Why Young Men Are Coming Back To Church

Something drastic is shifting in the spiritual atmosphere of the Western world. Surprised whispers of a “quiet revival” are swirling in and around the church. Pastors and pollsters, pagans and podcasters are taking note.

Shockingly, it’s the young folk of my generation—and especially men—leading the shift toward Jesus. But what’s caused this?

My simple theory: Young men became poor. And now ours is the kingdom of heaven (Matt. 5:3). Allow me to explain.

Imagine Being a Gen Z Male

Imagine that you were a boy growing up, as I did, in the 2000s and 2010s.

Throughout most of your school years, the word “toxic” was the most popular descriptor for “masculinity.” It often felt like you should apologize for your inherently oppressive maleness.

When you were young, your male energy spent eight hours a day boxed into a very colorful, very feminine classroom, and then, when you got back from school, your biological father probably wasn’t there to greet you. There’s a one in four chance you never lived with your dad in the first place. You loved your mom and your female teachers, but it was nearly impossible to find any consistent male presence in your life.

Young men became poor. And now ours is the kingdom of heaven.

Multiple times in high school and college, you joined clubs where men were outnumbered three to one. These were ostensibly the most important leadership roles in the school—but you realized “important” basically meant event planning and making sure the school was a “safe space” with lots of good vibes and cute posters.

Again, not exactly your wiring.

You and your friends were unmotivated in school—on pace to earn less than half the college degrees, to die by suicide at four times the rate, and to be incarcerated 14 times more often than your female counterparts.

But school wasn’t the only arena where you were affected. By age 7, your developing male competitiveness had been relegated to “everyone’s a winner” sports or off-loaded into the virtual realm, where you murdered hundreds of virtual humans every night with glazed, sleepless eyes. This made you feel like you had control. Like you had power. But deep down, you knew you didn’t.

Before you hit puberty, a pack of online megacompanies monopolized, monetized, and commodified your sex drive. You likely had years of digital sexual shame by high school, secretly battling pornography addictions ever since. This battle is hard to win. After all, virtual relationships and digital simulations of “intimacy” are simpler.

Now, young adult women are 30 percentage points more liberal than you—the largest gap in American history. To say this makes relationships hard and loneliness easy is a gross understatement.

You and your twentysomething peers have fewer marriages, fewer friends, fewer kids, fewer siblings, and fewer mentors than any generation before you.

You are—by all the most important metrics—very, very poor.

Becoming Rich Again

Yet one of Scripture’s core themes is this: Only those who need God will find him (Isa. 57:15; Jer. 29:13; Luke 5:31–32).

Stripped of any vision for manhood, the men of this generation have become beggars. And now, in a surprising turn of events, God Almighty has made blind men see. Jesus whispers gently, then firmly, then—gripping our uncalloused palms, dragging us to our feet—he shouts, “Blessed are the poor in spirit! Yours is the kingdom of heaven!” And we’ve begun to believe him.

We’ve become disenchanted with the emerging father figures of the secular world. Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules lose their magic when you need 13. Andrew Tate’s macho ethics seem pubescent and power-lusty. Andrew Huberman’s self-growth says nothing about the heart. Porn, video games, chatbots, and YouTubers turn off and become nothing more than a blank screen reflecting our blank faces. None of these offers the deep meaning and sustainable growth we seek.

We need a far more powerful Man and Father and Brother and King—and we’re beginning to think we’ve found him. Or perhaps he’s found us.

Exemplar: Crucified Man

It’s not wrong for young men to come to church seeking meaning and empowerment as men. But what they need to hear from churches is not a Jesus advertised as a political activist, culture warrior, or self-improvement guru. This type of Christianity will recripple men, for “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble” (James 4:6).

Instead, young men need to cry out with Paul, “I decide to know nothing except Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1 Cor. 2:2). The manhood this generation needs is the paradoxical manhood—strength and humility—epitomized in Christ crucified.

On the one hand, today’s young men feel the need to escape the “quiet quitting,” silent-sitting, digital passivity of contemporary male experience. In inviting followers to take up their cross and follow him, Christ calls young men out of passivity to bold, daring, radical strength. On the other hand, young men know that more money, more 1950s “tradvalues,” and more self-empowerment will often only make them narcissistic. The crucified Christ calls young men out of selfish ambition to humble, meek, simple service.

Only in humility, in boldness, in crucifixion with the True Man will the men of my generation find their resurrected selves.

My Simple Advice

Considering all this, allow me, a young man, to finish with practical advice. If, as the data overwhelmingly suggests, the Lord has decided to awaken young men to our weakness—to our need for Jesus Christ—then perhaps the best method to get young men into church is for leaders to model humility in their own lives (James 4:10). Historically, revival takes the form of people in face-down prayer for hours on end, pleading for Christ’s blood to cover a generation like a Carolina hurricane.

The crucified Christ calls us out of selfish ambition to humble, meek, simple service.

God has already done the work of priming a generation for Christ. Now, the church’s task is to arrange the meeting. Our first strategy, as Jonathan Edwards so often coached, is to pray and preach and publicize the crucified Man, persisting until he comes.

Young men, now is the time to wake up and need God. Old men, now is the time to wake up and need God. Young women, old women—now is the time (Joel 2:12–17).

Father, awaken this generation. Awaken your whole church.