CrossCon is a traditionally missions-focused conference for young people (ages 18-25). Our church has been going since 2019, and although the conference was originally every 2 years, they recently switched to a yearly format instead, and growth seems to be significant. Apparently, there were 10,000 attendees in 2024, but that number increased to 15,000 in 2025. It was crowded.
There were 3 main things to do at the Conference. They had Main Sessions, Breakout Sessions, and an expo center/book store.
We got there mid-day Thursday, and after signing in, the first thing was a main session at 2. We sang (led by Worship Initiative), listened to a sermon, watched some announcements/advertisements for various groups who sponsored us, sang more, and listened to a panel of people talk. The sermon was done by Garrett Kell, and he focused on the rich young ruler and comparing us to him. There were multiple people from our group who liked that a lot, but I don’t remember it that well because it was the first thing 🫤. The panel for that session featured Kevin DeYoung, Rosaria Butterfield, and Garrett Kell, and the focus was on “gouging out your eye” to fight sin. It was very good. I’d never really heard Rosaria Butterfield before, but she was a very good speaker throughout the conference. Every main session was about 2.5 hours long.
After that, we had time to grab dinner. We had meal plans included so we made a short (cold) walk to grab it, and walked back to sit on the floor and eat lol. I believe we checked out the expo center at this point as well. That was an awesome place. It was a very big room with a ton of different Christian “vendors” that you could see and talk to, ranging from groups that focused on sending missionaries to extreme places to book providers like Crossway. There were several books being given away, and I came home with a lot of pamphlets as well. The bookstore in the same room was awesome. Many of the books were ridiculously cheap ($1-$2), and almost all were discounted in some way. I ended up walking out with probably 5 books on the first day.
The second Main Session at 7 on Thursday featured more singing, a sermon by John Musyimi where he focused on the Queen of Sheba and her visit to Solomon. I remember his 4 points were “1. She came, 2. She saw, 3. He conquered, 4. Jesus is greater than him.” I thought he did a very good job. We also heard the testimony of a young lady who had attended a past CrossCon, and concluded with an interview of John Piper. This is another one that I don’t remember super well, but I remember it being good and funny. There was an optional event later in the night, but we decided to head to the hotels. There, we sat in the lobby and discussed the events and sermons of the day, referencing our numerous notes and trying to overcome our tiredness. I was in bed around 12:30 that night.
Friday morning, I awoke at about 7, ate breakfast, and we were at the center by probably 8:30 or so. The first official event was at 9, but there was an optional prayer meeting earlier that we declined to attend.
We opened this 3rd main session with a brief devotional by John Piper (that is hazy in my memory), singing, more announcements, 2 sermons, and a panel. The first sermon was by Trip Lee on the necessity of church, which was good but not outstanding. The second sermon was by Mez McConnell on loving your neighbor, but I remember it more for its ending and his focus on loving Christ. He mentioned many different reasons one might come to CrossCon, but concluded by throwing them all out and stating that our main focus during the conference should be loving Christ more. The more I think on this talk, the better I think it was and I think it made an impact on me at the conference. The panel in this session featured 5 people: John Musyimi, Mez McConnell, Jonathan Leeman, Gloria Furman, and Keri Folmar. The focus of this session was on the necessity of the local church in missions. It doesn’t stand out to me as particularly great, but it wasn’t bad either.
Afterwards, we grabbed lunch and browsed the expo center again, although no books were purchased this time.
At 2 were the first of the Breakout time blocks, where there were 7 themes in 7 different rooms, and most of which had 4 30 minute talks, with some including hour long talks instead. We initially tried to enter a smaller room which was themed around Loving God, but it was unfortunately full by the time we made it there. We instead went to an hour long Rosaria Butterfield talk on modesty, followed by an hour long talk by Sam Ferguson on Christlikeness and finding identity in today’s culture. Both were very good, although one was more applicable to me than the other 😅.
By now you know the drill, another meal and then the final Main Session of the day.
This Main Session, the singing was led my Shane & Shane, and it was phenomenal. David Platt did a 50-point talk on the Holy Spirit and His work (which was quite difficult to take notes on). I’d never heard him before either, but I enjoyed listening. There was another interview-type panel where the interviewee was Brad Buser, and although it has grown on me after consideration, I think it was my least favorite talk of the conference. After a couple other things, the highlight of the whole conference began. It was an hour of singing with 15,000 people led by Shane & Shane. This was absolutely incredible. Almost everyone we went with seemed to think this was their favorite time of the conference. I think it may be worth going to the conference just for that experience alone. I’m not sure how to describe just how wonderful this experience was, but I hope I remember it for a very long time. That must be what heaven will be like one day.
We got back to the hotel pretty late, so we took the time to pray in the lobby but didn’t discuss much, and went up to our rooms. This was a very good day.
Saturday, the final day, breakout sessions started at 9, which would be followed in the afternoon by the final Main Session and dismissal.
Everyone in our group wanted to be at the same group of breakout sessions, which was themed on dating and marriage, so we arrived almost an hour early to save our seats. Unfortunately, we concluded that the room would be full by the time it was our turn in line, so we couldn’t attend those breakouts. We instead went and saw another Rosaria Butterfield talk (she was in the biggest room so it was easy for us to access). I thought she did another fantastic job with this talk, which was on hospitality. She focused on how important Christian hospitality was to our neighbors, even ones we don’t like, and I left her talk feeling very inspired to be more welcoming. She demonstrated this hospitality with an example from her own life and her family’s hospitality towards the most hated man in the neighborhood, who was eventually jailed. There are more details there, but I’ll leave them out for now. She was followed by another David Platt talk on focus, smartphones, the internet, spiritual health, and the necessity of the Bible. “Focus” was actually the main theme of the conference this year, so this was fitting. This was a motivating talk and I find I’m wasting less time on my phone after hearing it.
We ate lunch for the last time in the convention center and visited the expo again. This time, I walked out with about 6 more books, feeling proud and defeated at the same time.
The final session of the conference included a sermon by Kevin DeYoung, more singing (although no Shane & Shane), a panel about planting churches in foreign countries, and a closing sermon by John Piper. Kevin DeYoung’s sermon was fine, where he talked about how the focus of the Great Commission is on the spreading of the church in individuals, not making entire nations Christian nations, but I found it a little bid muddled in its delivery. The point wasn’t clear enough at the end, I don’t think. The panel was not very memorable, but it was fine. John Piper’s closing sermon was quite good. He spent his time on 5 main points, featuring truths such as the eternity of every person, the places of heaven and hell, and such matters of eternal weight. I found comforted in my perceived role as a sender (instead of a goer) after hearing him, but he also made human souls and sharing with them extremely important. The conference concluded with Piper asking everyone who felt called to be missionaries and who would commit to asking for guidance from a local church to stand. No one from our church group stood. We then prayed over the ones who did stand and the conference concluded with a final group of songs.
Overall I would say that while the theme of CrossCon throughout the years has been missions, I would say it has a tint of missions but is quite applicable to every Christian. Some others from our group seemed to think that this conference was focused on missions less than previous years, and this perception may have been aided by the fact that we didn’t attend any missions-focused breakout rooms. As my first time there, I found the whole trip very edifying and encouraging, including the car rides there and back, and would definitely recommend to almost anyone. I will say that although I came and left the conference with the perception that my role in the church is not to be a missionary, my feelings did end up a bit mixed during the conference, so that may be something to expect. It is a very emotional experience, which included positives and negatives, but on the most part is positive. I also didn’t expect the speakers to talk so much to the lost people in the congregation, as I assumed that it would be mostly Christians but I do think that was a good decision on their part. Based on the testimonies of people on stage and further consideration, I think the crowd was less Christian in its majority than I originally assumed, although no doubt being surrounded by Christians everywhere. It just shouldn’t be expected that almost everyone attending is a believer. I am so thankful I got to attend and go with the people that I did, and I hope and pray the seeds planted there will grow into fruit even after the emotions die down.
That’s my initial overview. I anticipate writing more about the conference, including (hopefully) deeper dives on some of the talks and more takeaways soon (although I commit to nothing).
Link to all sessions and breakouts:
https://www.crosscon.com/livestream