‘A Major Spiritual Shift’: Why Are More and More Young Men Flocking to Church?

Pastors typically expect Easter Sunday to be their biggest church service of the year and in 2025, many around the country experienced more than the normal “Easter bump” in attendance.  The catalyst appears to be younger men filling the pews and saying yes to Jesus.

Senior Pastor Greg Laurie tells CBN News that Harvest Church in California saw a great turnout on Easter Sunday.  What caught him by surprise, however, happened at the end when a large number of people gave their lives to Christ. 

“We saw 500 people make a profession of faith. We called them forward in public invitations. It was fantastic. I can’t remember an Easter where we had a response like that,” Laurie said. 

And more young people, especially young men, are attending church than in years past. Harvest Church, like many others across the country, is seeing Generation Z, the under-thirties, show up in much bigger numbers. 

“Yeah, without question. And usually, the people that respond to these invitations are on the younger side. I was just talking with a teacher yesterday who teaches in a public school, and she has a little Bible club on campus where the Christian kids meet. She said, ‘I’ve never seen anything like this in all my years of teaching, 28 out of 30 of them were boys.’ And that’s so unusual Wendy, because hey, girl power, you girls lead the way in spiritual things and guys are sometimes passive, at best, or resistant. But there’s been a complete shift,” Laurie said.

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ven the New York Times is reporting that more young men are returning to church. Laurie calls it an exciting sign.

“And I think one of the reasons for it is just men have been so beaten down in the last decade or so. They’re tired of being brow beaten and young men specifically being told it’s bad to be a man, it’s bad to be masculine. And there’s been a reaction. And I think it’s a good reaction,” Laurie said.
 
David Kinnaman, CEO of the Barna Research Group, told CBN News that a new study supports these findings among young men and shows an overall increase of nearly 30 million Americans who say they’ve committed their lives to Christ compared to 5 years ago.
“I think it represents the idea that commitment to Christ, spiritual openness, it’s bubbling over into unexpected places of our society today,” Kinnaman said.

Laurie also cites the success of recent Christian films in influencing young people. “The Chosen and something called The House of David, that a friend of mine, John Irwin, has done. It’s on the life of King David on Amazon. It hit the number one spot of all the things they offer on the Amazon platform. So all of these things are indicators that people are looking for spiritual answers, people are looking for truth,” Laurie said.

Although Laurie believes we’re definitely seeing signs of revival, he says what the church really needs to focus on right now is the Great Commission.

“And the Great Commission, of course, is going into all the world, preaching the Gospel and making disciples of all nations. And I just urge everyone that these are effectively the final words of Jesus, if you will, before he ascended to heaven. And so, this is important to Jesus. It should be important to us,” Laurie said.