Greetings, Gargoyles and Gentledemons...
A prosperous New Year to all of you and best wishes and the Lord's blessing upon you for the coming year.
Passion 07 cannot be defined in words. Nevertheless, I shall endeavour to do it justice, which I assure you, I cannot. How does one describe the indescribable? It would be easier, almost, to try and fathom GOD HIMSELF.
We started out -- well, my church group did -- on Sunday morning, at an hour which not even the dead should be allowed to rise: 06.30am and drove to North Carolina, to stay at the palatial estate of a former member of our church before heading on to Atlanta on Monday, 01 January. The most memorable part of that first leg of the trip was dinner in Virginia. We stopped at Wendys, which in and of itself might not be much of anything. But as we were standing in line, a lady came in on a flaming rope to yell at the staff... right in front of us. What was said might stick for a long time, but as I said to another of our group, "at least she was clean in her language." Very easily might she not have been. We rang in the new year in style: with Dick Clark's Rockin' New Years Eve and then hit the sack.
The next day was more of the same, except we actually made Atlanta around maybe four in the afternoon and then had to drop everything to run and check in. The first session, I admit, dear readers, my attitude wasn't the greatest although not poor. I was curious more than anything because when my dear friend told me about Passion before the '06 Conference I got fired up then for this year's conference as it was too late to go last year when I did find out about it about a week before Christmas. The Philips Arena and the Georgia World Congress Center Arena across the street in Atlanta served as the main venues for this year's event. Philips is HUGE... and they all but packed it out and the Congress Center WAS packed out. I didn't loosen up during that opening session and I was rather hesitant to branch out even in the Community Groups which we were sent to thereafter, around about nine or so. Maybe closer to ten by that time.
The Community Group is the first breakdown into smaller groups at Passion. Each person is given two coloured bracelets. One is given to their whole group and signifies which arena they'll be in in the main session. The second is to define where they'll go to community group. They had so many groups this year, though, that they doubled up on colours and added "stripes". Mine was Striped Yellow. The back of the band, incidentally, had a white coating and the word "shine". If people want to know what that means, it can be a handy tool for opening a witness to them.
In my group's room in the Omni Hotel International Ballroom, we were split into eight-person family groups. As with any group, unfortunately, my timidity showed its ugly head again, but in this case, it's not necessarily a bad thing. I wouldn't say it served me right, because without it, I would never have been blessed to meet the seven people that I did. Sometimes waiting off and letting things happen can be to one's advantage and it certainly was with this one. As I would say later, one of the absolute highlights was to meet my "Family Group." All of the ones who stayed the course and the two that didn't quite still were blessings in ways that none of us may even know when we get to Heaven.
After the Family Groups got done we had latenights the first two nights. Those were fun. The artists who did the praise and worship in the community groups (some of them anyway) held full scale concerts. The first night, I went to see a group called LeeLand... though now I couldn't tell you honestly any of their songs. I didn't stay for the whole time, preferring to amble about. One group was a hip-hop group... another, the married couple (the Nockels) who led the worship in Striped Yellow community group. And there were still others. Shane & Shane would probably win the title as most popular group considering the lines I saw to get into their concert. I've never heard them, but the line made it a bit on the daunting side to want to go see them, though about half my church group did so.
Monday's most memorable moment was when my church group was in line for Taco Bell down in the CNN Center food court and we got all the way to the front and my van's driver -- a TB junkie if ever there was one who like cheesy gorditas and Baja Blast Mountain Dew -- found out they had NEITHER!
Tuesday was a good day, though we still got to our groups late. My driver didn't get up till eight and that was just too late to navigate the Atlanta morning rush to get to groups on time when we were staying 10 miles away in Smyrna, Georgia. We got to the point where he let us off about six blocks away and we still got there faster. He'd gone to Passion '06 in Nashville, Tennessee and saw the community groups and family groups as wastes of time. His loss. Without them, I would have felt really cheated out of the blessings I got even if it would have been my own fault. In the Family Groups, we focused on parts of Colossians as our studies, especially Col. 1.15-20, the theme of which is Christ's Preeminence over all.
That day, we had Beth Daniels as our speaker in the morning and Frank Chan in the evening. Bar none... including Louie Giglio, the main event organizer and head of 268generation, the organizing body of Passion... these two were THE BEST speakers of the whole conference. I say that though I have to admit... with all due respect to Beth, at the beginning she reminded me of a Saturday Night Live skit. But that was my own prejudice, sprung from having never seen her live and in action and I admit I was thoroughly wrong. But by comparison one to one, I liked Chan's message better. I took things away from both that I'll remember for a long time.
From Chan's message, I took away that we have an automatic invitation to the Throne... that we can and will sit on GOD's Throne WITH HIM if we exercise that invitation. And his comparison of crowds' noise at a Lakers' basket ball game with the same at Passion. It's amazing, I took away, that we can get so excited about an orange rubber ball dropping through a ring of steel... or a little vulcanized rubber hamburger into a net... but it takes so much more for us to get excited about the same thing with GOD, our Father and Creator. If we choose, we, HIS children, can accept GOD's invitation to sit with HIM on HIS throne, and that NOBODY messes with a Prince of the Realm of GOD... NOBODY messes with a Princess of the KING!
From Beth's message, I liked her analogy to the swinging arm of GOD. If you're going to stand up for yourself... speak up... FROM YOUR KNEES. If you're standing, you just might be in the way of said arm and get taken out yourself. Let GOD's arm take out the proud people who are persecuting you... just watch that you're not standing when it does swing or it'll take you out with it!
The breakouts were good... I went to one on Tuesday about Pornography because the other men in my accountability group from church went as well. I would rather have gone to one on theology, but I didn't. Oh well... my loss. Just before they got started, one of the guys in my group got a phone call and answered it and began talking in the middle of a dead-silent room and told the person on the other end exactly that out loud, causing a bunch of people to laugh. It eased the tension, I thought. Then on Wednesday I went to one on singleness in the Omni International Ballroom. According to the guy who led it, they had had to turn people away from it on Tuesday and judging by the crowd that was there Wednesday, I believe it. The room holds 1500 people. There had to be at least that many. I'd say probably closer to 1700. Every available spot seemed to be taken.
I didn't go to a late nite on Tuesday because I preferred to use that time to do my shopping instead. Not a bad choice, either. I managed to pick up four cd's and a pair of t-shirts. That and I really couldn't decide what I wanted to see. Another thing they had was the Graffiti Worship Wall, a huge... I don't know what exactly it was made of... giant windowshades maybe... of just worship and passion-oriented graffiti that participants could design on themselves with marker. Many did... I'd like to say probably a quarter or more. Unfortunately, I'm artistically challenged and didn't think i could make the design in my head come out on the paper. So I stayed away from it... my one regret of Passion. Oh well... live and learn and it doesn't matter if I'm 35 or 105 the next time a four-day Passion happens again if it ever does. I'm going and doing the wall, GOD willing.
Wednesday was probably the best day of the time we were there. Again we were late... but it was all good. My church's group was in the Congress Center for the morning main session and the man who spoke is the favourite of one of the other guys in my group. John Piper talked about the importance of sexual purity as I remember it. For me personally, he was okay, but not my favourite by any stretch of the imagination. Through no fault or cause of his own just my own personal preferences, I wouldn't jump at the chance to hear him again though he was good. My favourite part of that morning session was that we sang all the verses of Amazing Grace... including my favourite single verse in all of Christian hymnody:
"When we've been there ten thousand years
Bright shining as the sun, we've no less days
To sing GOD's praise than when we first begun."
The evening main session on Wednesday was Louie Giglio again talking. This time, he talked about what a party Heaven is going to be, and he threw out some impressive numbers about how many people are coming to Christ... and about the dearth of money and missionaries spent on unreached people groups. If the statistics are even CLOSE to correct, then about 3% of missionaries, operating on a total of 1% of the entire amount given to missions as a whole, are spent on that portion of the human family. The theme of Heaven being a great big party -- which is a nice mental picture when one thinks about it -- would repeat itself later on in the evening and the second of two of the most memorable moments in Passion for me. A second music main highlight happened during the David Crowder Band concert: they sang the Wesleyan hymn O For A Thousand Tongues to Sing intermixed with their own chorus every couple of verses.
After the evening Community Group time, we had been given special instructions as to what to do. Our Late Night that night wasn't in the Georgia World Congress Center. It was outside in the field between the Philips Arena and the Georgia Dome and it was one stage, all twenty-four thousand or so participants together. Against the high cement wall of the Congress Center was a silhouette of the Passion emblem. We marched silently carrying unlit candles to our destination where we had one last concert together. On the Jumbotron up by the stage, the words appeared something to the effect of "Look around you and imagine what Heaven will be like." Following a candle service and another concert we were dismissed to come back for the last Family Group time at nine in the morning, a little less than eight hours later.
It was probably the best and yet the saddest part of the entire time when we had to say goodbye to our Families. It is amazing to me how close eight people -- or six or whatever -- can become in groups like that. Sure, we never hung out... in fact, I only saw two members outside the family groups a total of two times... but I count myself blessed to have met those seven people. One question we were asked to ponder aloud with our groups was what was the one thing about Passion that meant the most to us. I could not separate which I liked more so I openly said that the previous night's late nite was tied with one other thing: the blessing of having met my Family group and that I desired to keep in contact with them. I still do, even if we never meet again in person this side of Heaven, although it is a prayer of mine that GOD does bless that way that we're able to meet again somewhere along life's paths. I would like to have gotten to know them all better... but unfortunately at the time it was not to be. May GOD bless that that be possible along the future. We did exchange email addresses, the six of us who made that final Family Group, and to the two that didn't, Josh and Caitlynn, you missed out! BIG TIME! :-)
The final main session and the close of Passion 2007 was the best praise and worship gathering I have ever witnessed and or been a part of. To see twenty-four thousand plus people worshipping as one body... as one spirit... of one mind... worshipping the One God, Three Persons yet unified as One... was indescribably amazing. Words cannot express in any language, because of the fallibility and limitations of the human mind, how awesome it was. The graffiti worship art was displayed in two towers that stretched from the floor of the Philips Arena almost completely to the roof. The final tallies for the fund-raising drives of passion were announced, and the crowd cheered as almost all of the goals were met and exceeded exponentially in a couple of cases.
The ones I remember: Seed money for One Verse translating the New Testament into the language of one unreached people group was so great that a translation into a language for a second people group was completely funded and a jump gotten on a third; A donor had pledged to match the number of surgeries funded by contributions of Passion participants... with the goal being that there would be a TOTAL of one hundred, fifty from Passion, fifty from the donor... and when all was said and done... Passion raised the money for ONE HUNDRED surgeries (most in the last day or so); At the invitation of the government of a Kurdish town in Iraq, missionaries will be building a "Freedom Center" -- akin I guess to a student center on American college campuses, correct me if I'm mistaken. Passion sold bricks for $10 each, hoping to raise $5000 through that method and blocks of bricks where they hoped to raise another $50,000... they raised over $100,000 for the Freedom Center; Passion has sponsored some African students to go to college and asked for donations toward that, an especially long-term commitment ($8,000 to $12,000 over four years)... and one of the other groups was blessed with so much money from the participants that they themselves decided to sponsor one of the students themselves through Passion's program.
All good things on this earth must come to an end, however, and at 12.52pm on the mostly sunny afternoon of 04 January 2007, Passion 07 officially came to a close as its final main session let out. There were hugs both at the end of the Family Session and the Main Session, promises to keep in touch -- some will be kept, some not -- and prayers for safe travel. There were probably some tears as well, as even now as I write this, a little over thirty-six hours later, I can feel the tightness in my chest over the emotions that threaten to well up inside me over Passion and how much GOD touched me there.
On the way home, my church mates and I had opportunities at length to discuss our feelings about Passion 07, the direction of the 268generation movement, our hopes and dreams for Passion-style gatherings in the future and what GOD had done for us and with us the previous four days. The twenty-hour drive also (in between bouts of sleeping) allowed us to expound upon our hopes for what we would like to see happen with our own walks to an extent, though on this topic we did not spend much time.
To My LORD, GOD ALMIGHTY: Thank YOU... Thank YOU so much for EVERYTHING. Thank YOU for giving Louie Giglio and the others the vision and passion for what they do. Thank YOU for creating the 268generation movement and sustaining it against all that they have had to strive against and through. LORD, bless them MIGHTILY as they go forth into a future that only YOU have charted at this time. I would not mind if YOU called me to work with them one day. Thank YOU for blessing me and allowing me to go and be blessed and ministered to in ways I could never even begin to comprehend were possible. Thank YOU for YOUR gift of salvation and eternal life... debts never able to be repaid. To YOU is due all Praise, Glory and Honour.
To any and all who read this who have ever gone to OneDay or Passion in any incarnation or ever will: I can truly tell you now from first-hand experience that we are richly blessed for our experiences. As Our Lord says in St Luke's gospel, "From everyone who has been given much, much will be required" (12.48, NASB). We have been given and blessed with SO much by our experiences there. May we ever use those blessings to bless others, whether they are fellow Passion alumni or not. If you have NOT been to a OneDay or Passion event of any kind... the next time you have a chance... GO! Your life will NEVER be the same!
To Louie Giglio and the rest of the 268generation team, I say a profound thank you. Words will never be enough to describe how much of a blessing you've been to me the last four days. Although I am not "college-age", I went to Passion this year and would go again no matter whom it was geared to, no matter what my age was. Thank you so much. You and your team are in my prayers.
And finally, to my Passion "family": Tara, Cam, Nene, Alex and Dana: You truly became my friends and you all blessed me over those four days. Thank you so much. God bless you all and may HE use you mightily. Take care and PLEASE... keep in touch.
Thank you dear readers for bearing with me. Your prayers are appreciated and you are thanked for them in advance. Know that you are in mine.
+Tim
