This June, leaders and changemakers from across the world assembled at the Love Your City Conference to discuss, workshop, and go out into Missional Creativity. The theme for this year, Missional Creativity focuses on first, God, the creator, who has launched a rescue mission to recover and redeem the brokenness across the world. It is part of His missional creativity, then, to include each one of us in the story to not only be recovered ourselves, but to go out to help, serve, and love others, too.
Day one of the conference opened with Jerry White, the International President Emeritus of The Navigators. White showed footage from the 60’s during his time at Cape Canaveral working on missiles, saying “God never fails… but man, his creation does”. Failure and discipline are critical parts of stepping out into creativity, and through White’s words, we learned about the various elements, perspectives, and challenges of it that ultimately allow us to create in God’s image.
Following up, author John Stanko continued the first morning session with the importance of your unique purpose when it comes to God’s missional creativity. He shared his own purpose story and how he realized that “You have a purpose, something for you to do that only you can do, something for you to be that only you can be, and the good news is, God wants you to know what it is.”
Fueled from the inspirational speakers in the morning session and conversation over a short lunch, conference attendees continued into the various workshops offered that day centered around Missional Creativity and its specifics for young people, marketplace leaders, and missional leaders. With conversations around generosity, caring for and developing your employees, purpose, and making the most of your “splashzone,” we were just getting started unpacking Missional Creativity for each of our own lives.
Day one ended with Recording Artist, Songwriter, and Award-Winning Author, Andrew Peterson sharing hisSongs & Stories. Peterson’s songs touched those within the audience as he wove in anecdotes from his own faith journey with humorous flair.
Keeping the ball rolling, day two opened up with Tyler Prieb, a missiologist, pastor, and entrepreneur. Prieb focused on renewing our “Missional Imagination” and how we need to follow in the footsteps of Jesus who “closed the [Missional] gap between God's love and the people that needed it.” He illustrated this through the stories of Phillip the Evangelist who was full of spirit and wisdom.
Next we faced the upside-down reality that oftentimes the hardest moments lead to deep, critical creativity across the world. In a panel titled, “Impossibilities to Innovation,” leaders from around the world shared first-hand accounts of what young people are facing in slums, refugee camps, and post-COVID realities. Oftentimes, young people are often forgotten people, but they are actually the agents of change the world’s most painful and pressing issues need.
After another motivating round of workshops following the second morning session, conference attendees came together later that evening for Barbecues and Conversations. Gathering as communities of practice, young leaders, marketplace leaders, and missional leaders shared what they face in their “playing fields” of schools, workplaces, and neighborhoods
Taking what they learned from the first two days, conference attendees, including members from the twelve Boy With a Ball teams across the world launched into action across local Love Your City communities. Splitting into small groups, everyone had the chance to meet someone new and step out into missional creativity at work in the community. As an exciting part of the largest Love Your City ever, outreach into a new neighborhood launched alongside the vivid work happening in the current Gwinnett Love Your City community. Afterwards, everyone gathered for latin food at Plazas Las Americas to share their experiences from walkthroughs.
The Love Your City Conference concluded with a Night of Mission, Friendship, and Generosity. After sharing stories of how the Lord weaves others into our lives and our lives into the lives of others, we commissioned the goers, those who are called as boots-on-the-ground to go our and impact communities, the givers, those who generously give their irreplaceable contribution to make world-change possible, and the gone-to's, those who are reached and launched as leaders in their cities.
Our largest and certainly one of the most exciting conferences yet, this year’s LYCCon was an important gathering place, celebration, training ground, and launching pad for global leaders who have many, many different spheres of influence but a shared part in the calling to turn the world upside down with the life we have found.
Do you want to be part of a global movement of passionate leaders who learn and grow together more than they could apart? Do you know you have a unique role in your workplace, church, school, or community? Do you want to discover the deeper side of what that means? The Love Your City Conference is for you. Rewatch sessions and workshops from LYCCon 2024 and make sure you’re there for the Love Your City Conference 2025!
