Why Are Young Men Coming Back to Church While Young Women Are Leaving?

For most of my life, if you walked into a church on Sunday morning, you could count on one thing: there would probably be more women than men.

Not anymore.

Something surprising is happening in the American church. After decades of women attending more regularly than men, that pattern has reversed. Barna reports that in 2025, 43 percent of men attended church weekly compared with 36 percent of women. The divide is particularly interesting among Gen Z, where 38 percent of women ages 18–24 now identify as religiously unaffiliated.

So what’s happening?

Why are young men showing a renewed interest in church while so many young women seem increasingly willing to walk away?

For me, that question is more than academic.

In 2013, I went through a season of church hurt that changed me profoundly. My trust in Christian leadership was shaken, and eventually I had to untangle some things I hadn’t realized I’d tied together: Jesus, the church, Christian leaders, and my faith.

Years later, I wrote Fractured Faith: Finding Your Way Back to God in an Age of Deconstruction out of that experience.

And I did find my way back.

Today, I attend church regularly. I’m part of a local body of believers. I love the church, and I believe deeply that following Jesus means belonging to His people.

But sometimes I still don’t feel like I fit.

Maybe that’s why the statistics about young women caught my attention.

I know what it’s like to love Jesus and still struggle with church. I know what it’s like to believe you belong to the body of Christ while sometimes wondering exactly where you belong inside the room.

And I wonder how many young women feel some version of that.

So why are they leaving?

I wonder if part of the answer is belonging.

Do young women believe their gifts are taken seriously? Do single women feel fully included in the life of the church, or do they sometimes feel as though marriage is the point at which their real Christian life will begin? Have leadership failures affected women’s trust more deeply than we’ve understood? Have some of our conversations about biblical womanhood left women with a clearer picture of the role they’re supposed to fill than of the disciple they’re called to become?

I don’t know all the answers, and the research doesn’t give us one simple explanation.

But I think there’s something particularly interesting about these two trends happening at the same time.

Perhaps young men are finding something in church that they’ve struggled to find elsewhere: purpose, brotherhood, conviction, responsibility, and a vision for who they can become.

If that’s true, I celebrate it.

But what if some young women are asking the same questions and aren’t finding the same sense of possibility?

What if they aren’t looking for a church that asks less of them, but one that calls them more deeply into the life of Christ?

That possibility matters to me.

Because after my own experience with church hurt, I didn’t ultimately need a church that expected less of me. I needed to rediscover Jesus apart from the failures of people who represented Him poorly. Eventually, following Him led me back to His people—even though being part of the church can still feel complicated sometimes.

Maybe that’s why I care so much about what’s happening with Gen Z.

I don’t want the church to figure out how to reach young men while quietly losing young women. I want both to encounter something far bigger than the identities our culture keeps offering them: a life completely given to Jesus.

Because maybe that’s what this generation is hungry for.

Not an easier Christianity or one perfectly tailored to their preferences, but a faith sturdy enough to build a life on and a Jesus worth giving that life to.

It’s the question I’ve been wrestling with for the past few years, and it’s ultimately why I wrote All Your Life.

The book isn’t about convincing Gen Z to go to church. It’s about inviting a generation to discover what happens when following Jesus moves from one part of your life to the center of all of it.

And perhaps that’s the opportunity hidden inside these statistics.

Young men are showing up. Young women are leaving. Instead of simply celebrating one or panicking about the other, maybe we should listen carefully to both.

Because the invitation of Jesus hasn’t changed.

“Follow Me.”

And it’s still an invitation worth giving your whole life to.

Why do you think young women are leaving the church?

If you’re a Gen Z woman, I’d especially love to hear from you: what do you wish the church understood about your experience?

And if you know someone—especially a young woman—who has wrestled with church, send this to her. I’d genuinely love to hear her perspective too.

All Your Life grew out of my conviction that Gen Z doesn’t need a smaller version of Christianity. They need to discover a Jesus worthy of their whole lives.

Learn more about All Your Life here.

GET THE BOOK