For fifty glorious years, Mt. Hermon, a stunning Christian conference center just outside Santa Cruz, California, faithfully served the Christian writing community through their legacy conference. When the Pandemic came, this conference center, which has served hundreds of thousands of families, churches, youth, writers, and numerous organizations since its founding, was in jeopardy. Thankfully, they survived, but their operating model had to shift in order to weather the Pandemic years of no/little income. While Mt. Hermon has resumed hosting several of its own retreats and events, especially camps for youth in summer, the Pandemic did result in a permanent partial shift toward hosting events for outside groups for portions of the calendar year.

Mt. Hermon's writers conference, which was one of the first in the United States, had such a huge impact on the Christian writing and publishing community, so we couldn't let that die! One author, Robynne Elizabeth Miller, began working with Mt. Hermon to resurrect a similar conference as an outside group. The result? Vision is held with the full blessing and support of Mt. Hermon, and follows much of the legacy conference's model. But it is fully run and financially backed by Robynne and her husband, Ian, as an outside group.

We weren't sure what was going to happen as we first launched our conference right as the world started opening up again, but we trusted God was in it and so we moved ahead.

After several glorious years of successful ministry, in which many hundreds of writers from across the world (New Zealand, Mexico, Europe, Canada, etc.) have been inspired, educated, encouraged, and equipped through Vision, both Ian and Robynne are as committed to, and passionate about, serving the greater Christian writing community as they were when this all was just an idea five years ago.

Where are we now? Vision stands as a top-level writing conference filled with agents, editors, publishers, award-winning authors, world-class speakers, and a host of industry experts. And we're now looking to establish a sustainable model for this beloved conference that will extend far beyond the scope of the original founders.

Since its inception, Vision has been privately underwritten by Robynne and Ian. While the sizeable financial risk has been a ministry, it is not sustainable, nor transferrable. Vision currently entirely depends on both the financial backing of, and the skillset of Robynne and Ian, who run this conference with no salary or profit. So, we want this conference to continue to grow and flourish independently of any one person. Therefore, we are seeking to secure the continuation of this conference via a shift to a formal, endowed nonprofit. Doing so would mean the conference could continue into the future AND allow us to expand our ministry reach by opening up significantly more registration spots (It is currently a huge financial stretch/risk for Ian and Robynne to underwrite the current number of spaces). This would dramatically increase and multiply Vision's impact across the world.

As mentioned, Vision is staffed, administrated, and run entirely by volunteers and has been operating on a zero-profit model, including no salaries for the director or assistant director for all its years of running. This no-profit model (though not a formal nonprofit ... yet) has been in place to keep costs as low as possible to attendees, ensuring as many writers, creatives, and communicators have affordable access to excellent teaching, fellowship, and community.

In order of priority, we would use any monies received to: 1) secure our deposit for 2026, 2) begin the process of establishing Vision as a formal nonprofit, 3) Expand our contract to add more spots (which would both lower the cost per person due to economy of scale as well as fundamentally expanding our reach), and, whatever we receive beyond that would go to establishing an endowment used to secure future conferences. 

We've been blessed with speakers like Bill Myers, James Rubart, David A.R. White, Tricia Goyer, and Robin Jones Gunn, etc., and world-class worship with Thunderstorm Artis and The Voice winner, Todd Tilghman. We even had Broadway performer, Nyla Watson, on faculty this year, and she gave us a bonus mini concert! Our ever-rotating faculty has included Christie Hall of Fame authors, best-selling and award-winning authors, and top experts in all facets of publishing. We have been blessed with the highest standard of teaching, spiritual input, mentorship, and worship.

We would deeply appreciate your prayerfully considering partnering with us to continue this important ministry to Christian writers, which, in turn, has huge impact on the world.

Thank you ... truly.