Men have outpaced women in church attendance the past three years, reversing a longstanding trend of more women in the pews that narrowed in 2016, Barna said in its 2025 State of the Church release, created in partnership with Gloo.
Women had outpaced men in attendance since 2000, then at 47% to 38%, before men began outpacing women in 2022, at 35% to 30%. In 2024, 30% of men were attending weekly, compared to 27% of women.
Searching for solutions
“As a leader,” researchers said, “consider how your church is reaching and connecting with women, who have traditionally been more engaged but now waver.”
Several reasons could be driving the gender flip in attendance, researchers told Baptist Press, but cited none as definitive to any degree. Among them:
— Women are overwhelmingly responsible for homecare and childcare and increasingly work in the marketplace because of a rising cost of living.
— “More women are single today than ever before,” researchers said, “and many feel discouraged by the dating pool at church, as church attendees are more often married than not.”
— Researchers pointed to the lingering trauma of the COVID-19 pandemic and its shift on remote engagement in church and work.
— “A troubling number of Christian ministry leaders have publicly and egregiously fallen to sexual sin, which tends to make women in particular feel uncomfortable and unwelcome,” researchers said. “These hurtful experiences cause great dissonance for women.”
Overall, 2024 closed with 28% of U.S. adults attending church weekly. But early 2025 shows signs of promise with as many as 32% of adults attending church weekly, researchers said.
The gender flip in attendance was among five top trends Barna and Gloo announced in their State of the Church report released March 13.
Other trends cited:
— Weekly church volunteering, at 24% of U.S. adults, surpassed pre-COVID 2019 levels of 18%, with Gen Z and Millennials leading the efforts.
— 65% of U.S. adults, including Christians and non-Christians, believe the church is still relevant in today’s world.
— Most adult church goers actively seek relational connections at church, engaging in conversation before or after church with a pastor (57%), other attendees (53%), or church staff (50%).
— Spiritual encounters make church meaningful, Christians said. Top spiritual encounters cited were “connecting to God,” chosen by 73% of respondents; the “presence of the Holy Spirit,” chosen by 68% of respondents; “growing closer to Jesus,” 67%; “praying together,” 59%; “emotional comfort,” 58%; and “the sermon” and “worshiping together,” each drawing 56% of respondents. “Serving,” 47%; discipleship, 41%; and “giving or tithing,” 39%, ranking lowest among factors that make church meaningful.
Volunteerism
Volunteerism is rebounding from the hit it took during the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers found, with the highest rates of weekly volunteering seen in adult Gen Z, at 21%, and Millennials, 19%. That’s far more than the 9% of Boomers and the 12% of Elders who volunteer weekly, and far different than 2000 when the older generations were the top volunteers.
Researchers suggest the flip might amount to the dynamics of life stage and desire.
Younger generations have more time flexibility, physical energy, excitement and opportunities to serve, researchers said, and are more able to give through service than financial resources.
“It could be that young people are offering what they have in abundance: their time, presence and passion,” researchers said. “It’s also important to think about this from not just the rise in volunteerism among next generations but the decline in volunteerism among older adults. Post-COVID, a plurality of Boomers and Elders have not rebounded back into active life.”
Gen Z, tending to be cause-driven, sensitive to problems and injustices, and wanting to see real change, appreciate the structured opportunities churches provide to make a difference, researchers said.
“Many churches have well-established volunteer programs and deep community connections,” researchers pointed out, “offering young people both meaningful ways to serve and the ability to see concrete results from their efforts.”
Relevant Church
While both Christians and non-believers said church is relevant today, church is relevant for more practicing Christians, 88%, and non-practicing Christians, 67%, than non-Christians, 46%. The average among all U.S. adults is 65%. Specifically, researchers presented respondents the statement, “Church is no longer relevant in today’s world,” and asked them whether they 1) definitely disagree 2) somewhat disagree 3) somewhat agree or 4) definitely agree.
“Church relevance is more pronounced among practicing Christians, those who more regularly attend church and see their faith as a central part of their lives,” researchers said. “Knowing this, it could be that those who see church as relevant have experienced or seen some of the meaningful benefits that come with church community.”
Among benefits, researchers pointed to relational connections, a sense of purpose, growth opportunities, and transcendent experiences relating to peace, inspiration and God.
Researchers cited several possibilities that might cause someone to judge church as irrelevant, including past negative experiences in the church, having found connection in alternative communities, and online access to a variety of content and perspectives that challenge the need for more traditional sources of spiritual growth.
“Sometimes as Christians we over complicate church into thinking about it as the ‘good’ or ‘correct’ thing for people to do,” Daniel Copeland, vice president of research at Barna, told Baptist Press.
“However, what if we simplify church attendance down to: is it helpful for a person? Does it functionally do anything for them? Birth friendships of community? Purpose? A connection to Christ?
“The church won’t be seen as relevant until it’s seen as helpful to a person’s flourishing.”
Barna and Gloo drew State of the Church 2025 from several studies, including church attendance and volunteering data based on 131,539 online interviews conducted between January 2000 and February 2025; the February 2025 Barna OmniPoll of 1,532 U.S. adults; the Discipleship in Community online survey of 4,063 U.S. Protestant churchgoing adults conducted March 18–27, 2024; and the Making Space series of data and analysis based on an online quantitative survey of 2,000 US. Adults, conducted Feb. 28–March 9, 2022.
Churches are offered free access to articles and quick insights from the research at Barna.com.
EDITOR’S NOTE — This story was written by Diana Chandler and originally published by Baptist Press.
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