NFL Hall of Famer Brown challenges students to start legacy of faith

Before being inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 2009 and the NFL Hall of Fame last August, Tim Brown had to learn that humility comes before honor and persistence is the path to success in any pursuit in life.

Those are lessons he shared with Liberty University’s Convocation crowd on Monday, along with his testimony of transformation from a player who compromised his walk through profanity-laced trash talk to one who started using the platform God gave him to be a minister of reconciliation and a fisher of men.

The former Heisman Trophy winner at the University of Notre Dame and nine-time All-Pro wide receiver for the Los Angeles/Oakland Raiders finished his NFL career ranked third all-time with nearly 15,000 receiving yards and 100 receiving touchdowns from 1988-2005. But he said he realized mid-career that it was more important to live a life of integrity and leave a legacy of faith than to have his name forever etched in NFL lore.

Brown said that God’s purpose for his life was more than just making it into the Hall of Fame.

“God was setting me up,” he said. “It was all about giving me a platform to reach others for Him.”

While he lived a life of relative morality, Brown said he realized early in his career that he was not living out the faith that had been instilled in him growing up in a Pentecostal church in Dallas. He remained lukewarm until rededicating his life to Christ at 3:30 a.m. on June 26, 1996.

“I knew what God wanted from me,” Brown said. “I got to the point where I could not look at myself in the mirror in the morning because I couldn’t stand to look at myself, because I knew I wasn’t doing what God wanted me to do.”

He was convicted of the hypocrisy of his foul speech not lining up with the faith he professed during a game against the San Diego Chargers, when he took a late hit from All-Pro safety Rodney Harrison after dropping a fourth-down pass as the Raiders were trying to stage a late rally.

In response to the humiliation of letting his team down and receiving the stinging hit by Harrison, Brown launched a verbal tirade that shocked even Harrison.

“I was having the worst game of my career, dropping balls that hit me right in the stomach,” Brown said. “I got off that ground, and I said some things to Rodney Harrison (that were profane). I immediately felt shame because I felt like I had lost my witness.”

That very night, he went to his room, got on his knees and asked God to give him the endowment of His Holy Spirit.

“I needed it to be with me all the time,” Brown said. “It’s one thing to say that you’re somebody, and it’s another thing to live it. We have to be careful about saying that we are somebody but we are not living that way. I did not want to be that person. I knew that if I truly had the Holy Spirit inside of me and I listened to the Holy Spirit, things would work out a lot better for me, and they certainly did.”

Brown wrote “The Making of a Man” and is now involved in various Christian-based organizations. He said he doesn’t consider himself a social rights activist, but a man who has inspired others by living out his faith with integrity.

“For me, I am not the political type, I’m all about God’s Word,” he said, calling for repentance which leads to reconciliation and paraphrasing 2 Chronicles 7:14. “Until the people seek God and turn to Him, then He will heal their land. We don’t need another march. I’m hoping that one day, people will seek God’s Word, because that’s what it’s all about.”

Prior to Brown’s testimony, in commemoration of African American History Month, Josh Carter, a senior education major, recited  a “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,”  written by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., from inside a jail cell set up off the center stage designed to replicate the one in which King was incarcerated in Birmingham, Ala. on April 16, 1963.

That dramatization segued into a rousing rendition of “Glory,” sung by the School of Music Gospel choir LU Praise. A video was also shown promoting the End It movement, dedicated to stopping human trafficking on a global level. Liberty Student Body President Quincy Thompson invited students to gather in the Vines Center following Wednesday’s Campus Community to make a public stand against the modern-day slavery.