less.

Surging or insurgent – depending on your point of view – he’s blessed with a visionary verbal arsenal and an abiding faith that’s piloted a unique career trajectory defying the typical hip-hop storyline. ‘The system may not have planned for this,’ wrote Vibe about Lecrae, ‘but it’s definitely coming around.’ “More caught than taught,” is how the artist describes his incredible journey that includes two Grammys, a history-making #1 album with his masterful 2014 offering, Anomaly (topped multiple categories, including the Billboard 200 and is RIAA Gold certified), and a compelling live resume, most recently notching a headlining 2016 ‘Destination’ tour which Lecrae says was about “real unity, not pretend unity.” He continues to thoughtfully engage the culture, reeling off a NY Times Bestseller (last year’s riveting memoir ‘Unashamed’) and a breakthrough spoken word performance at the BET Hip Hop Awards last fall that had the twittersphere heralding his arrival as truth-telling firebrand. BET hailed it as an “epic poem,” of “necessary affirmations.”

Lecrae relishes his purpose-driven career arc as inspired ‘catalyzer’ – going “from artist to architect” on the new album, widening the close-knit comfort zone of Reach Records (the label he co-founded) by partnering with Columbia Records and expanding his creative outreach. “I sought influences and collaborators I never imagined I’d have the opportunity to work with,” he says. The patient growth process was born out of a “gumbo” of more than 50 songs, “some to just get off my chest,” he says – “I don’t know if they were all meant to be heard but I know they were meant to be written.”

Katherine Wolf is an author, advocate, and co-founder of Hope Heals. After she survived a near-fatal brainstem stroke at age 26, her family’s journey through disability has become a public witness that good and hard can co-exist in the same story. Through caregiving, storytelling, and lived theology, Katherine is inviting others into a vision of hope, interdependence, and embodied resilience. She and her husband Jay live in Atlanta with their two sons.

Kelly M. Kapic (PhD, King’s College, University of London) holds the Honorary Chair of Theology and Culture at Covenant College in Lookout Mountain, Georgia, where he has taught since 2001. He is an author or editor of more than twenty books, including You’re Only Human and Embodied Hope, which each won a Christianity Today Book of the Year Award. In 2025 his devotional You Were Never Meant To Do It All and his more academic volume Christian Life each received awards by The Gospel Coalition. An active speaker and collaborator, Kapic has also worked on research teams funded by the John Templeton Foundation and has written for various academic journals and popular magazines, including serving on the Board of editorial consultants for the Journal of Spiritual Formation and Soul Care.

Kapic regularly speaks at Churches and conferences where he seeks to help God’s people better understand their faith so that they might grow in their love for God and neighbor. Kelly and his wife, Tabitha, live on Lookout Mountain. They have two adult children: Jonathan and Margot.

Trent Taylor is a Christ-centered speaker, author, and mental health professional whose life boldly reflects the redeeming power of God. After spending the first half of his childhood in foster care due to neglect, domestic violence, and sexual abuse, Trent experienced profound healing through God and the steadfast love of his adoptive family.

Today, at just 25 years old, Trent serves alongside his adoptive mom as Co-Founder and CEO of Watch Me Rise, equipping foster and adoptive families, churches, and professionals with practical tools and supports rooted in biblical truth. He also works directly with children and teens, mentoring, teaching, and walking alongside them in their healing journeys. Trent holds a B.S. in Family and Human Development, is a TBRI Practitioner and Board-Certified Master Mental Health Professional and is the author of four life-changing books that have impacted people around the world. Blending lived experience with professional expertise, Trent boldly proclaims that the Gospel is not only something we preach, but it is also something we embody in how we love and care for vulnerable children. Trent gives all the glory to God for his story and healing.

Génesis Miranda Longo grew up in Juan José Ríos, Sinaloa, Mexico, in a community shaped by poverty and violence. When her parents moved to Arizona to start over, she experienced what she now calls
philoxenos — the Greek concept of “love of the stranger.” Teachers who saw potential in her. Neighbors who invested in her future. Strangers who gave scholarships and opened doors to possibilities she couldn’t have imagined.

She became the first woman in her family to graduate high school and attended Cornell University, where she met her husband Auggie. After graduating with honors in 2018, she now works in Enterprise Marketing at Shopify.

In 2023, Génesis and Auggie opened their Austin home to international refugees and asylum seekers. One of those strangers was Kamdin, a 17-year-old Iranian refugee who had escaped his home country and journeyed through Latin America for over 40 days. What began as a temporary place to sleep became guardianship, and eventually adoption. In 2025, Kamdin — who had been abandoned by his birth mother at age 3 — officially became their son. He’s now a freshman at Huston-Tillotson University, studying mechanical engineering.

Génesis’s life is the story of strangers becoming family — and how love from strangers can break generational cycles and rewrite futures.

Inspired by deep compassion for others and informed from a Christian perspective, psychiatrist Curt Thompson shares fresh insights and practical applications for developing more authentic relationships and fully experiencing our deepest longing: to be known.

With a considerable dose of warmth (and surprising measure of humor), Curt weaves together an understanding of interpersonal neurobiology (IPNB) and a Christian view of what it means to be human — to educate and encourage others as they seek to fulfill their intrinsic desire to feel known, valued and connected. He understands that deep, authentic relationships are essential to experiencing a healthier, more purposeful life — but the only way to realize this is to begin telling our stories more truly.

Curt’s unique insights about how the brain affects and processes relationships help people discover a fresh perspective and practical applications to foster healthy and vibrant lives, allowing them to get unstuck and move toward the next beautiful thing they’re being called to make.

Through his workshops, speaking engagements, books, organizational consulting, private clinical practice and other platforms, he helps people process their longings, grief, identity, purpose, perspective of God and perspective of humanity, inviting them to engage more authentically with their own stories and their relationships. Only then can they can feel truly known and connected and live into the meaningful reality they desire to create.

Curt and his wife, Phyllis, live outside of Washington DC and have two adult children.

Annika Marek-Barta is a former foster youth who spent five years in the foster care system during her teenage years and early adulthood. At age 26, she was adopted as an adult, displaying the truth that we truly never outgrow the need to belong. Today, Annika is passionate about using her voice and creative abilities to advocate for foster youth. Her heart is to see seats added to tables as the lonely are invited into belonging.

Jedd Medefind loves journeying life with his wife, Rachel. He relishes wrestling matches with his five children—Siena, Marin, Eden, Lincoln, and Phoebe. Most of all, he desires to reflect the heart of Jesus Christ in all of life.

Jedd believes that love for orphans transforms. Both personally and through the example of countless others, he’s seen that lives are turned upside-down when Christians reflect God’s heart for orphans through adoption, foster care and global orphan care. This kind of love transforms not only orphans, but also those who open hearts and homes to them. Churches can be transformed as well, moving the entire community beyond self-focused religion to self-giving faith. Finally, when a watching world sees the Gospel embodied in this way, onlookers are transformed as well. Desiring to spur this kind of transformation through the Church, Jedd serves as President of the Christian Alliance for Orphans.

Prior to his this role, Jedd served in the White House as a Special Assistant to President George W. Bush, leading the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. In this post, he oversaw reform efforts across the government to make community- and faith-based groups central partners in all Federal efforts to aid the needy, from prisoner reentry to global AIDS. As described by the Harvard Political Review, these reforms “fundamentally changed the government’s strategy for improving the lives of the downtrodden…”

Previously, Jedd held a range of posts in the California State Legislature. He also helped establish the California Community Renewal Project, which strengthens nonprofits in some of the state’s most challenged communities. He has worked, studied and served in more than thirty countries, with organizations ranging from Price-Waterhouse in Moscow to Christian Life Bangladesh.

Jedd has written many articles and four books, including Upended and Four Souls. His most recent book, Becoming Home, offers a short yet meaningful exploration of how families and communities can embrace vulnerable children with wisdom and love through adoption, foster care, mentoring and more. Jedd is frequently interviewed for insight on effective care for vulnerable children, as well as other national and global issues, in outlets ranging from Christianity Today and The Gospel Coalition to the Wall Street Journal, NPR and Al Jazeera.

Jedd Medefind and his wife, Rachel, live near Washington, DC. They’ve welcomed children through birth, foster care and adoption.