Marcell said that people who attend a Life Surge event can expect to experience “a powerful atmosphere” where they will “hear from leaders in the thought space that they represent—some of the most powerful communicators, the most passionate about what God is doing in and through their lives.”
“I don’t believe anything really significant happens in a person’s life without first being inspired,” he said. “You have to have that vision, you have to know that [sense of], ‘Hey, God’s not done with me. God wants to use my life.’ And so we definitely want to speak to that in the course of the day.”
“But we also believe that the church has been over-inspired and under-equipped. So once I’m inspired and once I have vision and I have a sense of purpose, how do I go and do it?” Marcell continued. “And so they also can expect to have practical application on how to take next steps, to go create resources: Why would you create resources? How do I leverage my resources for the glory of God?”
“So, it’s all in this context of both inspiration and activation,” he explained. “I’m inspired; now I take action.”
“And then of course there’s going to be powerful worship,” Marcell added.
How Life Surge Is Making Kingdom Impact
Marcell was clear that Life Surge is not a ministry and has never “taken a penny of donations from anyone.”
“Yet this year alone at our events, we’ve seen over 15,000 people give their hearts to Jesus,” he shared, pointing out how Life Surge is living out its own mission. “We’ve donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to organizations like YouVersion and others that are getting God’s Word into the hands of people across the globe.”
“We believe that the business community has a powerful advantage, that when you create, you can impact,” said Marcell. “And so we want our events to model that, and we want as an organization to not just talk the talk, but walk the walk.”
The number of people who are giving their lives to Christ at Life Surge events “was one of the most surprising things for us, to be honest with you, because we had no intention of necessarily doing a gospel presentation when we first started,” Marcell shared.
However, at one event, Nick Vujicic wanted to give a presentation of the gospel, “and we had a pretty significant response,” said Marcell. “I’m ashamed to say we didn’t think about it [prior to that]. We should have, probably.” But leaders initially thought of Life Surge as a “Christian business event.”
“After that,” Marcell said, “I don’t think we ever have done another event where we didn’t give people an opportunity.”
“I think in the last 12 months, it was 20,000 people that have given their hearts to the Lord, and then 15,000 just since January of 2025,” said Marcell.
