Louie Giglio: The Passion Movement
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LOUIE GIGLIO leads the global Passion movement started in 1997 and in 2005 founded Passion City Church in Atlanta. His efforts to engage the college moment have reached millions of young adults throughout the world. Read more about Passion 2012 and the 268 Generation.
CONNECTION TO OUTREACH: Giglio was featured in the January/February 2012 issue in The Outreach Interview.
LOUIE SAYS:
You’ve said you don’t have any baggage from your experience in the church [When Giglio was 11, his church split, dwindling from 3,000 to 300 attendees over several months]. And perhaps that enables you to lead from a pure standpoint. But what about those pastors or leaders who do have emotional baggage and have not dealt with it? Is it possible to have baggage yet not lead out of that place?
I can say I have no baggage, and that’s a big statement. But the truth is we all have baggage. We all lead out of disappointment in some way. There is something in the bent part of our humanness to prove something: “Well, I was hurt and disappointed, so I’m going to prove this.” Fill in the blank.
I have some of that, but there was a point in those early days at First Baptist where it all became about Jesus for me. And when it did, everything was OK. I placed whatever baggage I carried through my Jesus filter. I settled it early on in my life that Jesus is perfect; the church is imperfect. And I still believe that. I still believe the church is jacked-up. But I have more passion for Jesus than I have baggage about the church and all its shortcomings.That’s the well I want to pull from. 
What did the split do to you as a young Christian?
It, honestly, made me want to rally around truth. Because even at that age, I felt like it was a division over spiritual values. I could sense that it was the old wineskins versus the new. Much of my adolescence was spent sitting on the front row watching 300 Christians come together and become one of the great churches of our lifetime—and that’s Charles Stanley at [his] peak, First Baptist at its peak, InTouch Ministries at its peak. I watched that all happen.
What I learned was “Word of God” and “presence of God.” That’s how you do ministry. That’s all you need. I have taken that and infused it into my life and ministry. What I did at Baylor with the Bible study, it was Word of God, presence of God. That’s the only reason a tenth of the student body would show up on a Monday night. Eleven years with 7:22? Word of God, presence of God. What makes Passion what it is? Word of God, presence of God. Passion City Church? Word of God, presence of God.
That stamp is our DNA. It’s what makes me confident in a gimmickless path. And I think this all came out of me watching that church of 300 find its wings.
So theologically, the epiphany came from having grown up with Southern Baptist theology, which ended with a lot of commas and not many periods like, “For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” For 99 percent of church people, that’s the end of that verse. Maybe one out of 2,000 can quote the next part: “and all are justified freely by His grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.” I realized we were all just living in the first part—the idea that “Christ died for you; do you think you can live for Him?” It was the end of every [Christian] camp, right? You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to realize that won’t work. It’s a high dive with no water in the pool.
In my pre-Passion days, the theological epiphany was, “Yes, Christ was crucified for sin but was raised to bring life. He is the life that I can’t live.” For me, that was a 180. It changed the whole trajectory of my life.
In 2008, you took Passion events to the world, visiting 17 global cities, and then in 2010 returned to seven of those cities on Passion World Tour 2010. What did you glean about the church from these travels?
I was surprised by the homogeneity of 18-year-old Euro-culture. In the past, we spent a lot of time trying to be culturally sensitive so we could bridge cultural gaps—like sing songs in their language and not be the white people coming to sing songs. But when we would do a song in their language, they would clap as if to say, “OK, that was great. Nice try on the Portuguese. Can we sing it in English now?”
For example, we’d sing a song in Japanese or Chinese or you name it. There’d be this feel-good moment, but zero attitude in the worship. But as soon as we began to sing the same song in English, the room blew up in affection for Jesus. We just shook our heads because it’s really not about the East and the West anymore. I don’t think 18-year-olds are making that distinction or are struggling with saying, “Hey, white man, come to my country, but make sure you adopt my customs and my idioms to make a cultural bridge toward me.” I think what they’re saying is, “Hey!” That’s it—that’s all the stuff that’s between us and them.
I was driving in a car with a 31-year-old pastor in Korea. He didn’t know what Passion was. He only knew me because he’s picking me up at the airport. He’d never heard of Chris Tomlin. He’s just a 31-year-old pastor of a 50,000-member church. I'm going to this event [in Seoul], thinking there’s literally no context here for what we’re doing.
When they introduced me and mentioned Passion, the audience went nuts. When Chris Tomlin was mentioned, the place erupted. These young folks knew what was going on. It showed me that the gap between a 31-year-old and a 20-year-old was a mile wide.
How does that play out in areas where the political climate hampers or even outlaws the Gospel?
Our big takeaway from that story in Korea is that there’s a small, growing community of friends who really don’t mind speaking the same language or being in the same cultural space like that. We learned that the church around the world is burgeoning and dealing with some of the same things we deal with. There’s an old guard and a new guard, one trying to hold on to the past, one trying to rise up—seeing what God is doing globally and to take it and run with it. The problem, however, is that in our culture, it’s OK to revolt. But in other cultures, it’s not acceptable. In the East, that won’t fly at all. They will have to wait a whole generation to pursue God in a newer way. We found many 18- to 25-year-olds hungering and thirsting for God.
HOW TO LINK: Connect with Louie at on Twitter @LouieGiglio or at Passion City Church.
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