Discern
& Build

Teaching, live builds, lunch roundtables, and a hands-on workshop where you build one working thing for your ministry with a coach nearby. Got an idea for the open-source project we build for Portland's churches? Propose it when you register.

Executives and department leads of established ministries working out how AI fits their organization — strategy, policy, and practice.

Pastors and staff carrying an operational need worth solving — and ready to learn a better way.

Christian nonprofits and mission organizations needing leverage without a tech team.

You direct the AI; it does the building. We teach the working approach we use every day — and we'll send the exact tools and setup instructions to install ahead of time.

Jim is a software engineer, entrepreneur, and investor who has been creating software for over twenty years, and holds a master's degree in AI. Most recently he founded Dronelink, a startup offering flight automation for drones. Jim takes interest in theology, Austrian economics, political philosophy, and natural law and is currently coding seven major software projects thanks to advances in AI. He is an avid skier and enjoys playing music, smoking meat, and living with a low time-preference. As an ordained ruling elder in the PCA, Jim serves as the worship leader of his local church.

Clayton Henry is a Harvard-educated U.S. Army veteran and software engineer focused on designing and operating complex, high-stakes systems. His work centers on production-grade AI, architectural clarity, and durable system design, and includes published research and patented approaches in applied AI and secure networking. As co-founder of viaforge.ai, he partners with organizations navigating consequential decisions around AI adoption and governance. He lives in St. Petersburg, Florida, with his son Cash, and enjoys music, writing and other long-term creative projects.

Ronald is a technologist who has been playing with machine learning since 2016. With over a decade of experience of engineering at Intel and now operating as an independent Bitcoin and AI Consultant, he loves building novel solutions and learning the new tools that this AI Renaissance brings to offer — including the latest frontier models and the leading edge of self-hosted AI tools.

Thomas is the lead pastor of Trinity Church of Portland — the church hosting Discern & Build — and the founder of Humble Beast, a record label and ministry. A spoken-word artist and member of Beautiful Eulogy, he writes and speaks on creativity, discipleship, and the Christian life, bringing creativity and theology together to glorify the God who made both. He also does AI integration consulting for several major Christian organizations, and at the conference he frames a Christ-centered vision for using technology and creativity well.

John Buckingham is a product leader and builder based in Vancouver, WA, working at the intersection of product strategy and applied AI as Senior Product Manager at Buzz Health. He designs and operates multi-agent AI systems — building custom MCP servers and wiring tools together to deliver real-world outcomes — including a fleet of specialized agents and browser automation. His current project, Magellan, is a knowledge-graph pipeline for agentic deep research. Earlier he founded the Portland agency Pancake Creative and led product at Visiting Media.

Jason is a University of Florida graduate and former Accenture leader with over a decade architecting and delivering enterprise-scale digital systems — translating complex business needs into durable solutions that run reliably at scale. As co-founder of viaforge.ai, he brings that same enterprise-grade rigor to AI, helping organizations move past the hype to build systems that deliver sustained impact. He lives in St. Petersburg, Florida, with his wife and two young boys.

Ahshuwah is the founder and executive director of Brilliance Labs, a Portland innovation lab putting bright ideas to work across the full spectrum of God's mission. Through its Ignite AI Consulting arm he helps churches, ministries, and nonprofits adopt AI with discernment — keeping prayer, people, and faithful stewardship at the center. A systems thinker and builder, he led the AI optimization of Brilliance Labs itself, integrating Claude across the organization's operations — the budgeting process, bookkeeping, donor management, event coordination, and a full website rebuild. At the conference he'll do two things: teach the Christ-Centered AI Framework, and share a case study on implementing AI in a small-nonprofit context.

Ted leads data engineering, analytics, and data science at Ligonier Ministries, one of the most trusted teaching ministries in the world — and he's at the front edge of Ligonier's hands-on exploration of AI, prototyping tools that serve the ministry's mission. He's seen firsthand how one relevant problem plus one guided build experience gets a ministry leader off to the races, and that conviction is exactly what he brings to the room.

John joins the conference from Ligonier Ministries, where a serious commitment to leading well with AI is already taking shape. He's helping chart what AI-equipped ministry looks like for large, established organizations — and he'll be in the room, learning and building alongside everyone else.

Thank you — your seat is confirmed and you're all set. Watch your email for your confirmation and next steps for Wednesday, Sep 30 at Trinity Church of Portland. Questions? hello@brilliancelabs.org.

Your seat is locked in. We’ll reach out within one week to schedule your free 30-minute project coaching session.

One moment — finalizing your registration.