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.
Breaking News. Spirit-Filled Stories. Subscribe to Charisma on YouTube now!
“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-30s, 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, 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.
Even 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 browbeaten 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.
To read the full story, visit our content partners at CBN News.
Reprinted with permission from cbn.com. Copyright © 2025 The Christian Broadcasting Network Inc. All rights reserved.
Join Charisma Magazine Online to follow everything the Holy Spirit is doing around the world!
