Why Churches Think 12 Is the Perfect Number
Youth groups, adult classes, boards - why are we afraid of 20, 30, 50...?
Why do churches think 12 is the perfect number?
During my 34 years of ministry, the number 12 keeps popping up.
The quick answer is the Bible’s New Testament talks about Jesus having 12 disciples. But nowhere in the New Testament are the disciples sent out to form groups of 12 people and then stop. We are not commanded in Matthew 28:19, “Go, therefore, and make 12 disciples of all nations…”
Here are the real-life places, I’ve heard well-meaning, church people give 12 as the answer:
Youth groups often never get past 12 people. The youth leader doesn’t know why, but they love this group.
Youth mission trips are limited to 12 people, and the parents of those 12 are the most vehement about this rule.
In college, the small group began to draw 15-20 people. People complained that people were changing “their” group.
Our young married small group grew past 20 people on its way to nearly 40 and the church pastor said “Way to go,” but had no help for what to do next.
A church leader wanted to lead an adult mission trip. It would have 12 people as this was the right number. Any more than that would cost money, more vehicles (more logistics!), and we wouldn’t get to enjoy knowing everyone.
Adult classes are limited to 12 - 15 but they have chairs for 10.
The key to understanding this self-imposed limit is sociological and roots out of the Dunbar Number. Dr. Robin Dunbar is the head of the Social and Evolutionary Neuroscience Research Group in the Department of Experimental Psychology at the University of Oxford, London, England.
The Dunbar Number is a series of numbers that relate to how we relate to other people. Most people have five close friends up to ten good friends. Then our intimacies slide to a final “friend” number of 150 which is often referred to incorrectly as the Dunbar Number.1
Why the 12-Person Group Feels Perfect
A small group, youth group, or mission team with 12 people feels about perfect as it mimics this feeling that we have 10 good friends. Now we know that these twelve people are not actually our closes friends, but they give us that feeling of acceptance as they mimic the behavior of good friends.
People in groups of 12 in the church can act out the Christian values they are learning about so the group functions almost like friends: by accepting others, encouraging people, listening well, and laughing with others. This group of 12 behaves like 10-12 actual good friends getting together.
As adults we know that is rare that we can have our 10-15 good friends all together at once. This only happens at the weddings of our children, reunions, or intentional events like major birthdays or a summer weekend.
The 12-Person Group Makes us Feel Good
So the small group at the church that is limited to 12 people gives us a lot of the feels we are missing.
For we do miss that experience of being altogether. How many of us can remember those Friday nights at college with all our friends together hanging out drinking Meijer pop, eating Oreos, and telling the stories one more time?
How Do We Limit the Groups Growth?
So in our small groups and mission trips, we actively work to limit the size of the group. Here are some of the ways we do this:
Schedule the group in a room that only holds ten people.
Schedule the group in a larger room but only have table space for ten people.
Not provide more than 10 chairs in the circle.
Insist on the circle so that the room size limits the number of people.
Low ball budget the event/trip so that the trip size stays small.
Avoid finding volunteer leaders to help lead the group.
Skip formal training for anyone who does volunteer, so that information and relationship building is limited to the leader.
Avoid the planning that is required for a larger group or trip.
Fall back on Jesus having only 12 disciples
Bad Theology
Did Jesus have only 12 disciples? Not to open too deep a theological bugaboo, but scholars do Greek gymnastics to get all the names listed in the gospel lists to equal 12 people. And how much patriarchal shenanigans occurred to make sure the women who followed Jesus did not get counted in the 12?
Sticking with tradition and saying Jesus had the 12 key disciples, still doesn’t justify limiting anything in our churches to twelve people. Our call is to do love Jesus, share the good news and serve the world. In all these ways we should be planning, staffing, organizing to do so with expansion in mind.
Growing Youth Ministry
Youth ministry should scale. Youth ministry doesn't usually scale because the new youth leader wasn’t trained properly or at all. So they read three books and get overwhelmed and summer trips are coming fast!
The youth leader then finds one parent to help them and sets out to lead the group doing everything except for the one lesson every six weeks the volunteer does. Dr. Kara Powel’s work around Sticky Faith teaches us that adult leaders can build solid relationships with five students. So two youth leaders give you ten students.
As a youth ministry veteran, I often told our leaders that I could serve/know well 6-8 students and they should serve/know well 4-5 students. When we felt we were ready for growth we added adult leaders, trained them, and set them loose getting to know the youth. When we were running a youth group with 20+ students we had four Leaders, at 35+ we had 7-9 on the team. We can dig into this more in another post.
In Conclusion
The Dunbar Number(s) show us that sociologically speaking we have friend units from 5-10-20-150. But this isn’t a mandate for our churches. Twelve people are NOT the perfect number. We can plan for more. We can learn, train, and scale for more.
If your church groups are hovering at 12 people, find some others to read this post and talk about it. Use the comment section to talk with each other or ask questions. Let’s open up a conversation about scale in the church. Let’s consider this new idea - 12 IS a good number, but 50 is better.
In Christ,
Jim Monnett
Ann Arbor, MI
The Dunbar Number 150 is fascinating. I have done so much reading about the 200-myth as it relates to church size, growth, and plateauing. Church organization expert Alice Mann talks a lot about this myth in books like “Raising the Roof: the Pastoral to Program Transition.” Mann talks of how when church’s reach 120-150 in worship attendance growth stalls.}*{I find the Dunbar 150 fascinating as I have done so much reading about the 200-myth as it relates to church size, growth, and plateauing. Church organization expert Alice Mann talks a lot about this myth in books like “Raising the Roof: the Pastoral to Program Transition.” Mann talks of how when church’s reach 120-150 in worship attendance growth stalls.