The world in which we live and work has radically changed. God’s people and leadership are losing their effectiveness because they don’t understand the new cultural war. As strategists and brand experts, our desire is to help participants understand how God has uniquely designed and called them to be brilliant image bearers and giant change agents for his Kingdom. The tour will help participants edit their affairs to be on a course to finish with national quality the work God has given them to do.

The Street Works Tour is

• A campaign of thought. Are you a student of the world or is your head in the sand? Do you understand how hard global brands are working today to command your attention and resources? They’re powerful and sexy and noisy.
• A call to believers and believing organizations, especially people in leadership, to stand up and reassess the importance of being salt and light in today’s branded economy. A challenge to participants to live and work as God’s brand giants—people who are radiantly alive, contagious, engaged in the marketplace of ideas, strategically pressed into service according to how he has designed and called them.
• An unpacking of our Creel Model. Participants will learn how to look for a God vision. They’ll learn that brand is a lot more than a logo. By the end of the day, they’ll understand the process for unraveling their God DNA. They’ll begin to see how God made them to be uniquely at work in his purposes, which will give them a new ability to edit their activities and opportunities.
• A skill-building opportunity. Participants will learn how to press passion or burden into a clear, strategic, forward “campaign” of action.
• An important timeout for reflection and repurposing. In addition to learning clear, cogent processes for working more strategically, effectively and productively, tour participants will be exposed to Kingdom giants who will motivate and encourage them. They’ll be exposed to critical disciplines that will help them stay the course God has called them to walk and finish strong.

• Servant leaders in positions of authority and responsibility.
• Faith-based business owners who desire to be more intentionally invested in kingdom purposes and complement success with significance.
• Board members, executive directors and staff of not-for-profit organizations and helping ministries.
• Board members, committee members and leadership of women’s ministries, men’s ministries and student ministries.
• Leadership of oversight/umbrella organizations that desire to more effectively inform the purposes and direct the activities of constituents.
• Best-practice thinkers, including university and seminary students.

First, I believe the tour can be a sending strategy for pastors. By sending key staff or lay leadership to the tour event, a pastor will be doing a lot to build up the body of believers to be more effectively and productively and passionately at work.

Here’s what I mean: A church has tremendous needs. Generally, people are very willing to step into needed roles, but they aren’t always able or right-fitted for those roles. What would it look like if people understood how God uniquely made them to come alongside him in specific purposes and places within the life of the church? Spiritual gifts assessments are often the first step in right fitting people to need. Behind that, the tour delineates key processes and filters that can bring about great revival of purpose.

Pastors will also get a fresh look at contemporary drivers for consumerism and its subtleties. They’ll discover new content for facilitating a campaign of thought in the church that will challenge staff and members of the congregation to become God’s brand giants—powerful image bearers—in the 21st century.

One of my favorite parts of the day is the time spent on strategic communication. A pastor will learn to become a more powerful strategic communicator with the ability to capture people for the vision God has given him.

I believe society suffers from a crisis of leadership. That statement is not about an absence of leadership. It’s about leadership capacity. Leaders today are burned out, tapped out and pushed and pressed and pulled in so many directions. What if we slowed down to really consider that God didn’t make us to be robots; he made us for his pleasure. He made us to bear his image, to love what he loves and hate what he hates, to live and work in the great power and sufficiency of his grip.

God knows we can’t do it all. He knows that when we spend time to understand how he uniquely made and called us, our God-given potential for significance explodes.

You’ll learn to

• Engage a comprehensive process to uncover or certify your organization’s God-given identity.
• Build differentiation and distinction around your identity, and inform, energize and mobilize those who are following you.
• Tightly narrow/edit organizational activities to become more strategic, directed, productive and effective. You’ll better understand how God is calling you to be a national-quality influence, creating more time and resource for significance.
• Plan and execute more productively and effectively. You can replace lengthy, unwieldy planning processes with solid “strategic campaigns” that have a clear result and timeframe for completion.
• Become a more powerful strategic communicator with the ability to capture and mobilize stakeholders for the vision God has given your organization. You’ll find your unique, God-given voice.
• Reengage critical stakeholders or redirect/remove board members, staff or volunteers who are not uniquely designed and called to be at work with you.
• Discern whether false narratives have taken you out of the game and put you on the sidelines.

On the traditional side of our business, we help companies and organizations build great brands. We know it is critically important not to lay a creative brand veneer on an organization. We know the best brands, powerful brands, are built when we spend the time to extract the brand DNA from the organization’s core. When we work to uncover the true genius of an organization and build the brand platform from that centerpiece competency, people get excited and the organization thrives and grows and affects the economy around it.

The same thing is true of Kingdom people in God’s Kingdom economy. When we understand that God uniquely designs and calls us to be at work in his purposes, when we begin to really see ourselves as God sees us and live out of that, the world around us is changed.

The personal motivation? We believe this is how God has designed and called the Creel Institute of the Strategy Group to be significant.