RANCHO PALOS VERDES, Calif. — Pastor Greg Laurie urged Christians at Turning Point USA’s Faith Forward Pastors Summit this week to pray for revival amid a growing spiritual hunger manifesting among young men especially.
“I wonder if God is at work,” Laurie said, noting how 45,000 people packed Angel Stadium in Anaheim for a Harvest Crusade last month, which prompted the fire marshal to lock the doors for safety reasons.
Laurie, who pastors Harvest Christian Fellowship in Riverside, California, said he dubbed his Wednesday address to the packed room of pastors, “Are We Seeing Another Spiritual Awakening?”
“We can evangelize or we can fossilize.”@greglaurie live at FFPS 2025 pic.twitter.com/dWx2jntfLJ
— TPUSA Faith (@tpusafaith) August 8, 2025
Reflecting on the spiritual seeking among baby boomers that led to the Jesus Movement he was involved with in the 1970s, Laurie noted that trends increasingly suggest millennial men and younger are similarly ripe for the harvest despite profound challenges.
“There’s a lot of encouraging things happening right now,” he said. “There’s been a dramatic shift in the culture toward the Gospel and toward Jesus Christ. In the past, elders and baby boomers tended to be the more committed Christians, but in the last two years that has changed, especially among young people and specifically among young men.”
“Gen Z men are making a commitment to Christ,” he said, presumably referencing a study that was part of Barna’s State of the Church 2025 initiative, which found that commitment to Jesus has risen sharply among young men.
Conversions jumped 15 percentage points between 2019 and 2025 among Gen Z men, and 19 percentage points among millennial men, according to the study.
“This is interesting,” Laurie said. “Usually, girls, come on, you’re the ones that are always ahead of us in this. But for once, they’re not leading the way; men are leading the way. We need this to happen.”
Laurie also noted the rising number of Bible sales, which he said indicates spiritual hunger.
“Guess what? Grandma is not buying the Bibles,” he said. “It’s young people buying the Bible for the first time.” He went on to say Gen Z and Generation Alpha are hungry for the truth, but “don’t want thoughts; they don’t want a watered-down Gospel.”
“They want the tough truth; they want the unfiltered Gospel of Christ crucified and the power of the Resurrection.”
The book tracker Circana BookScan showed Bible sales rose 22% in the U.S. through the end of October last year compared to the same time in 2023, according to The Wall Street Journal. Experts who spoke to the outlet attributed the sales to people seeking meaning in their lives amid growing uncertainty.
Laurie exhorted the pastors listening to him to focus on evangelism and shepherding new believers.
“We have a choice before us: we can evangelize or fossilize,” he said.
Echoing Pastor John Amanchukwu, who spoke shortly before him, Laurie cited Romans 13:12, which warns that the time is short for Christians who have been given a narrow window to serve God in their generation.
“Revival starts with us, and not just with our churches, but it starts with you,” he said. “Because nothing can happen through you until it first happened to you, and you cannot take people any further than you, yourself, as a spiritual leader, have gone. You set the spiritual pace in your church and with your congregation.”
Jon Brown is a reporter for The Christian Post. Send news tips to jon.brown@christianpost.com
