Today the team drove up to IKEA for our typical weekly team meeting with a twist. Once a month I’m taking the team out for the day to enjoy an outside perspective on youth ministry. As we walked through the store for 20 minutes, I wanted them to answer the question, “What can we learn from IKEA that we can apply to our high school ministry?”

I think there’s a few reasons this exercise was helpful – the first being it is important to break up the routine and get away as a team (not to mention the Swedish meatballs there are excellent). Secondly, I enjoy insipration from non-Christian sources – IKEA is a massive and successful company, surely we can learn something from them as a church? Finally, I feel it helps develop critical thinking and translation skills – a valuable trait of youth workers is being able to adapt a situation into a context and translate successful principles for their individual areas of expertise. Fun!

JG