Last year my team and I created a new volunteer conference called Illuminate. You can read about what we did here, here and here. Essentially, the idea was to create an incredible experience for our volunteers at Gateway. Many times I’ve walked out of an incredible breakout at a national conference and said, “Wow! I wish all my volunteers had experienced that!” Unfortunately, most churches can’t provide a “national conference” experience for all the volunteers… unless that church brought the national conference to their volunteers. That’s what Illuminate is.
On Saturday, November 12, 2011, Gateway Church in Austin, TX will host Illuminate for the second time. I’m expecting 600-800 kidmin volunteers/staff for this incredible experience. The breakout and speaker lineup is amazing!
But wait… there’s more!
Last year when doing Illuminate in Austin, I had a thought. Illuminate is a huge blessing for kidmin volunteers in Central Texas. Why limit it to just Central Texas? Once all the content and program is developed, doing it again in a new location isn’t really that much work, right?
So on Saturday, August 27, 2011, Westwood Church in Birmingham, AL will host the first Illuminate Conference outside the great state of Texas. How exciting is that? We’ll pack in the same great stuff that made Illuminate successful in Texas, but serve it up Southern Style.
But wait… there’s even more!
Last year I recorded every session and breakout of Illuminate. I intend to record every session and breakout from Birmingham and Austin in 2011 as well. So, what am I going to do with all this great video content? You guessed it. Illuminate is going online. I don’t have specific dates and details yet, but plans are underway and concrete dates will be set this summer. I truly believe in what is happening with Illuminate. I don’t know of any other experience of this magnitude focused at equipping volunteers. Not everyone can get to Austin or Birmingham… but this video content can help anyone, regardless of where they’re coming from.
This year for Illuminate, I’ve gathered some of the greatest minds in Kidmin: Jim Wideman, Sam Luce, Jonathan Cliff, Gina McClain, Dan Scott, Matt McKee, Amy Fenton Lee, Michael Chanley and more to be announced. That’s a Kidmin Powerhouse!
So, whether you live in Texas or Alabama (or within a couple ours of the locations) or whether you have a computer with high speed internet, plan to connect with Illuminate this Fall. It could be exactly what you’re volunteers need most. Stay tuned for more details soon.
Don’t hesitate. Click here to visit the illuminateconference.tv
Click here to follow Illuminate on twitter
Click here to visit Illuminate on facebook
Awesome. I cannot tell you how excited I am about this! It is so cool to see how your vision for this is growing.
Now I need to go change my pants.
Jared, you should have just done what I did- read this post while sitting on the toilet! That’s true kidmin ingenuity right there! Probably due to my Illuminate 10 attendance no doubt!
That is an awesome lineup of speakers! And I’m thrilled about the online videos.
Is the live online, or download? I’d definitely like to get this streamed live if possible and show it at my church. Would the fee be a set rate or a per person fee?
Looks to be a great conference, if I’m able to stream it for my volunteers and others in our city and area I’ll be participating that way… if not… see you there! 🙂
Love how you think, Kenny! I’m excited for you and your team. I’m even more excited for the numbers of volunteers that will be blessed by what you are doing!
NIFTY!
This is great! The MomentumKids vols will be at the Birmingham event! Thanks!!
Woo hoo!
Making the conference available online is the best!! It is difficult for teachers to find time and/or extra money to travel to workshops. This will open a whole new level of excellence for local church vol training! Love it! The end result…..better equipped teachers in small churches as well as large!
Awesome! I have been looking for a way to get my Sunday AM Staff trained, but we definitely don’t have the budget to travel and pay big fees to attend. But if we can have all our Volunteers come to our own church and put it up on the big screen, HOW AWESOME! Thank you so much for making this available, God is sure doing some awesome things and this was a big answer to prayer!