Over the past couple of days, I’ve been processing my thoughts from Passion 2020. I gave a general introduction, and then a bit of backstory that explains how I think conferences, retreats, and camps fit into a continual pattern of Christian growth. You don’t need to read either to make sense of what follows but you’ll enjoy it more if you do. And it might help to read about the first three sessions before this one.
As I said last time, I’m giving my general highlights, not necessarily a blow by blow account. I don’t take notes at things like this, or really anywhere for that matter. I have a good memory, and I think it’s more important that I actually remember what you say rather than that I write it down. Active listening though is a lost art, but I digress
Session 4: Ravi Zacharias
I’ve heard Ravi Zacharias before, and I also knew his name wasn’t Robby, so I immediately had an edge on the students. His accent takes a bit to get used to, and at this point it was after 3pm. On its own that’s gonna be the low point of the day, but this was a room full of people who had been up well past midnight the night before and sitting in a football stadium since 9am or earlier. Thankfully they had the air cranked so it was freezing.
I’m gonna be honest, I’m not sure what his main point was. I was thrown for a bit when we started saying there was two main theories of truth when there are actually three (correspondence, coherence, and pragmatic). He left off the latter, which is honestly the one that most of the students in the room probably inadvertently adopted since its the air you breathe on a college campus.
In short, it’s the view that truth is what works. Its the underlying philosophical foundation of being able to say things like “true for you.” If that works for you, then it’s true for you, but it might not be true for me. On the other hand, if truth corresponds to reality, then it is a public good that we all have access to and saying “true for you” is nonsense.
As you can see, Zacharias went pretty philosophical for a room of sleepy college students. Not that he got into this theory of truth, but he talked about the others a bit, as well as the importance of moral philosophy and how we as humans have dignity. We bear the God in a general sense by being made in his image, but in a particular sense by being gifted for specific callings.
If I had to fit his talk into the overarching theme and structure of the conference, it was to underscore the importance of the individual as someone created in God’s image. At the same time, he didn’t really preach per se, and it wasn’t like a TED talk with a clear point (that I remember). It was more like if you asked if I’d read anything interesting recently and then I talked to you for 45 minutes straight and you followed about 50% of what I was saying even though you politely smiled and nodded the whole time.
Session 5: Louie Giglio
In typical Passion fashion, Louie bats cleanup. Everyone had taken a dinner break after Ravi and those of us with means and street smarts hopped in a van and drove up the road lest we have to wait in line for 2 years to get food.
Several of the previous speakers had used interactive visual aids, which I failed to mention because you can watch this YouTube video and actually see them. You can actually, now that I’m writing this, watch all of the session on YouTube and you’ll notice the headings are links. Louie’s had a pretty interesting visual aid reveal, so it’s worth watching, although really only up until the reveal because he really belabored and dragged it out after that.
In short, he starts his message by talking about turning the page as its a new year. After fleshing that out for a bit, a giant book is exposed at the back of the floor space and then he proceeds to have several pages turned. You should really watch it unfold to get the full effect, here is the moment it happens.
What he says after the first reveal about defeat is worth watching as well, rather than me recapping it for you. His ultimate landing point was that if we want to see God turn more pages in our life we need to turn more pages in his book.
This is a great place to underscore how Passion works, because Louie is 100% correct about that. However, that was at the end of his message and he didn’t give any concrete explanation about to go about turning pages in general or even turning pages in The Book. I had students complain about this, and so I pointed out that he needs to be as vague as possible to it applies to as many of the 65000 students as possible. But, when they’re on the van ride home and they want to explore it more, they should have faithful leaders who know a thing or two about turning pages.
Ultimately, Passion helps point out the way, but leaders do the daily work of discipleship that actually helps students grow.
Session 6: Shelley Giglio
Session 6 was the last, and like the previous morning, had two speakers. Shelley led things off with a recap from the giving from the night before, which was for Bible translation. That was also a push when I went in 2007, although clear progress had been made. By that, I think we’ve cut the people groups who need the Bible in their language in half. Not the people themselves mind you, but the total number of people groups without a Bible.
After that, the bulk of her talk was fairly autobiographical. We found out about how her and Louie met and got together, as well as how their ministry started.
In the course of telling us all that, she made two key points. One was that we should realize that we can ask God for things, and we should in fact do so. She encouraged everyone from her own personal example to ask God for wisdom.
The other was that you don’t know how God will work through the years to build things through your faithfulness. She used Passion as the obvious example as 30 something years ago they couldn’t have imagined filling Mercedes-Benz Stadium with college students mobilized to serve Jesus. And yet, that’s what God has done through their faithfulness in ministry over these past decades.
This provided a good bookend to Levi’s message from the first night about playing the long game. But, because she was fairly chill as a speaker, they needed someone hype to close things out.
Session 6: Tim Tebow
I thought we were gonna get a special appearance from Kanye West at this thing, but instead we got the Kanye West of minor league baseball, i.e. Tim Tebow.
I wanted to make a joke to Ali about having Tebow close it out because he’s used to things ending in Atlanta, but I refrained until now. While I respect what Tebow does with his platform, he’s always a Gator quarterback in mind which makes him an adversary.
Ok, I think I’m done.
Nope, one more thing. Tebow made the only really obvious slip-up in his message. There was a point where Louie was talking about the Greek word “Nikas” but had “Nike” (in Greek) on the screen. That’s close enough since the point he was making was unchanged.
Tebow on the other hand took us to Philippians, and then made a point about something he read saying “rejoice” can also mean “take confidence in.” So he then proceeded to re-read that early part of Philippians 4 substituting that phrase for rejoice.
This would work, except that the underlying Greek word for “rejoice” in Philippians 4 doesn’t mean that. A different Greek word that translates into English as “rejoice” can do that, and Romans 5 provides a good example.
At the end of the day, it’s not heretical or even really a wrong overall point. It’s just a word study fallacy that people who are untrained make regularly and I might even blame whatever study Tebow read rather than him. Whoever he read didn’t do their homework while he was clearly putting in the reps to do his.
Aside from that, his ultimate point was that we should pursue significance over success because the later can only apply to us but the former involves other people. I think you should pursues both, but only if you leverage success for significance, so I suppose significance is the ultimate aim. And in that we take confidence that our God will supply our every need as we pursue that day by day.
Now, having talked about all the sessions, I should talk about the conference as a whole, and that entails some thoughts on the stage, the songs, and the spectacle of it all.