,” he says. “Most of all, I hope that more people catch the significance of doing interfaith work, and of involving young people in the process.”
