Passion '07: part 3

During Passion, the students were challenged to "Do Something Now", and were asked to get involved NOW in one of 8 different tangible activities. You can read about what they were challenged with and how they responded here. There were some financial and some non-financial activities, and the students far exceeded all their goals in every category.

In terms of financial giving, by the last morning of the conference, the students had collectively given something in the neighborhood of $700,000. Wow.

But that's not all! (eww...that feels like an infomercial sound bite)

On the last morning of the conference, Louie spent the first part of the main session reviewing what the students had collectively accomplished through the Do Something Now challenge and then talked a little about their vision for the future. There will not be a Passion '08 conference (and probably not a Passion '09) as one main gathering. They are moving into a new phase...or, as Louie put it, the sails of the boat called "Passion" have been filled by a new wind. And that wind is taking them to the students who can't get to Atlanta, or Nashville or Sherman, Texas very easily. Loosely, they plan to do mini-events...in a LOT of different places. Some of those places are in the States...but many are not. And in some of those international locations, they hope to offer the conferences for free. I'm doing this such little justice. Louie's words were much more intense and purposeful and rich than mine...

Regardless...their initial projections are that it will take a few million dollars to make this happen. So, at the worst possible time to take an offering (after they've encouraged the students to give to OTHER ministries throughout the entire conference), they took an offering to start raising the funds needed to follow the global wind.

Now...one of the side jobs that our team had been given was to help receive the offering. All we had to do was wait for the cue (one of the Passion board members to pray for the offering) and we walked quietly to the front of our sections and just held up the bucket we were given so the students could come to us.

They streamed into the aisles like a river. And I was overwhelmed. I'm SO not cute when I cry, but tears were streaming down my face at a pace I usually manage to reserve for the most private of moments. But I didn't care. A few poor sweet college students felt compelled to capture the moment on film, and now have a fairly rough-looking picture of a random volunteer who isn't so fabulous at crying...but whatever. It's not about me.

One of the last things I got to do as a volunteer was be in the small group of people who helped count that offering. The room was silent. Partly because we needed to be in a serious mood; you just don't joke around when you're dealing with that much cash. But mostly I think we were just in awe.

The offering they took that morning was $256,000. Double wow.