How Evangelicals Can Reach Gen Z with Masculinity
One day, several weeks ago, I arrived at my PCA church’s middle school youth group and was disturbed to find around 30 girls and no boys in attendance. Granted, it was the opening weekend of hunting season. Still, even when more boys are there, they are outnumbered by the girls and often unenthusiastic and uninterested. Eventually, one boy showed up a couple of minutes late, looking rather unexcited. We are a fairly large and continually growing church with more than 500 weekly attendees, and a youth group that is considered one of the best in our area. Every Sunday at our church, the Bible is preached well by men of integrity. And yet we struggle to attract young men.
What’s going on with young men? In recent years, many concerning studies have emerged about young men, particularly those in Gen Z. We hear about climbing high suicide rates, singleness, and social degeneracy. The number of those who identify with LGBTQ is increasing, and worst of all, many young Christians are apostatizing. It is encouraging to hear that religion is becoming masculine-coded and that young men are outpacing young women in turning to religion for the first time in a long time, but Gen Z is still currently the least churched generation and churchgoers are still predominantly women.
How should Church leaders respond to these crises? Ultimately, the root of this problem is the lack of a feeling of purpose. It is the role of leaders in the Church to provide a sense of clear purpose, belonging, and place for the disenfranchised young men of today by embracing tradition, reinforcing masculinity, and shepherding them strictly. Grounding and rootedness, encouragement, and discipline, that’s what young men need.
For decades Protestant Churches have changed their liturgy, style, and message to accommodate our culture. This mistake is likely to deter young men. According to the Institute for Family Studies, around 61% of church attendees in the US are women. This statistic is concerning, not because we don’t want women at church, but because, like a family, the church requires both men and women. If the church is disproportionately attractive to women and not men, it is time to reassess ministry models, and, yes, every church has a ministry model whether they realize it or not.
This divide surely has many causes, but one of them is modern liturgical style. Most modern churches in America can be found singing contemporary music (even in Roman Catholic churches). This liturgical choice feeds what Aaron Edwards appropriately labeled, “ecclesial effeminacy.” Both the lyrics and the style of most contemporary music is emotive, emphasizing the relational character of God, and downplay things like God’s power, wrath, and justice. Martial, judicial, and apocalyptic representations of God in Scripture are rarely if ever featured. Few if any songs draw on the Major Prophets or recount the events of Judges, Kings, and Chronicles. It is not that all contemporary music presents false doctrine, just sentimentalized doctrine. It is disproportionately, thematically effeminate.
This music disenfranchises young men in the church. It focuses on the emotional side of the Christian life, while completely ignoring the duty, discipline, and spiritual war that traditional hymns and psalms offer. The psalms certainly speak of God’s love and comfort, but they just as often speak of war and judgment, conquest and dominion, triumph over darkness.
One result of this liturgical disparity is that many young men are swimming the Tiber or converting to Eastern Orthodoxy. A recent study showed a 78% increase in converts to Eastern Orthodoxy in America from 2019-2022, while in England, Catholics now outnumber Anglicans among the younger generations.
There is a kind of instability and presentism to the consumerist model that informs and surrounds contemporary music. No one was singing any of these songs 100 years ago and no one will be singing them 100 years from now. This is why more traditional liturgical models are attractive to young men in particular: they present stability, rootedness, history, and invite us into participation in and contribute to something bigger and older than the fleeting emotive style of the latest Christian attempt to mimic Coldplay. Traditional liturgy is built to last and it asks men to do something that is natural to them: to guard, protect, and cultivate.
Young people, particularly men, seek tradition to be rooted but also for another reason, tradition is countercultural. Young men are attracted to certain expressions of religion today because religion is now nonconformist, countercultural, even anti-modern. There are worse ways to channel youthful rebellion. But there is scriptural warrant for nonconformity. “And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.”(Romans 12:2)
Applications of this Christian posture are numerous, but one is certainly that we should think seriously about the extent to which our worship merely mimics the impulses and tastes of the predominant culture. Are we chasing fads and fashion? What are we communicating with our lyrics, our music, our style? Does our liturgy reflect the endurance and triumph promised to the church by Christ? Does it invoke the memory of the saints gone before us? Does it root us in God’s work throughout history? Is the predominant message emotive comfort or martial boldness?
Many young men go to Rome or the East because, at least superficially, these expressions of Christianity promise countercultural stability and authority.Theology aside, the aesthetics of Catholics and Orthodox appeal to Gen Z’ers reared in the instability of postmodern hyperreality. Hillsong and Bethel songs in strip mall churches just don’t provide the same comfort and assurance that traditional rites do. A lot of modern Evangelical churches still live by a seeker sensitive ministry model. They want to attract and retain members. We all know the cringe results this model can yield, but to some extent, every church is seeker sensitive. But Evangelicals have missed part of their market, and, ironically, modern Evangelical churches do not provide a thick communal ethos. Maybe the coffee is good and the small groups are bustling, but the communion of the saints for all time is lacking in the liturgy.
To be clear, some protestant churches offer this. Denominations like the CREC have skyrocketed in growth because they understand that people want tradition, even the simplicity of tradition. Nothing flashy, nothing pandering to what a ministry strategy book says is culturally relevant. They worship with psalters and hymnals, with minimal instrumental accompaniment, and young men like it. When I have attended CREC churches, a large share of the attendees are men aged 16-30, well-dressed and engaged.
Something else that these increasingly successful reformed churches understand is the importance of embracing and reinforcing Biblical masculinity. This goes beyond the music. Leadership structures and preaching matter too. Feminism has infiltrated the church in many ways that are more damaging than worship style. Flirtations with female pastors or “shepherdesses” and “deaconesses,” is only the most obvious manifestation. The primary, animating mission of many churches seems to be to not offend women. In this way, even churches that still exclude women from the pastorate are functionally egalitarian.
This fixation is not only a distraction, it alienates men. God made men to lead, provide, and protect; however, churches rarely stress these aspects of masculine leadership today. Instead, many conservative evangelicals have created non-binary churches, where expectations of men and women are no longer differentiated. Whatever men can do, women can do. Biological distinctions carry no weight, as if God has not encoded truths and order into his creation. If scripture does reserve certain functions for men it is almost treated as regrettably arbitrary. Again, the goal here is to make sure that women are offended as little as possible. The problem is, nature and scripture are remarkably offensive. Not only do these prevalent attitudes inordinately elevate women, they diminish the responsibility of men. Part of generating a sense of purpose for young men is through assignment of unique responsibilities in the church that reflect their nature, talents, and passions.
Like the music, much of evangelical preaching fixates on relational themes like compassion, forgiveness, hospitality, and kindness. Obviously, all of these qualities are taught in scripture. But scripture also includes prophets crudely mocking idolatry, apostles rebuking sin, and warrior kings crushing the enemies of God. Christ is presented as the good shepherd, comforting, compassionate, gently guiding; he is also presented as a blood-soaked, sword-wielding warrior. Spiritual life is described in the bible in warlike terms, warlike enough to require armor. Christians are to care for the sick and also defend the weak. For every pastor in church history who ministered to plague-infested cities at his own hazard, why are there not also examples given of knights who protected the pilgrim road from bandits and Ottomans? Women seek consensus but men need conflict. If these gendered impulses are not accounted for and channeled they take on excessive expression. Masculine traits need to be formed by the church not suppressed. Especially today, the church needs fighters, protectors, leaders, but a generation of men have been taught to suppress these traits for the sake of internal peace and public witness. Men are offensive; an inoffensive church will not attract them.
As Rusty Reno wrote last year, young men want strong religion but they also want “hard religion, not easy religion.” Good soldiers are disciplined soldiers and they need a company. Worthwhile communities are demanding and disciplined.
Male leaders in the church should not be afraid to tackle the besetting sins of young men. Call young men out on lust, pride, physical weakness, emotional weakness, and sloth. If you address these topics, the young men in your church will grow to be strong, Biblical men. Correction and discipline like this, the kind that our Father in heaven offers to us, is attractive to young men, especially the fatherless young men.
This is the basis of spiritual growth but also male camaraderie, another thing young men crave. There’s a reason male friendships are often rooted in disagreement and mutual mockery. Conflict, struggle, even insults form male social groups. Men want to be challenged and the Christian life is challenging. Men want accountability, self-improvement, and growth not stagnation. It tells them they’re going somewhere, doing something. Done properly, the church can and should offer these benefits to men, scripture certainly does. Whoever offers both challenge and brotherhood to young men communicates that they care about them. Many men are deeply lonely, friendless even. This is an opportunity for the church to fill that void.
The Church is losing young men quickly. Many false teachers and evil men are leading them astray. We need to do our job to reclaim these young men and give them belonging and purpose, to raise the next generation of strong Christian leaders.
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