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If your youth group is hovering somewhere between 25 and 50 students, you may be living in the most pivotal season your ministry will ever experience.

Why? Because what you build here will either carry you forward with health… or quietly create problems that come back later with interest.

In a recent conversation, Keith and Ryne unpacked what makes this stage so important—its strengths, its challenges, the mindset shift every youth pastor must make, and three practical steps you can implement immediately.

Is it “Okay” to Stay at 25–50 Forever?

Before getting tactical, Ryne raises a question that a lot of youth leaders are already asking (sometimes quietly):

Is it always the goal to push past this growth barrier?
Or is it okay to stay right here?

Keith and Ryne agreed on a key point: attendance alone is never the definition of success. You can have a large youth ministry that isn’t healthy, and a smaller youth ministry that’s faithfully making disciples.

But they also challenged the idea that we should ever want to stay small out of comfort.

Their conviction was simple:

• The goal is always to make disciples.
• Spiritual growth tends to lead to numerical growth (even if there’s a lag).
• And if your ministry is truly multiplying disciples, it’s hard to argue that no one new will ever be reached.

They did add an important real-world caveat: sometimes growth limitations are geographic. One leader in their community serves in a tiny rural town where the entire population is only dozens of people—so “growth” might mean reaching every student available, then sending disciples outward to surrounding communities.

So the takeaway isn’t, “You must hit 100 students.”
It’s: We should never settle into comfort when there’s still “one more” to reach.

Why 25–50 Is Such a Powerful Stage

Keith and Ryne described this size as a kind of ministry “sweet spot,” because you get the best of both worlds:

1) You still know everyone (mostly)

At 25–50, you can still learn names, track stories, and keep a family feel. Students often feel seen, known, and connected.

2) You finally have momentum

You’re no longer in the “who will show up tonight?” stage. There’s enough consistency that you can build rhythm, plan ahead, and dream bigger.

3) Growth can multiply faster

When 20% of 50 students bring friends, that’s a very different outcome than 20% of 10. This is often where ministries feel a genuine “tipping point.”

4) More opportunities open up

From events to retreats to mission trips, things become more feasible. You can host nights at someone’s house, plan outings with a couple vehicles, and still maintain intimacy—without the logistical complexity that comes when you’re moving 80–120 students.

The Hidden Challenges of This Stage

This stage has a few predictable pitfalls—ones that can quietly cap a ministry.

1) Getting ahead of yourself

Keith referenced a leadership framework (Dave Ramsey’s business stages) and applied it to youth ministry: problems happen when you operate like you’re in a later stage than you really are.

At 25–50, it’s tempting to act like a “big ministry” without the infrastructure, leadership depth, or systems to support it.

2) “What got you here won’t get you there”

This one can be painful: sometimes the very patterns—and even certain core families—that helped build the ministry in the 25–50 stage may not be the same ones that help you grow beyond it.

That doesn’t always mean conflict or drama. Sometimes it’s simply that a ministry’s culture shifts as it grows, and some people prefer the earlier season.

3) Manual ministry systems start breaking

In smaller stages, you can get away with “I’ll just remember,” “I’ll just text them,” or “I’ll just handle that.”

At 25–50, that approach begins to fail—not because you’re a bad leader, but because the ministry has outgrown what one brain and one calendar can hold.

4) Growth without foundation creates future problems

They used a helpful image: the bigger the ship, the harder it is to turn.
If you don’t build foundations now (culture, systems, leadership), it becomes harder to correct later—when there are more students, more parents, more expectations, and more moving parts.

The Mindset Shift: From Doing Ministry to Equipping Others

This is where the conversation got extremely practical:

Nothing happens “by accident” anymore

Keith emphasized that you can’t rely on spontaneity the way you could when the group was smaller. Planning ahead becomes essential.

You must give leadership away

Ryne called out a common ceiling: the leader who won’t delegate becomes the bottleneck.

This is the season to begin giving leadership away to trusted adult volunteers—because eventually, beyond this stage, you’ll need students leading too. But first, you need a healthy adult volunteer engine.

Ministry will start happening without you—and that’s good

That can sting. It exposes pride, insecurity, and the temptation to need to be needed.

But long-term health is when the ministry can function, disciple, and care for students even when the youth pastor isn’t the center of every moment.

You’ll have to get better at saying no

More students means less time per student. To stay faithful, you’ll need clarity: what are the “yeses” that matter most?

Three Practical Steps You Can Take This Week

If your ministry is in the 25–50 range and you’re wondering what to do right now, Keith and Ryne offered three action steps:

1) Implement critical systems

They highlighted three essential systems:

• A check-in system (not just “how many,” but “who”)
  So you can track attendance, notice patterns, and know who’s actually present and engaged.
• A follow-up system
  Because you can no longer rely on memory to notice who has been missing for weeks or who needs a touchpoint.
• A spiritual follow-up system
  When students trust Christ, you need a plan to ensure they’re discipled, connected, and cared for—especially as the number of new believers increases.

2) Standardize procedures

This is where ministry gets “drier,” but also healthier:

• First-time guest process (what happens, what they receive, who follows up)
• New believer next steps (Bibles, resources, family notification, discipleship path)
• Volunteer onboarding (application, background checks, possibly fingerprints)
• Parent communication systems (because “they’ll ask me” stops working at scale)

Keith and Ryne even discussed fingerprinting as an extra layer beyond a basic background check, noting it can add an added level of certainty when vetting volunteers.

3) Track meaningful metrics

Not for ego. Not for bragging. But for clarity, stewardship, and celebration.

They mentioned tracking things like:

• salvations
• baptisms
• gospel conversations
• first-time guests
• spiritual growth “pulse checks” (they referenced the Four Chair assessment used by some ministries)

Measuring doesn’t make it “count,” but it helps you:

• celebrate what God is doing,
• know what needs attention,
• and stay accountable to the mission.

A Final Encouragement: This Stage Is a Foundation Stage

One of the strongest themes of the episode was this:

This season is about building the foundation for what comes next.

Not chasing numbers.
Not trying to become a “big ministry.”
But creating the kinds of systems, leadership development, and discipleship culture that can support growth without sacrificing health.

And if you’re already feeling the strain—that’s not failure. It’s often a sign you’ve entered the stage where your ministry needs to mature.

The question isn’t “How do we grow bigger?”
It’s: How do we grow deeper, so that growth can be healthy?