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By Mike Parker, after an interview with Louie Giglio, founder of OneDay
OneDay03, a solemn assembly gathering college-aged young people in worship and prayer for spiritual awakening will be held on Memorial Day weekend, May 24-27, on a private 400-acre ranch in Sherman, Texas, a small town located about 70 miles north of Dallas.
The last time such a gathering took place (OneDay2000), more than 40,000 college students from every state in the Union and 26 different countries descended on a field outside of Memphis, Tennessee. But Passion founder/director Louie Giglio is making no predictions for this year’s events.
“It’s not like we looked at Memphis and said, ‘We had 40,000 in attendance then, so we have to have 50,000 this time.’ After OneDay2000, we weren’t even sure there would be another OneDay event. Sherman represents a new beginning, a restart,” he explains.
Instead of focusing on numbers, Giglio prefers to concentrate on the purpose for the gathering. “Our purpose in these days is to consecrate our lives,” he says. “To consecrate simply means to set apart. We are setting apart our lives for the purposes and glory of God. The Joel 2 challenge that the OneDay vision springs from says it this way, ‘Gather the people, consecrate the assembly.’”
To that end Giglio has prepared an online devotional to help students prepare their hearts for the solemn assembly.
Posted online in 7-day increments at www.OneDay03.com, students may participate online daily or download each set of readings. The devotional ends on June 9, a date associated with Pentecost, which is traditionally 50 days past Easter.
The unique purpose of Passion and OneDay03 is to gather college students from campuses and churches across the nation, uniting them across ministry and denominational lines to seek the face of God together in worship and prayer. Affirming and valuing the work of local churches and campus ministries, Passion seeks to foster unity and connectivity among them, encouraging them to draw strength and encouragement from each other, resulting in a louder anthem of God’s renown.
“We focus on the core beliefs of Christianity,” Giglio stresses, “The Cross, the Death and Resurrection of Christ, Repentance, Prayer. OneDay is God-Focused. When we humble ourselves before God, when we still our hearts before Him then our expectations fade. What He has is store for us is up to Him, but we expect to encounter an amazing God.”
Past Passion events have been noted for producing some amazing times of contemporary worship as chronicled in the Passion albums such as “The Road to OneDay,” “Better is OneDay,” and “OneDay Live.” And while Giglio expects OneDay03 to be equally stirring, he warns against vaunting “modern” worship.
“Passion is positioned as a leader in ‘modern’ worship,” he says. “I’m not comfortable with that. I don’t think the term ‘modern worship’ is all that helpful. God is not impressed.” Instead Giglio aims to draw on the rich tradition of worship that has developed through the ages, incorporating contemporary expressions of worship into both classic and ancient hymns to produce what he terms ‘Ancient-Future Worship.’ He says a new project that centers around that concept will be available from Passion around the end of the year.
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