A recent Barna survey conducted in conjunction with Christ in Youth ministry had both good news and bad news. It found a trend, that was first noticed in Finland a couple of years ago, is now taking place in America.

There are more boys (ages 13-18) attending church youth meetings than girls, the Christian Post reports.

The survey of 1,500 youth was conducted in mid-February 2026.

It found that 57% of youth who claimed to be Christian attended a youth meeting at their local church at least once in the past three months.

However, when broken down by gender, there was a noticeable difference between how many boys attended compared to girls.

The survey found that 63% of the boys attended at least one youth meeting compared to only 52% of the girls.

This reversed a trend over the past several years in which girls typically outnumbered boys.

But it falls in line with a Gallup study released earlier this year that revealed there has been a notable increase in the number of men aged 18 to 29 who valued religion.

While 28% of men in that age group considered religion to be “very important” in 2022-23, that percentage jumped to 42% by 2024-25. This represented a 50% increase in just two years.

This mirrors Finnish studies that reported a similar trend. According to Hanna Salomäki, the head of the Evangelical Lutheran Church’s Institute for Research and Advanced Training, the number of young men aged 15 to 29 attending a Finnish church at least once a month has risen from 5% in 2011 to 12% in 2019.

Over the same period, the number of young women attending a church service only increased from 4% to 5%.

The good news is that men are increasingly drawn to Christ, but unfortunately women have not experienced the same surge.