What Young Adults Are Looking for Spiritually at Church

New research from Barna, as part of its ongoing State of the Church initiative with Gloo, asked young adults about their churchgoing habits: Compared to a year ago, are you attending church more often, less often or about the same? Among Gen Z and Millennials, about one in three (34%) say they’re attending church more often. Roughly two in five (45%) say nothing has changed. About one in five (21%) say less.

The 45 percent reporting no change argues against a picture of young people suddenly flooding back into congregations. Instead, it shows a stable percentage of young adults who are maintaining a churchgoing habit alongside a meaningful minority that is increasing its attendance on Sundays. 

“We keep asking whether young people are coming back or falling away, as if it’s one tide moving in one direction,”  says Barna’s vice president of research, Daniel Copeland. “For nearly half, nothing has changed. The real story isn’t the average, it’s who’s stirring at the edges and what they are looking for.”

Who’s More Likely to Show Up on Sunday?

Among young adults who say they are attending church more often, the increase isn’t spread evenly across the population. Young men (41%), Black adults (41%), Hispanic adults (36%) and those ages 25 to 35 are the most likely to say their attendance has grown. Young women and Asian young adults are the least likely to report an increase.

The gender gap here isn’t isolated to this survey. It shows up in Barna’s broader attendance tracking too: As of 2025, 43 percent of men report attending church weekly, compared to 36 percent of women, the largest gap Barna has recorded in 25 years of tracking. For most of that history, the pattern ran the other way, with women outattending men by a wide margin. The reversal is recent and concentrated among younger adults. Since 2019, Gen Z and Millennial men have moved from the least engaged generational cohorts to the most engaged, while young women’s attendance has held closer to flat.

The reasons behind that divergence are outside the scope of what this survey measured, but Barna’s broader research points to a mix of potential factors: heavier caregiving and work loads on young women, a cultural mismatch between traditional church structures and younger women’s values, and eroded trust following high-profile leadership failures.

What They Want from Church Spiritually

The more interesting question isn’t just who’s returning to church, but what they’re finding there—or hoping to find. Nearly half of young adults (45%) say prayer is a reason they attend church, the single most-selected spiritual reason on the list. Worshiping Jesus alongside other people follows at 38 percent.

Spiritual Reasons by Gender

The gender pattern isn’t uniform. Young women are notably more likely than young men to say they attend to worship with others—roughly two in five women (45% ages 18 to 24; 41% ages 25 to 35), compared to about one in three men (31% ages 18 to 24; 35% ages 25 to 35). But the pattern doesn’t hold consistently across every reason. Men in both age groups are more likely than women to say they attend to confess their sins or to experience the liturgy or church calendar. Among the older cohort, men (38%) are slightly more likely than women (35%) to cite experiencing joy in Jesus as a top reason for going to church.

Spiritual Reasons by Race

Prayer rises to the top for every racial segment. Nearly half of Black and Hispanic young adults (48% each), along with 45 percent of White and 40 percent of Asian young adults, rank prayer as the top spiritual reason to attend. Overall, Black young adults are the most spiritually engaged of Gen Z and Millennial churchgoers, rating higher than every other race for spiritual reasons to go to church (excluding ‘Other’).

Spiritual Reasons by Faith Commitment to Jesus

Followers of Jesus are strongly motivated to attend church for spiritual reasons. Whether someone has a new, recent or a long-time faith in Christ, prayer, worship and experiencing joy in Jesus are the main reasons they show up on Sunday.

“The data reminds us that new followers arrive with real needs while a lifelong follower wants to go deeper,” says Copeland. “The real opportunity for leaders is to help the first become the second, to transform that early curiosity into a craving for depth.

A Pattern, Not a Movement

The two halves of the data highlighted in this article create a fuller picture of Gen Z and Millennials in church today. The young adults most likely to say their attendance is increasing, concentrated among young men and Black and Hispanic young adults, are largely the same group most animated by prayer and shared worship. 

“There’s a temptation to think reaching young adults takes something new—better production, a sharper program, or a provocative message,” Copeland says. “This data points the other way. They’re showing up for the simple offerings—prayer and worship shoulder to shoulder with other people. The opportunity isn’t to reinvent, but to get back to the basics and meet people where they are.”

The data reported here isn’t evidence of a sweeping spiritual movement as much as a traceable pattern: a defined slice of young adults showing up more often and doing so for devotional reasons that are consistent across nearly every demographic cut in this data.

What’s missing is the relational piece. Part 2 of this series will turn to that question—the social reasons young adults give for going to church, and what they say they want from the people sitting next to them once they’re there.

This article is part one of a series on What Young Adults Want from Church, produced by Barna in partnership with Gloo as part of the State of the Church initiative.