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So how did this evolve into a national event?

Giglio I used to speak at that time to a lot of campus ministries around the country, even though I was living in the Baylor student world. I knew a lot of college leaders from around the country. And I knew which ones had a similar heartbeat for what we were going to do. And those 15 or 16 college leaders brought their kids to Passion '97 in Austin. Two thousand people showed up, and it was just four days of seeking the face of God, and yielding our lives for his fame, his glory. And man, God just dumped on this thing. And the whole movement started. We didn't do any marketing or PR for the next year, but those two thousand turned into five thousand the next year.

So it was all word of mouth?

Passion founder Louie Giglio shares the Passion 05 purpose with 11,000-plus students at the Gaylord Entertainment Center, Nashville, Tenn.

Giglio Word of mouth. The five thousand turned into eleven-and-a-half the next year. That jumped to forty thousand kids at OneDay in 2000 in Memphis. And we're going to haul along, to see where we're going and what God's going to do.

A big part of the growth is the music. Did you always have that core group of lead worshippers like Chris Tomlin, David Crowder, and others? Did you discover them?

Giglio I wouldn't say I discovered them, but I was friends with them. I'd spoken at a lot of events, and that's how I got to know Chris, at a youth camp I did with him. He was a college student and hadn't written any famous songs. Not yet. But I saw immediately that this guy had something in his heart from God. Crowder was a student at Baylor, so he was sitting in some of these Bible studies. I didn't know him really well, but I had heard one of his indie CDs, and I thought, These Crowder guys are really cool.Charlie Hall, same circumstances. I met him through friends, loved his heart. He was already voicing the vision and writing songs about it before I met him. That's how the team came together.

That core team has stayed the same through the years, and no new worship leaders have been added to the fold. Why is that?

Giglio (Laughs) Because we've built it through relationships. And I'm not very likely to put somebody in front of our movement that I don't have a relationship with. [I don't care if] someone is "the hot thing right now." If I don't know them, I don't know if they really get what we're doing. I know everyone wants to play at a Passion event: "How can I get my band in there?" But if that is what you're asking, then you probably don't need to be there. This is not about people. We don't make a big deal about Chris Tomlin at Passion. It's not like somebody goes, "Now everybody, please welcome No. 1 radio single songwriter … blah-blah-blah … Chris Tomlin!" He just gets on the stage with his guitar and starts pointing people to Jesus. That's all Passion cares about.

Is that why your label, sixteps Records, hasn't signed any new artists?

Giglio We're a family. We're not just trying to throw around trendy words. We go away together every year for two or three days in a family vacation. We encourage each other. We build each other up. We see each other as integral parts of this equation. Matt Redman is part of it. John Piper, who has spoken at every major Passion event, is part of it. Beth Moore has been in that same stream. We're not trying to get Beth because she's the hottest woman speaker; she's part of what we do because I know her, and her heart for God and her passion for college students.

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