Louie Giglio calls Passion 2026 students to lifelong devotion: ‘There’s only one fame that won’t fade’

By Leah MarieAnn Klett, Assistant Editor Tuesday, January 06, 2026

In the final message of Passion 2026, Passion City Church Pastor Louie Giglio told over 45,000 college students and young adults that the conference’s purpose has never been about gathering crowds, but about sending people out “for the glory of God,” including those who feel too wounded or anxious to believe they can be used.

“[Passion] is all about Isaiah 26:8,” Giglio told those gathered at Globe Life Field in Arlington, Texas, on Jan. 3. “This has been our theme for 29 years: ‘"Yes, LORD, walking in the way of your laws, we wait for you; your name and renown are the desire of our hearts.’”

“Renown is a powerful word. It's fame that will never fade,” the 67-year-old Atlanta-based pastor continued. “The world's full of fame. In fact, because of sin, every one of us wants to get our own kind of fame. But all that fame, all of it. Think of the biggest fame you can think of on this Earth; it is all going to fade. There's only one fame that won't fade, and that's the fame of Jesus. The glory of Jesus will not fade.”

Giglio, who founded the Passion Conferences in 1997 alongside his wife, Shelley, said Passion exists to call students to a different kind of ambition, not self-promotion, but devotion.

“The reason Passion exists is to help us trade little fame for the fame that never ends,” he said. “That's the gift of God to you and me. I want to help you trade little fame for the fame that never ends, so that when your life is over on this Earth, your life can live on forever, because your life was a part of His renown.”

He described the vision of the Passion movement as simply a launching point meant to become a lifetime mission.

“We talk about it like this: our goal, believe it or not, is not to get tens of thousands of people into stadiums. Our goal is to launch tens of thousands of people out of stadiums for the glory of God,” he said. “And so, for us, it looks like arrows being launched into every sphere, every nation, every sector.”

“If finance is your thing, praise God,” he added. “We want to launch you like an arrow for the glory of God into whatever segment of finance God puts you in, arrows flung for the glory of God.”

“But what is also true is that not all the arrows are ready to go. Some, actually, probably a lot of the arrows, are broken,” Giglio said. “Some of them, when the archer pulls them out of the quiver, they're smashed.”

“We live in a world where we're always putting our best foot forward,” he said. “Pull me out of the quiver, and it looks like stickers on a laptop. I don't know why we put stickers on our laptop, but I wonder if sometimes it's to distract people from the fact that there really is a pretty significant crack there, and maybe they'll just see the tape and not notice that, if I'm honest, I'm a broken arrow.”

Giglio referenced testimonies shared during the conference, stories of people who once sat in the same seats carrying trauma and fear. That reality, he said, led him to Luke 8, the account of Jesus encountering a demon-possessed man in the region of the Gerasenes.

“I'm not saying every broken arrow is demon possessed, but […] demons are real,” Giglio emphasized. He added that in recent months, “it feels like in my feed I've seen more demons on social media than I've seen in a long time.”

“I don't believe every issue is a demon,” he stressed, “but I know that when Jesus arrived in the region of the Gerasenes, he was met by a demon-possessed man from the town.”

“This, by the way, is where the enemy wants to lead you,” Giglio said. “He wants to lead you to a solitary place, to a place where you feel isolated, where you feel like nobody else understands. ‘Nobody else gets me, nobody else is going through what I'm going through.’”

But Giglio pointed to what happened next: Jesus did not simply restore the demon-possessed man; Jesus sent him.

“You could insert here, Jesus launched him like an arrow,” Giglio said. “And He said, return home.”

Similarly, Giglio said God put a “vision” of a stadium “filled with broken arrows” on his heart.

“There was a whole stadium filled with broken arrows,” he said. “Some were broken because of the choices they had made. Some were broken because pain had sent them to dark places. Some were broken because they had been abandoned. […] Some were broken because of abuse. Some were broken because of a syndrome, a condition, a diagnosis, a disorder. Some were cracked because they were overlooked. […] Some were broken by fear and anxiety and depression and dread. Some were broken by the lies of the enemy: ‘you're unwanted, you're insignificant, unlovable, defective,’ but all were broken.”

“Maybe for you, the graveyard is disappointment, or the tomb is abandonment. The tomb is abuse,” he said. 

Giglio shared a personal account of his own experience with debilitating depression and anxiety, revealing there was a time when he believed he was dying, and when doctors tried to convince him otherwise.

“I was diagnosed with something called the fear of death syndrome,” he said. “I thought I was going crazy, and I thought that I was dying. I had to go to somewhere near 20 different doctors to tell me I wasn't dying before I began to believe I wasn't dying. I was losing my mind.”

Even so, Giglio said the story of Jesus is about both past and future and that a person’s future does not have to be chained to what they have survived.

“But what I want to say to you is this story is about two things. […] It's about the past, and it's about the future,” he said. “And I would love to proclaim today that the God, who is in Globe Life Field, is a God who can deliver us from the past and who can lead us into His future for our life. Your destiny is not your past. Your destiny is a future with God.”

“So here's the question: What can make the broken arrows soar again? Better question, who can make the broken arrow soar again, and how?” he asked. “And the answer is as big as we could get it tonight, the answer is the cross of Jesus Christ.”

He connected the cross to Isaiah 61, describing Jesus’ mission as one aimed at the wounded. Giglio also quoted from Matthew 27, describing the darkness at the crucifixion and the tearing of the temple curtain.

“He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,” Giglio said. “Jesus didn't come for great arrows. Jesus came for cracked arrows.”

“When Jesus died, it wasn't just that we got access to God, but we did get access to a holy God through the death of Jesus Christ,” he said. “But when Jesus died, we not only got access to God. We got a way out of our tombs.”

He emphasized that true healing begins not by fixating on personal wounds but by focusing on Christ’s.

“We don't get healed by looking deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper into our wounds,” he said. “We get healed by looking more and more and more and more into the wounds of our Savior, Jesus Christ, because by His wounds, we are healed.”

“I totally respect science. I totally respect medicine. I am grateful for doctors. I'm also grateful for prayer,” he said. “I'm grateful for Jesus community that rallied around me.”

Still, he said the cross speaks to those who feel defined by pain and to those who wonder if God’s love can be trusted in suffering.

“The enemy’s primary way of communicating to you that God doesn't love you is in your pain,” he said. “It's like, where's God? Where's this good God, where's this loving God, where's wonderful God?”

“This cross is saying to you, God has the power to change your life right here and right now,” he said. “God's going to use you. I want you just to say that, even if you can't say it out loud, I want you to say it in your mind right now: God's going to use me.”

Giglio acknowledged that healing may look different for different people, instantaneous, gradual or ultimately fulfilled in Heaven, but assured audiences that brokenness doesn't disqualify anyone from God’s plans.

“I'd like to offer to you tonight that if you identify in any way with one of these, you can soar again,” he said. “It may be instant healing right now. […] It may be progressive healing. […] It may be final healing in Heaven, but you can soar again.”

“Archery is not about the arrows. Archery is about the archer,” he said. “And here's what He's saying to you, ‘I got you. I got all of you. I got all of you.’”

“I'd like to invite you just to stand into this prayer,” Giglio concluded. “Just so that you can say to yourself today and proclaim, into the spiritual world, ‘I'm stronger than the devil wants me to believe I am.’”

This year’s Passion Conference was held Jan. 1-3 and featured speakers, including Cliffe Knechtle, Jackie Hill Perry, Earl McClellan, Jonathan Pokluda and Sadie Robertson Huff, along with music from Brooke Ligertwood and others. 

Following the conference, Giglio wrote on Instagram: “We prayed for Jesus to meet us here… on this field… during these days, and He did. We are so grateful for what He did in the lives of thousands of students at Passion 2026. This generation has a fire on the inside that won’t burn out as they go back to their campus, work, families, and to the ends of the earth. We are arrows being sent out by the power of God for the glory of God. Thank you, Jesus.”