The Carey Nieuwhof Leadership Podcast
CNLP 065 – Louie Giglio on The Back Story of Passion, His Nervous Breakdown, and How He Came Back
(upbeat music) - Welcome to the Carrie Newhoff Leadership Podcast, a podcast all about leadership, change, and personal growth. The goal? To help you lead like never before, in your church or in your business. And now your host, Carrie Newhoff. - Well, hey everybody, and welcome to the podcast. My name is Carrie Newhoff. I hope our time together today helps you lead like never before. And I think you will be so encouraged by today's guest. I think most of you probably know exactly who he is. I'm so fortunate to have Louis Giglio on the podcast. And if you're listening to this when it airs, the first full week of December, about a month from now, about 45,000 college students are gonna gather in Atlanta and beyond for the passion conference. And this is a movement, really, like a movement of God in our generation that's just been incredible. And Louis tells the whole story of passion. But, you know, if you look at Louis, I mean, he's got a very successful church in Atlanta, Passion City Church. He's written books, he's written a lot of the songs that we've sung over the years in church. He is like best friends and partners with Matt Redmond and Chris Tomlin and David Crowder and so many others. I mean, half the music you listen to is probably some influence from Six Step Records, the company that he owns with his wife. And if you look at that and all you see is success, but what I love about Louis is not only how passionate he is 'cause he is, if you've ever heard him preach, but how authentic he is. And Louis sort of takes us behind the curtain in this episode and tells us the backstory behind passion, as much of it as we can get to in 40 minutes. And then he shares, and this is what I think will really encourage you, we spend a lot of time talking about, well, what Louis calls a nervous breakdown. And he says, I know it's not cool to call it that anymore. You know, you get to come up with other terms, but seven years ago, in 2008, he had a complete nervous breakdown. And I mean, physical symptoms, panic attacks, just stuff that seemed horribly medically wrong, but nothing was wrong. It was just, you know, he couldn't cope anymore. And he thought it was over. He really thought it was over. And I mean, so many of you right now, I mean, I'm glad this is airing before Christmas because you're running at warp speed, and you're tired, and you're like, I don't know whether I'm even gonna make it till Christmas. Well, man, this episode is for you. And Louis just spent some time being so encouraging, so honest, so transparent. I think you're gonna love it. And I think it's one of the reasons, you know, that God continues to use him in his story. And man, if you're there, if you're hanging on by a thread, just hang on, 'cause we're gonna jump to the interview with Louis real, real soon. And I just wanna know if somebody who's burned out too about nine years ago, man, if you're there, we've got resources for you. You can go right all the way back to episode two, where Perry Noble talks about his burnout, episode five, Craig Jutilla, talked about how bad it got for him in ministry. And we'll also link to some show notes there that will really help you just get some resources that can probably help you, at least point you, toward the steps you need to take to kind of get well. And the good news is, as Louis talks about in his new book, The Come Back, is you can come back from it. I did, he did, Perry did, Craig did, and so many other leaders have. And so I just wanna encourage you, I hope this really comes your way as encouragement. And before we jump to the interview, I wanna give you just a heads up on something I am really excited about. As you know, if you're a regular listener, I'm a huge fan of Reggie Joyner and everything that Orange does is in equipping leaders for the next generation. And normally what I've done in past years is I've done, led the senior leader track for the Orange Conference. Well, this year, the senior leader track grows up and becomes its very own conference that runs parallel to the Orange Conference. So while your whole family ministry next gen team is at the Orange Conference, I've got something just for senior leaders and it's a separate conference running right around the corner from the Orange Conference. And in Atlanta, Georgia, it's called Rethink Leadership. It's a three day event, April 27th, 28th and 29th. It's gonna be amazing. Brad Lomannick, Reggie Joyner, John A. Cuff and myself are partnering together and we're putting on what we hope will be the best three days of senior leadership training you've ever had. In fact, Andy Stanley just let us know he's in on it. It's gonna be a far more intimate gathering than you're used to. Space is limited. You're gonna be seated around tables. There are gonna be some incredible people in the room, including leaders like Andy. And I want you to be among the very first if you're a senior leader to get in on it because space is limited. So here's what I'd love you to do. Just go to RethinkLeadership.com to check it out and registration just opened last week. So you're gonna get the best rates if you register now. It's gonna happen at the John Maxwell Leadership Center right around the corner from the Gwynette Center. Space is limited. Hope you can make it. Make sure you register. Just go to RethinkLeadership. It's gonna be three amazing days at the end of April next year. So anyway, now we are gonna talk with Louis. And I just love this conversation so much. I hope you do too. Well, I'm really thrilled to have Louis Giglio on the podcast. Louis, welcome. - Thanks, Kerry. Excited to be on with you today. - Hey, man. We met a few years ago through a mutual friend, but I first heard about you without knowing it was you. I think the year was 2000. We were on vacation in Maryland. And we were actually borrowing a friend's house. And there was the CD there called Passion One Day. I think it was like your very first Passion CD back in 2000. And I would love to go back to the early days of Passion, which is now, you know, it's coming up in January, again, this year or next year, I should say, but it's something that's touched so many people's lives. Take us right back to the beginning and tell us how Passion got started. - Well, I'll tell you, it's a very simple story, Kerry. Really God, you know, has plans for every generation and to be really in a front row seat to watch him unfold apart of his plan for the collegiate generation of our lifetime. We're heading into our 19th Passion Conference, which can I talk about, you know, being back in that place where we met early on. And you're not really sure you're gonna have a leadership podcast back in those days. You know, I remember back in the early days, I started out just long story short, you know, I left seminary in 1985, graduated from seminary, went to grad school again at Baylor University. So I went for a second master's degree, partially because I felt the Lord leading me and mostly because Shelley, my wife, who was not my wife at the time, was finishing her undergrad degree at Baylor University. And I just thought it was probably God's will for me to get into the same city as her. - So it's always God's will to hang around someone who attracted to, I had that experience too. - Absolutely. So I went to grad school at Baylor and prior to that, I had done summer college internships in Houston, the three summers that I was in seminary. Never really thought about college ministry, not really zero dental that I went to an urban commuter school in Atlanta, stayed in my home church that I grew up in, went to the youth group in. So I never had that going away to school, moving into a dorm, going to crew or whatever, Wesley Foundation or this ministry or that ministry. I just grew up in church and then one day went to seminary. And so now I'm doing this summer college ministry and I'm loving it. There's a real resonance in it. And three years later, I end up moving to Waco, Texas and becoming a grad student at Baylor University, the largest Baptist University in the world. And all that summer preparation, God had woven that together carry to really break my heart for that campus. There were at the time about 11,000 undergrads at Baylor, religion everywhere, but very little Jesus anywhere. And I had a heart for Jesus to touch the lives of people, awaken the lives of people on this campus. And a lot of them were kids I knew because I'd been dating Shelley for a couple of years and I spent weekends on guys, couches and floors, you know, staying in Waco. So all I like to say, a ministry was born for 10 years. I lived in Waco, Texas. That's why God brought me to Waco. It wasn't a grad program. And we started a Bible study in an apartment that grew to 1500 students coming on Monday nights. - That's crazy. Clearly that's a big apartment. - Just worshiping the word. We eventually had to knock a few walls down and take over the apartments next door. - Yeah, we moved from here to there, this auditorium in that place and met in a church for a long time, but for a decade, that's what we were doing. I ended up leaving that. Shelley and I walked away from that because my dad was disabled in the process of us being there. And I really wanted to get back to Atlanta to help my mom care for my dad, long story short, a lot of transition happened. We ended up leaving Waco coming to Atlanta and when we got to Atlanta, my dad died. - Yeah, you tell that story in the comeback, don't you? - Yeah, it's a crazy story. And I think all of us have a story like it where we ended up at a place in life where we was like, man, I don't have a clue what is happening right now. Feels like I just missed God by a hundred miles. I don't know what just happened. And so here we are in Atlanta, no ministry, no dad, no job. And I went to a speaking deal that summer and fly on the plane. And I know this story sounds a little bit mystical, but it's just the way it went down. I'm flying to Dallas, Texas. I'm sitting by the window right side of the plane, 24 or five rows back and I'm reading a magazine and I'm looking down reading an advertisement. I remember it like it was two seconds ago. And all of a sudden I just spaced out and went somewhere else in my mind and saw something in my mind that I'd never seen before. And it wasn't A campus, it was a C of college students. And they were on their knees. As far as I could see, college students on their knees praying for spiritual awakening in their generation. - Wow. - And it just blew every circuit in my mind. I don't know how long it lasted. I just know that it didn't last longer than the flight to Dallas 'cause at some point I'm back looking at that ad in that magazine. And it took my breath away what I saw. And I didn't know what it was. I didn't say anything to Shelley about it for a week or two. And finally, I just said, babe, I think God is calling us to something as big as all the college students in America and potentially the world. - Wow. - And he said, let's go after it. What does it look like? I said, it looks like this picture, but that's all I know. We didn't have a name, we didn't know what to do. And from that little vision, Carrie, we kind of rebooted everything. Our board coalesced around that. We prayed about it and we kind of set our gaze on starting a gathering. So it took us about 18 months to get to January 1997, Austin, Texas, passion, 97, four days. And I'm telling you, it was just a remarkable four days. 2,000 college students came to the very first conference. It was all about the glory of God. Isaiah 26, eight, your name of Renown are the desire of our souls. Piper spoke shockingly, Beth Moore spoke amazingly. The world was in our hearts, worship was in our mouths. The word was open and we were diving in and something was born that day. And it would floor me on that day if you told me that you and I were on this call right now, having this interview right now. And we're heading into, we're 30 days away from the 19th Passion Conference. And we haven't had one every single January, but we have done them in dozens of countries around the world and really seen a movement sort of blow up right in the midst of us and all happened from a little vision, a little moment of God saying, here's the next assignment Louis walked toward this. - That's incredible. I think sometimes if God showed us where it would go, we would be, yeah, we wouldn't know what to do with it. And tell us where it is this year. Where are you holding it again this year? - Well, we're actually doing some kind of crazy in a few weeks from now. We're doing one conference in three arenas at the same time. So we're in the basketball arena in Houston, the Toyota Center, we're in Phillips arena, where the Hawks play in Atlanta. And we're in what's now called infinite energy arena in Atlanta. A lot of people have been there for catalysts. They know that been you. And so all three arenas fill with college students. Every band will lead in every arena. So bands will be flying back and forth. Every artist will appear in every arena. They'll be speakers coming from all the arenas, hosting in every city, community groups in every city. Every person in every arena is gonna feel like they are at passion, like the passion. There's no overflow, there's no, this is the main site. These are satellite sites. It's three gatherings going on simultaneously. And the cool thing about the reason we're doing it, there's a reason for the madness. (laughing) It's just that we've lost our mind. The reason for that is that we're back in the Georgia dome in January of 2017. And by the time some people hear this, they might be too late for them to get into Houston or Atlanta for January 2016. But we're back in the Georgia dome. We were there in 2013. I think what was a historic gathering of 18 to 25 year olds, about 60,000 of them in the Georgia dome. - Yeah, that was crazy. I still remember the pictures. - And we've tried to get back in there, but the scheduling around bowl games, falcon schedule in that little window is very, very tight. So this is the first time we could be back is 2017. And then they're going to blow the dome up. They're going to tear that thing down a few months after January 2017. So we're coming back together, January 2nd, 2017. So we wanted to get everybody on this idea. This is when passion happens. So therefore, three arenas, same time, about 45,000 university students going to be in these three arenas. They're all headed towards passion 2017, which will be our 20th anniversary gathering, Lord willing, back in the Georgia dome. And we'd love to fill the place up and have a little footnote and Wikipedia right before they blew this thing up. You know, the most people that ever been in here came in here to lift up Jesus and to talk about how amazing he is in their generation, pretty cool. - So, Louis, thanks so much for sharing that. I mean, this is one of those stories that, you know, for everybody listening to this, a leader with a dream, they're like, "Yeah, that's quite an incredible story." And, you know, I wish my ministry worked that way where it was just, you know, it started with 2,000 people and now there's three simulcasts and 60,000 people, you know, access it at one time. And, you know, most of our story isn't like that, but that's not the full story for you either. You've had some setbacks along the way with passion too. In fact, there were moments where you thought the whole thing was going to fall apart. Isn't that true? - Well, everybody has that story, you know, all of us in this podcast right now have one thing in common. And the main thing that we have in common is that we all have big, big highs in our journey with God and we all have deep, deep lows in our journey with God. And even with passion, you know, you talked about if we'd known early on what the whole picture would have been over 20 years. - Well, we thought, we were so urgent, Carrie, in what God had called us to do. We were really perplexed in the early days by this statistic. There are about 19 million college students in America. - Wow. - Somewhere between 18, 23 million, depends on whose number you pick. And based on real like data, not just kind of like, you know, urban legend, but real data, there's a survey that a quarter of a million incoming freshmen and transfer students take every year. And it's not a spiritual survey, but it has two spiritual questions on it. And according to that survey, year after year after year, somewhere around 80% of that quarter of a million people answer to the question, do you consider yourself a born again Christian, they answered no. - Wow. - And if that's true, that means of the 19 million college students in America. And if you add in, you know, Canada, and you know, you just lump us kind of all together in North America, you're talking about millions and millions and millions and millions of people who are gonna go to sleep again tonight without having a clue why they're on this planet. - Yeah. - And so when we started passion, it wasn't about, man, what can we do? If we just hang in there for 20 years, it was, how can we get the story of Jesus to every college student right now? - And so in Austin, there were 2000 people. I love telling this story because probably a lot of your listeners are sort of in that 20 something age range. - Yeah, we have a lot, a lot of young adults, a lot of young leaders. - And guys, so a lot of those people really, you know, be mystified by what I'm about to say, but in 1997, we started patching and there was no internet. - That's true, that's true. Hey, I first encountered you on a CD in 2000. Remember those? - You know, there's no internet, there's no cell phones, nobody has a cell phone people, no one has a cell phone. And no one has access to the internet. And if you wanted to come to Passion 97, you actually had to get a brochure in the mail. You had to fill in the registration part, write a check and put it in an envelope and mail it back to us. And that's how we knew you were coming. 2000 people showed up, okay, so we don't have a great marketing plan, there is no internet, there is no texting, tweeting, Instagramming, Snapchatting, it's old school days. The next year, we were back in that same venue, 5,000 people showed up. - Wow. - We moved out of that venue to Fort Worth. The next year, 11,000 people showed up. And then we moved to a field outside Memphis, Tennessee in 2000 for the gathering called One Day. And 40,000 college students came from every state in America and about 30 countries around the world for a solemn assembly and Kerry, it was what I saw on that plane. It was a giant field in a park outside Memphis and it was 40,000 people literally on their faces on the ground on a misty day asking God to exponentially break through with the gospel to their generation. And we thought, that's it. That's what God called us to do. That year, we've been to 120 campuses doing campus events and prep. We've done eight regional events around the nation and then we had 40,000 people show up at Shelby Farms and outside of Memphis and we thought, that's it. And so we just walked away. Year four, we said, that's it. We're done. That's what God asked us to do. - Vision fulfilled and it took a whole year of nothing for us to realize that God was still standing there going, I'm not finished yet. So we're all, all of us today listening are in the same boat where we're honing our skills and our ability to not try to figure out what God wants us to do in advance but to continue to listen to him, moment by moment, day by day, so that we don't miss that little glance or that little nudge that says, hey, this is the way, walk in it. And so that's a, four years in, I think it's over. And if I get my way four years in, whoever's experienced passion and Jesus through passion for the last 15 years, they missed out on that if Luke gets his call. - That's so true. - Fortunately, God, Trump's Louie and he has a lot of grace for me and he helped our whole team understand, hey, no, this is a revolving door of 18, 19, 2021, 22 year olds and the door's revolving again and a whole new group's coming in today that don't know a thing about what we just did the last four years. So let's make that door go around one more time. And we've seen five of those revolving doors happen and a lot of people whose sons and daughters and nephews and nieces used to come up to me and say, hey, you know, Jonathan's nine and he's really hoping you're still going to be doing this when he's old enough to come. When he's 18 and I'm looking at Jonathan like, man, I, you might as well walk to the moon because that's going to be more realistic than us doing this when you're 18 years old. And then lo and behold, Jonathan's come to passion and now he's gone and moved on in his life and we're still there. So that doesn't answer your question, but just wanting people to know, you know, it's not a formula, it's not automatic. It's not, oh, Louie and passion. They just, you know, raise up the flag and people show up. It's been the most challenging, most difficult sacrificial fight, you know, all these years and we still believe it's worth it. And as long as God keeps pointing that direction, we're going to keep going that way. - You had a period a few years ago that you wrote about and you're speaking about a bit publicly these days where you kind of, I don't know what you call it, whether you burned out, you talk about the cloud and the song. - This hasn't been an easy personal journey for you too. What happened a few years ago, Louie? And how did that almost, you know, at the moment, you thought this, I might not come back from this. - Yeah, you know, I don't know what you call it either. Really, I think in the old days, Carrie, and I hate saying these words because I just think that this can't be true of me, but I think in the old days, they called it a nervous breakdown. And of course, you never hear anybody say that anymore. You rarely hear anybody say my brother just had a nervous breakdown. Your brother in 2015 or '16 had an anxiety attack or a panic disorder because nervous breakdown sounds pejorative and it makes us feel bad about ourselves and we can't feel bad about ourselves if anybody has those anymore. But I had a, I think, a nervous breakdown. My brain melted down. And I could tell you about that for five or six podcasts worth, but I would like to talk about it for a second if we have time. - Yeah, please do. I've got lots of time. I feel like when it happened to me, I didn't know what happened or what to do about it and I'd never heard anyone talk about it before. Now that we're, this was in 2008, now that we're a few years down the road, I hear tons and tons of people talking about it. And I know multiple people, CEOs, pastors, leaders who've experienced the exact same thing, I mean, almost down to the nitty-gritty detail. And for me, it was 2008, here's my defense. Every guy has to have a defense or rationale. Here's mine. 2008, the global economy melted down. If you're a millennial right now, that didn't mean a hill of beans to you. - No, you were a kid and you missed out a little bit at Christmas. - If you were a middle-aged guy, that was a pretty ground-shaking event. My mom was diagnosed with a terminal disease that was gonna take her life. My wife's back went out on her. She had a ruptured disc on the last of 17 city, 16 nation passion world tour we had done that year. - Wow. - So the last stop, Sydney, Australia, next morning, my wife falls in the shower with a ruptured disc in her back and can't move out the bathroom floor for a day and a half. - Wow. - And so we're in that zone. We planted a church, I don't recommend that if you really wanna have a peaceful, smooth year. - Yeah, you know, a church planting's pretty easy for most of us, Louie. I don't know what happened with you. - So we had planted a church that global economy was melting down. We'd done a, you know, 16 nation tour that costs six and a half million dollars, but we had about six dollars for when it started. We had to just somehow trust God for all that resource and then go do it over three months time. My wife flat on her back with a ruptured disc and I don't know, maybe a few other things going on that I can't remember now, but I wake up in the middle of the night like a lot of us do. You know, we kind of have that two o'clock, wake up, you kind of stare at the ceiling, all these thoughts are going through your mind, but this night it was really different. And I thought, I really legitimate, I know it sounds dramatic all these years later, legitimately thought I'm going to die right now. I'm having a heart attack. This is what it's like and this is gonna be me, you know? And I got up, washed my face. I'd never done that before, but that seemed like one of the things you're supposed to do right before you die. And I washed my face with cold water, that didn't help. That started me carry into a month long tunnel where I just fell in a hole. And I don't want to go on too much about it, but you know, the next day I ended up in the ER having convulsions, my fate. I walked into the ER two in the morning the next night and I walked up to the desk and the lady looks at me and she goes, "May I help you?" I said, "I'm 50, I can't feel my face. My arm is completely numb and my legs are convulsing and I can't make them stop." - And I'm telling you man, if you wanted to get out of the waiting room at the ER, that's a good way to do it. - Those are the words, are they? - They had me hooked up to stuff in two seconds and they knew right away that I wasn't dying of anything and they knew there was some sort of anxiety going on, but it took me about three months to figure that out. - Wow. - And in that hole of darkness, I got so low, so weak, so I didn't leave the house most days. I didn't function for months and it was just dark and gloomy and there was doom over my life and dread fear and that two o'clock scene came every night, every single night, every night it came. I just hated going to bed because I knew two o'clock was coming. - For me, it was 3.30 AM. That was like, we must be in different time zones, Louis. - I don't know, but I'm empathizing with you, man. - I like you, the worst thing you could do in that zone is start googling stuff and I was having symptoms. Almost every day I had a symptom, like a real symptom, like my legs were really convulsing. My wife looked at them and said, stop doing that and I said, honey, I don't know how I am doing that and I had symptoms every day. Your brain can take over your body and tell your body to do what it wants to do apart from your intervention and my brain was doing that every day, so I was in a different doctor every week, I was dying of a different disease every week, I was having a different test every week and all the tests were coming back clear and finally we did all the tests and they all said, hey, there's nothing wrong with you. You're not dying of this and you don't have this and I'm like, well then what do I have? And what I had was, I think this is me looking back many years later, I think that I had forgotten to be still and know that he is God and that sounds rather clicheish, but I think I had taken on the weight of running my life and I had forgotten that God was running the whole universe and it took a little song of praise, God, one night, the last night of it for me, I just was so desperate and I was 2.30 and I'm staring at the ceiling again and tears in my eyes and I'm like, guys, I can't do this again. And I thought a little verse popped into my mind, you know, it's a holy spirit, he'll help you. And this verse just comes into my mind, comes flying into my mind from way back, you know, somewhere, God gives songs in the night. I thought, okay God, if you give me a little song right now, I'll sing it. I'll say, I'll praise you right now. If you'll give me a song, I'll praise you and you'll think, well, why do you need him to give you a song? You got Chris Tomlin and Matt Redman and David Crowder and Passion and Christian Stanfield, certainly don't, you get the thought of a song. And I, but this little song came in my mouth and the little melody with it and I sang this little song just right over my lips really quiet. Be still my soul, there's a healer. His love is deeper than the sea. His mercy is unfailing, his arms a fortress for the weak. And what I was telling myself that night, I kept telling myself over and over, God hadn't healed me yet and he may not heal me tomorrow, but he is a healer. God didn't heal me in the 10 doctors I've been to, but he is a healer. And I'm just gonna keep reminding myself that he is a healer. And that song became the little light that slowly led me out. I did not wake up the next day and completely better. Two o'clock came the next night too, but I had that song the next night and that little song of praise led me out and thank God led me back into the land of the living again. And man, I just thank God for it. - Louie, I so appreciate you sharing that. I mean, I burned out two years earlier when I was 40, 41 back in 2006. And it was different. I didn't have the panic attack syndrome, but I was like just without hope, which is the definition of depression. And I thought there's no way I can ever come back. And in fact, your new book comeback is you tell that story and a whole lot of other stories. And for anybody who's listening right now and you just think, oh my goodness, I'm never coming back, there's hope, isn't there Louie? - Well, what we believe, and I have to keep coming back around what we believe, not what we feel. In fact, that verse Psalm 46, 10, it doesn't say be still and feel that I am God. It says be still and no. And so there's a point in time where our knowledge of God, our, the veracity of who he is and what he's done has to overwhelm what we feel. - Yes. - And for me, I think that what we know, what we proclaim is that Jesus was raised from the dead. This is the centerpiece of our hope. And those who don't have the resurrection, Paul says they're to be pitied among all people. If Christ isn't raised from the dead. And so our hope is linked inextricably to Christ resurrection power. And so if that's our story, then yes, everyone can come back. Every single one of us can come back and there can be, you know, I have a friend who I tell her story in the book and the comeback and her husband died three years ago to the day last week and he died in a bicycling accident. He was out on a long, serious ride on his bicycle and he, you know, she got to call nobody wants to get and rush to the hospital and before she could get there, she got to call it changed her life. And you know, Courtney's husband is not coming back. - Yeah. - Her father, her three kids father is not coming back. But if there is a resurrection, then their stories do not end here. They don't terminate at this point. And no one story terminates at this point. No one listening to this, your story does not terminate at this point if there is, in fact, resurrection power in Christ. And so, you know, I in the book, I'm not saying, hey, here's a good theory. I'm saying I came back from a whole of depression. And if you told me, I promise you this, Kerry, I'm not just being, you know, kind of speaker talk. If you told me in December of 2008, hey, Louie, and eight years from now, you're going to be on the leadership podcast with Kerry Newhoff. I would have looked at you and said, it would be easier for me to get on a pogo stick and go from here to the North Pole than to believe that I'm going to be on a leadership podcast with anybody giving a hoot about what I have to think about anything eight years from now. And so I'm just saying from a real life perspective, and that's not the only comeback I've seen God do, but the resurrection is the wellspring and the seedbed from which we believe today that no matter what the circumstances are, God can still work for His good. I mean, for His glory and for our good. - Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And it really is the power of Christ. And I love what you said about the head leading the heart. That was key for me as well. And it was a friend, I traced it back to August of '06 when a friend called me and he just said, I was lying on my living room floor. I was so discouraged. I thought my life was over, my ministry was over. And I hadn't done anything. I was just done, you know, like I was just done. And he just said, I know you don't believe this today, but the sun will rise tomorrow. And that was just a fulcrum. And I still believed in Jesus. I just couldn't feel Him. And again, Louie, if, you know, at that time, I didn't have a podcast, I didn't have anything. And I wasn't writing a blog. I hadn't published any books. I wasn't speaking anywhere. And if somebody had said, Carrie, your best is still around the corner. I wouldn't have believed them. I just wouldn't have believed them. - Yeah, well, somebody's listening to us right now. And, you know, the thing that I want you to know is that you're not crazy. And there may be some symptoms of insanity, but I know for me, I thought I am going crazy. - Yes. - And the second thing I want you to know is that you're not the only one. There's a sense of isolation and insulation that happens when we get into depression. And you start thinking that you're the only person on the planet that's ever fallen into a hole like this. - So true. - I just want you to know today that there might be symptoms of insanity in your world, but you are not crazy. And you're not the only person walking through this. And, you know, Psalm 118, I love the boldness of it. It says, I will not die, but live. And I will declare what the Lord has done. And that's gonna be the story of everybody that just keeps leaning, even if it's the last little ounce of their leanability. They just keep leaning into the promise that the resurrection power of Jesus is greater than the hole I'm in, the circumstance I'm up against, the diagnosis we got, the divorce, the death, the darkness, whatever it is in my life. And I'm just gonna keep believing, Mike Joseph, think about it from, you know, early teen years to when he was 30, a washout. - Oh, yeah. - And yet here at the very end, he has this, now this revelation side and he says, "Gosh, what the enemy meant for evil, God meant for good all along. And if we can see those little stories and believe in them, even when there's no other reason why we should believe other than the fact that Jesus is alive, then he's gonna bring us through. And I just want people to hear that today. God is gonna bring you through. This is not gonna be the final chapter of your story. - That's a great word. Hey, I know you've got an awful lot to do. And I'm so glad we kind of lingered there, Louis. I think this is gonna encourage a lot of leaders because as you know, leadership is hard, it's discouraging, it can be isolating. And I'm really glad we've camped out here, but while I got you for a couple more minutes, I'd love to ask you a few questions just 'cause, as you and I were talking about earlier, we reached out, I reached out earlier today, just on Instagram and Twitter, to listeners saying, "Hey, I'm gonna talk to Louis this afternoon, do you have any questions?" And there's some great questions. So think of this as a lightning round in the last few minutes, if you can. And we'll have you back and I think you're right, we should do like 12 podcasts on what we need to talk about. But so you have had over 30 years, a way of connecting with college students and young adults. Have you seen a lot of change over the years in that area or are the issues, kind of the issues that were there in the '80s are the issues that are there today? - Yeah, you know, I'm not a sociologist and I wish I could really quickly sort of pinpoint all the things in the fabric of that. But I think that it's very difficult to do that because you know, it's kind of like, what are we talking about? Are we talking about, and we talk about campus or 18 to 25 year olds or whatever the particular label we're giving them at the moment? There's so many different groups of people within that group of people. And it's hard to just say a big broad stroke and I think it annoys the heck out of them to say, "Hey, here's what's true of all of them." You know, and they're like, "Wait a minute, "I don't know if that's true of me or not." But I think what I have seen over time is there's potential. That's the main thing I see is potential. And yes, they're positives and of course they're negatives. I heard a university president the other day. He was getting frustrated 'cause he got criticized. It actually was an Oklahoma made news in Atlanta last night. I'm like, why is the president of this university on my news tonight in Atlanta, Georgia? He'd given a speech and he quoted scripture in it and it had offended one of the students. And he said, "Hey, this is a university, not a daycare." You know, and so I'm gonna share my feelings and my thoughts openly, but then he went on to say, you know, this is the most selfish, myopic, narcissistic, you know, me center generation I've ever seen and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, you know, that sounds like great rhetoric, but that's not true. There are so many 18 to 25 year olds right now that are in our wake, that are very others centric and are very justice driven and want to see their lives leveraged to make a change in the world. And so it's hard to pinpoint, but if I answered the question, I think what I would say, what I felt then at that first passion conference and what I feel now is there's potential there. It's exportation, they're all going somewhere. So if whatever you invest in them, you're getting free exportation to wherever they're going. It's, I wanna make a difference mentality. It's, you know, it's creativity. It's the cutting edge. I mean, think about those jokers that, you know, Harvard cooking up Facebook. (laughing) - Yeah. That's what, when I say potential, that's what I'm talking about. - Yeah. - And so I feel like there are students have potential, it's a long answer, I know it's lightning round, but I also think, Harry, that the university incubator has potential. And Facebook's a great example. Facebook started on one school, almost as a joke. - Yeah. - And then it kind of translated into something and spread to one or two other campuses. And then within two years, people's moms were using it. And I think that the campus is a natural incubator for good and bad, and I'm not a political guru, but I think Obama got elected first term on campus enthusiasm. I think it was a difference maker in his campaign. And if you can get an idea spreading quickly on campus, then the dorms, sororities, fraternities, study groups, condos, it just is an incubator. And if you put the true birth of Christ, real legitimate, my life is changing. In that incubator, the possibility and the potential for spiritual outbreak, I think is as great as probably anywhere in the world. - You know, Louis, that's a good word, and that's really a fresh word as well. In all the talk about reaching the next generation, I don't hear a lot of people talk about potential and accessing that. And I think one of the things you've done really, really well is you've connected with them and you've enabled them. As you were talking about the five turns of college students so far in 20 years, right? They get four years in college. So you're on your fifth generation, so to speak. I know a lot of church leaders who would say, well, that's a waste because, I mean, they don't end up tithing, but you think about the difference that that has made. - Yeah, this guy, I don't mean to knock him. I don't even know if he's with us anymore, but when we were at Baylor, we started an apartment, moved to an apartment clubhouse, moved to another apartment clubhouse, so we weren't chartered, so we couldn't use school buildings. Eventually, we needed a big room, like a 900, 1500 person room. And there was a church, literally, I mean, literally, like across the street from the campus. - Yeah, I've seen it. I was there a couple months ago. - Yeah, well, that church now seats about 400 people. It used to seat 1300 people. They downsized it, y'all. - Wow. - And that was the reason why we kind of got booted out of there. They were gonna downsize the auditorium, you had to go find somewhere else. But I went to the pastor, he was a very nice man, by the way. And if you're ever, if you're hearing this podcast for some reason, thank you for letting us meet in your church for the five or six years we met in there. But I remember sitting down with him, and I said, you know, we wanna do this Bible study, is there a possibility we can rent your building on Monday nights? And he said, well, you know, we really don't have a campus ministry, college ministry here at the church. And I just remember in my mind, I was like, okay, I'm sure I didn't hear that. And so I said, can Jesus come again with that? He said, yeah, we don't really believe in college ministry here. And I said, okay, why? And he said three reasons. He said they're flighty. He said, Louis, they'll be in one church this semester, another church the next semester. And as soon as you think they're, you can count on them, they'll all buzz over, migrate to the next church. He said, they don't give a dime. So you're not gonna get any kickback from them. And I can't remember what his third thing was, 'cause I think I was stumped on one and two. And I sat there and I thought to myself, wow. And so I went process that. And number one is true. I've observed that over 20 years now. They are migratory. But if what God is doing in your midst is catalytic and authentic and spirit-powered and word-based and not fluffy and fancy, but it's gutsy and gritty and honest and empowering, then they're gonna migrate to you. And 'cause that's what they're looking for. They're not looking for necessarily free food. They're looking for somebody that can really open God's word and give them some substance to build their lives on. And then I thought about the second thing they don't give. And I thought, well, you know, the reason they don't give, number one, is because, oh, oh, a third thing was, and they're all leaving here, Louis. They're all leaving, right? They're all gone in two years. And four years they're all leaving here. Anyway, even the ones that stick. And I've really thought about that. And so we have made a really determined effort to challenge 18 to 25-year-olds to generosity. And since 2007, at events, and I'm really happy to say this, I'm not bragging about passion, but I'm bragging really about Jesus. But since 2007 at Passion Conferences, we've seen 18 to 25-year-olds give over $14 million. - It's crazy. - On the spot. On the spot. - Wow. - To global causes of freedom, justice. So it's really whether or not we've taught them well, and led them well, because they're very resourceful. And on that last thing, I think I just started saying to our ministry at that time, I said, you know, we only got these kids four years. And so instead of looking at that as a negative, let's look at it as a positive. Whatever we deposit in their lives, they are taking to Washington, DC. They're taking to New York City, to LA, back to their hometown, to education, to business, to science, to the arts, and whatever we deposit in them, we are getting three exponential exportation of our ministry. We're sending out missionaries every single May at graduation, and they're paying their way to be our missionaries to the world. And I thought, man, this is a really good gig. And so I think it's that what you see. And I so challenge pastors to see the potential, see the potential and invest in the potential. Because, you know, yeah, maybe it isn't that you can count on them for 10 years. And maybe they're not gonna be your, you know, $50,000 giver, but they will carry your message, your podcast, and whatever you deposit in them, for the glory of God, they'll carry that wherever they're going, and they'll do that for free. - That's fantastic. That's such a good word, Louie. And you know what? It's something I really agree with. I just think you've got to get out of that mindset. I mean, I just turned 50 earlier this year, you're in your 50s, and you talked to a lot of people sort of in our generation, and they would see it the opposite of the way you just described it. So that is a very refreshing word. That's great. Louie, thanks so much. People are gonna wanna get more information on passion and on your book. What's the easiest way for them to do that? - Well, passion is passionconferences.com. - Okay. - So that's the easy place to find out the whole story there. Do you wanna know more about what we're talking about week to week? You can go to our church's website, which is passioncitychurch.com. - Right. - And all our weekly messages are there and other stuff that's going on. And the books everywhere that you could order a book, which for most people is Amazon. - Yes. - So just click on it to design and then come back. - It's called The Comeback. - It's called The Comeback. It has a big bright orange cover. It's hard to miss, and I hope it encourages people. - Well, we're gonna link to all of that in the show notes. So you can find that at kierinewhough.com/episode65. - Louie, thank you so much, man. I so appreciate this, been so encouraging. - Real treat for me, kieri. So thank you and just favor on everything you're doing. And thank you for letting me be a part of such a special conversation today. - Well, super honored. Thank you. - You bet, take care. - Well, that was preaching, wasn't it? Man, oh man, I was just so encouraged to hear Louie sort of go first as a leader, 'cause that's what leaders do, right? Sometimes if we hit the ditch, it's just easier to put a mask on it and say, "Well, you know, I had a rough window there, but I'm fine now." I just love that kind of authenticity. And once again, we've got some links in the show notes that can help you. We'll be linking not only to Louie's story. Just go to kierinewhough.com/episode65. And to all the things he talked about, including the links to Passion Conference. But I'll link back to Perry Noble's episode, to Craig Jutilla's episode. Both guys burned out in leadership, and they tell their story in a very raw, authentic way. There's also some resources in those links in particularly Perry's episode that Perry and I put together for anybody who's just hanging on by a thread, or you maybe are wondering you're burning out, or you know you're burning out. We just wanna help you. We just wanna come alongside you, because hey, there is a comeback. There really, really is. And as somebody myself who has burned out, I just wanna encourage you. So thank you so much for listening today. If you haven't done it yet, would you take a moment to subscribe to the podcast? It's absolutely free. And that way, all the stuff that we deliver, including some bonus episodes, which are coming up very soon, they'll be automatically delivered to your device. And it's a great way. When you subscribe, iTunes has a way of letting other people know about the podcast, because they go, "Hey, this one's important." So if you subscribe, if you haven't done that, that'd be awesome. And we will be back next week with a good friend, Wayne Cordova. And Wayne's been on the podcast before. He's back with some super practical tips that I think you're gonna be grateful for. And of course, now that you've subscribed, you're not gonna miss it. Thanks so much for listening. Can't wait to connect again next Tuesday. Hope this time together today has helped you lead like never before. - You've been listening to the "Carry Newhoff Leadership" podcast. Join us next time for more insights on leadership, change and personal growth to help you lead like never before. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) [BLANK_AUDIO]