Larger session completed, thousands of students head for community groups
Imagine 22,000 college students in one area.
Staggering thought, is it not, especially if one envisions the scene from the perspective of a volunteer standing between them and lunch as masses of hungry students, five and six abreast, start coming in waves through opened doors, looking for food.
More astonishing is the reality of the situation: the students are courteous, smile, follow instructions, unfailingly say “thank you.” That’s what happened at Passion2010, a gathering in Atlanta over the New Year’s weekend when students from around the world spent three days worshiping God with a passionate, contagious fervor.
The Passion conferences are a creation of the ministry of Louie Giglio and his associates who work to ensure that today’s college students can and should make a difference in the world. The Scriptural foundation of Passion conferences is Isaiah 26:8: “Yes, Lord, walking in the way of Your truth we eagerly wait for You, for Your name and Your renown are the desire of our souls.”
The prayer is that from Atlanta, and from the location of all other Passion conferences, college students leave as a radical band of Christ-followers who have experienced His unrivaled goodness and are fueled by a passion to spread His fame to every person on the planet.
For the small group of adult volunteers from Tallowood, the Atlanta conference was both exhausting and rewarding.
Tallowood volunteers John and Marlene Grant, Keith and Julie Williams, and Laura Cating
Jerome Smith, Tallowood’s minister of students, organized and led 28 adult volunteers who were responsible for the rooms in which students assembled in the morning and at night in smaller community and family groups. The Tallowood volunteers supported facilitators who led the students in focused examination of the messages they were hearing in twice-daily large group sessions.
It was within these community and family groups that students had a place to cultivate relationships with each other, and to process what God was doing in their lives and on their campuses.
For the volunteers, the lunch distribution task was so massive it was an “all hands on deck” challenge, involving everyone in addition to primary assignments. It was a breeze because of its efficiency.
Students pray in community group
In the morning hours, box lunches for every student had been stacked on long tables situated in different sections of the massive Georgia World Congress Center. Doors were opened in sequence and students were guided along a pathway that led them past the tables where they grabbed a box and headed into a cavernous room where they sat and ate together.
As students filed past, they were randomly asked to take a large trash bag and collect debris in their area when the meal was finished.
Virtually every student said yes. Every area was cleaned within minutes of the meals being completed. There was not a complaining word heard.
It was typical behavior and the kind of experience that made volunteers feel so good they can’t wait to do it again.
