After a decade-long stint leading a student ministry at Baylor University in Texas, Louie Giglio and his wife Shelley moved to Atlanta in 1995 and started the Passion conferences. It´s a national collegiate ministry that used live worship music and teaching to encourage young people to live for the glory of God. Yearly Passion events served as the movement’s centerpieces: multi-day, festival-styled gatherings whose attendance grew exponentially from a couple of thousand when Passion held its first get-together in 1997 to up to 40,000 in 2000.

Since the second gathering in Austin, Texas in 1998, Passion decided to document the musical portion of the annual conferences via live worship recordings — raw, in-your-face praise songs with an alternative edge. The original worship leader at the conferences was Charlie Hall, but soon other collaborators including Chris Tomlin, Crowder, Christy Nockels, Matt Redman and Kristian Stanfill joined the fold.