For the first time, Gen Z men are now more religious than Gen Z women, challenging the longstanding pattern of women being more religiously engaged than men.
This is true no matter how you measure religious engagement. Last year, the Survey Center on American Life showed that “54% of Gen Z adults who left their formative religion are women; 46% are men.” Recent research from Barna Group reveals that Americans’ stated commitment to Jesus has steadily grown in recent years, and that younger men are more likely to follow Jesus than younger women. Among Gen Z men, commitment to Jesus jumped from 52% in 2019 to 67% in 2025.
New data from the American Bible Society shows men saw a 19% increase in Bible use from 2024 to 2025, closing the gender gap in Bible engagement. Young men are also attending church more, with recent Barna data showing that since 2022, men have consistently reported higher weekly attendance rates than women.
Young men becoming more interested in Christianity and attending church is exciting because anyone growing more interested in God — or church — is worth celebrating, if you believe, like I do, that He and His church are essential to real, deep human flourishing, healing and growth.
But is this current trend sustainable? More and more young men — and fewer young women — in our churches is both a challenge and an opportunity for the church locally and globally.
The reasons for these young men turning to Christianity and church are deeply personal, multifaceted and difficult to generalize meaningfully. But we do know quite a bit about their social milieu, which is likely to influence their faith experience.
Young men in America aren’t necessarily more lonely than young women, but they are less connected. They’re increasingly likely to struggle with dating and relationships. They often report feeling devoid of purpose or meaning.
They’re also not likely to stick around if there aren’t women their age to befriend, date and potentially marry.
An underemphasized but critical part of understanding the current increase in male interest in Christianity is realizing that the interest may not last once they see their female peers on their way out the door.
I knew a young man in our church with incredible creative potential and a gift for inspiring those without faith. He eventually began a steady relationship that led to an engagement and marriage with the woman he believed was right for him. Recently, he shared how he had spent much of his life searching for family, having grown up in a fragmented one. Now, with his wife, he feels like he has finally found home.
For many young men in the church, not finding love — romantic, familial or spiritual — can damage their ability to grasp the love of God. This is why Ephesians 5:31-32 ties marriage so directly to Christ’s love for the church.
This is also why churches must work hard to make certain they are appealing to both men and women, because without both genders, they won’t see any real hope for love or family within the church. Absent this, they won’t stay. Some might, but most won’t. They leave, still searching for something they couldn’t find in the church they first joined.
For many, experiencing the love of God is inseparable from experiencing love and family in community. If churches don’t build ministries that reflect this truth holistically, they’ll lose people — especially men — who are earnestly seeking love but can’t find it among God’s people.
If church isn’t attractive to young women, it isn’t likely to remain attractive to young men. Of course, the role young women play in helping keep these young men involved depends in part on what made the young men interested in the first place.
The church’s task is to ensure that these young men become biblical believers and grow rooted in the Word of God, no matter what their original reason for joining the church.
That might seem like a tall order — and in many senses, it is — but the things these young men need to grow are not new or even especially unique to their generation.
Any Christian or church leader who has a role in mentoring and discipling the next generation must start with the Gospel and make it the focus. If we want to hold on to Gen Z, we must sit down with the Bible. We can and must learn to be inventive, innovative and responsive to the questions they pose. Everything aside from biblical truths, we must evaluate and explore alongside them.
We can go further, though. Churches can and should help young men address the full spectrum of their emotional needs. Equip them to grow spiritually, relationally and emotionally. If your church doesn’t have these tools yet, help develop them. Build a community where young men are equipped to learn how to love, act, think, resolve conflicts and even date better.
Further, they need opportunities to lead. Churches are an excellent space to teach young men how to lead well — and then step back while they do it. Our church seeks to intentionally develop the next generations by offering scholarships and internship programs to students and young professionals who we believe are the future of the church.
With time, they won’t just feel better; they’ll be better, because they have God’s love and Word in their lives.
And, in turn, they’ll be more attractive — in a holistic sense — to the young women who are currently drifting away from the church. Loving, well-adjusted, biblically rooted young men will be better able to sustain relationships and can help foster a culture more conducive to young women’s attendance and participation.
The local church is one of our greatest hopes. The church community these young men enter, whatever and wherever it might be, can encouragingly be adaptable to changes in demographic interest.
This is why we as Christians must inspire both young men and women to walk with God and remain engaged. A healthy church doesn’t grow through one gender’s faithfulness alone. It grows through mutual love, shared purpose and a spiritual family where everyone — regardless of gender — can find home.
Every single local church can and should see this as an opportunity to reinvent their church to meet the rising interest in Gen Z for purpose, meaning, spirituality and enduring relationships — and in doing so, help build the future of the church itself.
