<\/p>\n
A church in Washington, D.C., is reporting 2,000% growth over the last seven years, attributing the explosive expansion in membership to Generation Z and Millennials \u2014 young American cohorts increasingly turning to faith amid a chaotic culture.<\/p>\n
Ben Palka, one of the preachers at the King\u2019s Church DC,\u00a0told The Christian Post\u00a0about the growth inside his church, which has swelled to more than 600 attendees.<\/p>\n
He said the church grew during COVID-19, a time of true chaos and consternation, and that has only continued. And, in fact, it\u2019s expanding fast.<\/p>\n
Looking back at 2018, the church usually had around 30 people in its pews, but, by 2023, it was around 450, with 650 routinely attending last year. The pattern of growth simply keeps continuing, but the roots were most certainly set during the pandemic.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe saw an influx of young people, particularly in 2020, and that was like a snowball effect,\u201d Palka\u00a0told\u00a0The Christian Post. \u201cAnd we saw a lot of people who previously were not very serious about their faith get really serious about their faith.\u201d<\/p>\n
He continued, \u201cAnd we saw dozens and dozens of people \u2014 we see it every year \u2014 coming to faith in Christ.\u201d<\/p>\n
The murder of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk in September 2025 once again catapulted the number of people in the pews. Palka said young men began coming to the house of worship \u201clooking for answers\u201d and trying to make sense of what happened to Kirk.<\/p>\n
These patterns mirror what others are seeing nationwide. Daniel Davis, another pastor at King\u2019s Church DC, said young people have grown up in a world in which meaning is withheld and truth is squashed.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019ve been fed the idea that you have to make your own identity, your own meaning, to become your own source of significance, and that\u2019s a burden that no one can carry,\u201d he\u00a0said. \u201cThey live in the ruins of Christianity, Christian institutions and ideas that have just been trashed to a certain degree and torn down. They have very strong intuitions, but they\u2019re not able to ground them in anything transcendent or eternal.\u201d<\/p>\n
It seems that might now be changing, with other pastors and churches reporting similar patterns.<\/p>\n
The American Bible Society recently reported a 29% increase in Bible use among Millennials between 2024 and 2025, with Scripture engagement among Gen Z rising from 11% to 15%. Read more\u00a0here.<\/p>\n
Please sign up for\u00a0Faithwire\u2019s daily newsletter\u00a0and download the\u00a0CBN News app\u00a0to stay up-to-date with the latest news from a distinctly Christian perspective.<\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A church in Washington, D.C., is reporting 2,000% growth over the last seven years, attributing the explosive expansion in membership to Generation Z and Millennials \u2014 young American cohorts increasingly turning to faith amid a chaotic culture. Ben Palka, one of the preachers at the King\u2019s Church DC,\u00a0told The Christian Post\u00a0about the growth inside his<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17331,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[372,82,5483,2828,5482,162,1323,1259,5481],"class_list":["post-17330","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jesus","tag-charlie","tag-church","tag-covid","tag-experiencing","tag-explosive","tag-growth","tag-kirks","tag-murder","tag-reacts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17330","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17330"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17330\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/17331"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}