On a beautiful Sunday morning in early September, dozens of young men from Waco, Texas, began their day at Grace Church.
Men greeted visitors at the entrance, manned the information table, and handed out bulletins. Four of the five musicians on stage were men. So were the pastor who gave the sermon and most of the students who filled the front rows.
“I’m so grateful for this church,” Ryan Amodei, 28, told the congregation before a second pastor, Buck Rogers, baptized him in a tank of water in the sanctuary.
Grace Church, a Southern Baptist congregation, has not made a conscious effort to attract young men. It is modest in size and, in many ways, a typical evangelical church. Yet its leaders have noticed for several years that young men outnumber young women in its pews. When the church opened a small outpost in the nearby town of Robinson last year, 12 of the 16 young people who regularly attended were men.
“We’ve been talking about it all along,” said Phil Barnes, pastor of the congregation, Hope Church. “What is the Lord doing? Why is He sending us all these young men?”
