Collegiate Times

Wednesday Nov. 11, the Passion 2010 University Tour will be coming to Burruss Auditorium with artists Charlie Hall and Steve Fee leading a night of praise and worship.

Charlie Hall, a Christian worship leader and songwriter, has been with Passion Conferences since it first started 12 years ago. He was a college student at the time when Louie Giglio, the founder behind this movement, asked him to join. At the time, Hall was making records about revival and the church, which matched with the vision that Giglio had.

Passion Conferences is a regional event with conferences aimed to mobilize students to reach out and affect the world, said Isaac Barber, leader behind vtONE. Passion works with the Six Steps Record label, which showcases major Christian artists who carry the same heart of helping the world through movements such as building wells in Africa and fighting against the sexual slave trade.

vtONE was created to bring the numerous Christian ministries at Virginia Tech together, and the Passion 2010 concert is taking what this ministry does and beefing it up, according to Barber.  He said it is an opportunity not only for the campus, but also for our entire region to come together and worship.

Students will get to see that the body of Christ is bigger than their specific organization, and this concert is not a way to promote the artists, but the name of Jesus, Barber said.

When the university tour was being planned in the spring, the organizers saw that the Baptist Collegiate Ministry on campus had already signed up to take 20 students to the Passion 2010 Conference in Atlanta, Ga., and were the only group in Virginia that did. April Uebel, the associate director for BCM, said that this was why they were initially contacted.

Still, another connection between Tech and Passion had already been made in years prior. Giglio came to Tech after the April 16, 2007, shootings to give an encouraging message to students and had called to see if there was something that the campus could host.

Though this tour is aimed to get students excited for the Passion 2010 conference in January in Atlanta, Hall said it is a night to stir expectations, have prayer, worship and to have a collegiate, world-wide awakening.

“College is an awesome place in life where students have stepped out of their homes,” Hall said. “Especially their spiritual shelters, and (they) have to make decisions for themselves.”