Stephen Gahagen has been a pastor and church planter. He and his wife launched a church in the North Metro of Minneapolis and helped launch three other churches by creating opportunities for young leaders. Two of those church plants reached 1000 in attendance.

In 2013, Stephen graduated with a doctoral degree in Strengths-Based Leadership from Bethel University in partnership with the Gallup organization. Half of his training was on the Gallup campus where he was trained as an expert in the CliftonStrengths instrument, but also in “The Seven Demands of Leadership”, “The Power of Partnership”, and “Employee Engagement”.

In 2017, Stephen established “Play to Your Strengths” as a non-profit to utilize strengths tools as a way to engage in the youth mental health crisis – guiding young people to see their value and that they have talents they can use to make a positive difference in the world. Stephen’s training and communication experience has created opportunities for him to facilitate engaging training events for organizations. He has had the opportunity to work with Fortune 500 companies and a number of universities. Play to Your Strengths was organized as a bridge for followers of Christ to go into the world.

Stephen can provide training events around CliftonStrengths focused on businesses, marriage and parenting, as well as provide presentations on what it means to live our greatest story.