My experience at Cause Con is nothing short of catalytic. As a person seeking discernment for my life, going to Cause Con has transformed the course of my life not only in the way I walk with Jesus daily, but it has shaped the vision of what it means for me personally to follow Jesus for the long-haul.

I’ve been to several Cause Cons over the years, but the most recent time I attended in 2016 vastly stands out. In April of 2016, I was a student in the Heroic Leadership Institute and our class rode down together from Duluth to Kansas City. I had spent my first semester and half of HLI studying Missions and Church Planting and trying to discern what it would look like for me to embrace church planting as something Jesus wanted me to pursue. I had tons of resources in HLI to learn about how to do it, what it would look and feel like, but it wasn’t until the Cause Conference that God set my heart in a place to receive church planting not only as a call on my life but something He had designed me uniquely to do.

I would have been satisfied to have just gone to a conference, experience intimate worship with Jesus and gain some nuggets of wisdom from excellent leaders. But what I found in Kansas City was the Lord beckoning me, asking me to listen. He told me I wasn’t just another worker on assignment, but that I was His child who He wanted to go on an adventure with. He told me that He had crafted me to love people in a way that invites them further into the Kingdom of God, that despite what I or anyone else thought about my age, gender, ethnicity, or background, I was designed and now commissioned to be loved by Him and to lead other people into communities of love. My heart and desire to walk out my calling was transformed as I listened to the voices of other strong leaders casting vision for me and the Vineyard movement, to the voices speaking prophetically over my life, and to the voice of God as He spoke strong and sweet things over my identity.

Not all leaders are called to church plant, but all leaders are called to embrace their identities as friends of Jesus and discern God’s path for their life. Cause Con is a place where leaders can lean in, listen to the voice of the Lord, and be propelled by the promise and the mission of His love. It is most certainly the place to be for any leader in want of direction with their calling and affirmation of their value to God and His Kingdom.