Called to Greatness

This past Monday, I attended one of the most phenomenal Convocations of the school year. Convocation is a class at Bethel, which all students are required to take for all 8 semesters they attend BC. It is a class that has no homework, and only requires students to attend and stay awake. The class lasts for an hour, and is held twice a week. During the class, Bethel brings in speakers or entertainers on a variety of topics and they get about forty minutes to speak, with at least an additional ten minutes for all students to ask questions. The topics range anywhere from the death penalty in Kansas (for those of you out of state, this is a pretty hot topic, as the Kansas Legislator is currently working on laws to permit the death penalty), to art, to having music groups come in and sing to us, to Biology. In any case, students undoubtedly find at least one Convo that they enjoy throughout the year, and our Convo this past Monday will definitely be mine! On Monday, we had the pleasure of allowing Wayne Simien, KU Basketball star and Miami Heat player, to our campus to speak with us. My best friend and I, being the radical KU fans we are, showed up to Convo about twenty minutes early and actually stood outside the doors to Convo to be the first ones signed in so that we could get front row seats! This is probably the only time that I will do this at Bethel, but it was well worth it. The title of the Convo was “Called to Greatness” and you might think that since Wayne was a star basketball player, winning NCAA player of the year, a person who led the Jayhawks to back to back conference championships as well as to NCAA playoff games, winning once, that he might speak about his relationship with basketball and how basketball was his calling. But instead, he spoke to us about what he calls his most rewarding achievement in his life, his faith Journey. Here is a man who played on one of the most respectable teams in the NCAA, and then got invited to play with the Miami Heat professionally, and he gave it all up because he felt called to God. His speech was amazing, and I know it made me feel very humbled. After his presentation, he was asked if he missed basketball and he told us that he never felt like he did, and that in fact, he hadn’t played for almost an entire year. God was the one thing in his life that kept him satisfied always. I was extremely moved by his presentation and I think most other students enjoyed him as well. I think Convo’s like these make my time feel most enriching here at Bethel.