For the last couple of years, America’s been flooded with revival footage across college campuses. Depending on your level of cynicism, it either looked like the start of something real or another emotionally charged Christian moment people would forget by Monday.
The skepticism made sense; viral worship clips don’t automatically equal lasting transformation. The question hanging over all of it was simple: Were these students actually making durable decisions, or were they just caught up in the moment?
The baptism numbers suggest something more serious is happening — and it’s not just among college students.
Across the country, churches are reporting the strongest baptism growth they’ve seen in decades. In 2024 alone, Southern Baptist churches recorded more than 250,000 baptisms, up more than 10 percent from 2023 and marking their fourth straight year of growth — a trend the denomination hadn’t seen since the late 1980s and early 1990s. In a church culture that had experienced years of slow decline, baptism is one of the clearest signs that interest is turning into action.
And it all started on college campuses
In February 2024, Jennie Allen stood in front of 4,500 students at Florida State University and asked a simple question:
“Do you want to be free?”
What followed quickly spread across social media. Students gathered around Westcott Fountain, worshipping and stepping into spontaneous baptisms. Allen posted about it afterward on social media, sharing the moment with thousands.
“It’s happening again! Hundreds, maybe a thousand, students came forward to trust Jesus,” she wrote. “We can’t explain what’s happening apart from the Spirit.”
A couple months later, the scene repeated itself at the University of Georgia, only this time there wasn’t a fountain available.
“We found a public parking lot, and we got four pickup trucks,” Allen said afterward. “And we were baptizing kids in four pickup trucks … all these fraternity guys are watching from their decks. … It’s just insane.”
Those moments were dramatic, but they weren’t random. They were part of the growing reach of Unite US, the campus movement founded by Tonya Prewett and launched at Auburn University in September 2023. Since then, the organization says 13,000 college students have made decisions to receive Christ. Across its events, organizers report around 5,000 salvation decisions and 2,000 baptisms, with the movement continuing to expand.
Jonathan Pokluda, pastor of Harris Creek Baptist Church and a frequent speaker at Unite events, was there from the beginning.
“We went out there and thousands of students gathered around the pond,” he said of the first Auburn event. “Several of them wanted to be baptized. We began to have those conversations to make sure they understood the Gospel, that they hadn’t been baptized as a believer before, and we went to dunking.”
After another Unite event drew 5,000 students to UCF and 1,600 made decisions for Christ, Pokluda pushed back on the familiar assumption that Gen Z is spiritually unreachable.
“People love to say this generation is hopeless,” he wrote. “That Gen Z is too far gone. Too distracted. Too addicted. Too confused. Too broken. But after last night … Don’t believe the lie that this generation is lost. They’re searching. They’re hungry. They’re desperate for truth. And when they hear the name of Jesus lifted high … they respond.”
Stories like that are compelling on their own. The more surprising part is that researchers say the data is starting to back them up.
Barna Group data shows commitment to Jesus among Gen Z men rose 15 percentage points between 2019 and 2025, while millennial men saw a similar spike of 19 percentage points.
Church attendance patterns have shifted too. The average Gen Z churchgoer now attends 1.9 weekends per month, up from around one weekend per month in 2020. Older generations have stayed relatively steady by comparison. Much of the recent momentum seems to be coming from the youngest adults in the room.
Barna CEO David Kinnaman has been careful with his language, calling what he’s seeing a “renewal” rather than a “revival.” The distinction matters if the goal is to say only what the data can support. Even so, he’s also described it as “the clearest indication of spiritual renewal in the U.S. in more than a decade.”
Levi Lusko, founder and lead pastor of Fresh Life Church, sees a generational hunger beneath the statistics.
“Gen Z is asking the right questions,” he said. “They’re holding leaders accountable. They’re pushing for integrity. They’re not settling for a watered-down version of faith. That means they care.”
Mark Francey, the pastor behind Baptize America, points in part to the pandemic and everything that followed. A generation formed by isolation, digital life and nonstop anxiety may be more spiritually open than many expected.
“There’s something about going through a hard season that wakes people up to what really is important in life,” Francey said. “I think it’s the first generation that’s growing up completely inundated with technology, social media, raised on tablets.”
Secular researchers are noticing some of the same patterns, even if they frame them differently. Northeastern University religion professor Liz Bucar has said the “improvised, mix-and-match spirituality” embraced by many older Americans hasn’t been satisfying to Zoomers. In a world shaped by war, climate anxiety, political fracture and the long shadow of COVID, structure starts to look more compelling. A moral framework sturdy enough to hold suffering starts to feel less restrictive and more necessary.
Pokluda saw that hunger firsthand after speaking at a Unite US event in Georgia.
“There is a movement of college students wanting to live out their faith,” Pokluda said. “They aren’t interested in just going to church on Sunday but following Jesus Sunday through Saturday. They are walking their campus sidewalks and sharing the Gospel with classmates. They are throwing events that rival large conferences, but they’re doing it in what little spare time they have with extraordinary outcomes.”
