This vision was birthed in the year 2000 as Crossover Church became a national model for effective urban ministry. This initially happened when Pastor Tommy “Urban D.” Kyllonen released his first national Hip-Hop album “The Missin’ Element”. The inside of the album cover had pictures and information about our youth ministry, concerts and outreach. People starting calling us, emailing us and visiting us from all over the world to see what we were doing. People were hungry for urban ministry resources.

We launched our first conference in the year 2000 and have since hosted more than 20 conferences with people attending from all over the world. We have trained over 5,000 leaders. The conference general sessions and workshops feature the Crossover Church staff along with some of the leading voices in innovative urban ministry. 

Flavor Fest is also widely known for the evening Festival Hip-Hop Concerts. It is known as the largest gathering of Christian Hip-Hop in the world as hundreds of artists and music industry representatives converge at the event along with thousands of music fans. The evening festival includes 2 stages, a beat battle, break dancing competition, graffiti expo, spoken word event, vendors expo and the top names in Christian Hip-Hop along with up and coming indies.  

The entire event is hosted at Crossover Church in the Uptown Innovation District in Tampa, Florida. The church is located in a former Toys R’ Us store that they uniquely converted into a church. Crossover has been listed as one of the most innovative churches in America and is known for its creativity in music, preaching and outreach.