Photos By MIKE CHIEN/Daily Bruin Freshman soccer player Kendal
Billingsley and freshman baseball player Chris Denove enjoy the
live music at the Wave Conference in Pauley Thursday.
By Marcelle Richards and Bruce Tran
Daily Bruin senior staff
[email protected] [email protected]
The two-day Wave Conference in Pauley Pavilion was in drip mode
on opening night Thursday, pooling only about 150 of the 10,000
expected.
The sponsoring group, The Wave, hopes the floodgates will open
tonight.
“God’s going to bring it tomorrow,” said
Suzanne Linn, a fourth-year physiological science student and
javelin thrower on the track team.
A few Wave members in the upper stands clapped in rhythm to
Christian rock. The backs of their red shirts read
“servant.”
The Wave, which evolved from Athletes In Action, worked with the
Inter-Christian Council and umbrella groups like Campus Crusades
and Intervarsity Bruin Christian Fellowship.
“It’s open to everybody,” said former football
player Chad Rogers, who originally came up with the idea for the
conference. “It’s about having the desire to learn
about God and the desire to spread the gospel.”
Ex-Mafia member Michael Franzese shares his
testimony with attendees.
Featured speakers include former L.A. Lakers chaplain Steve Hage
and Lou Engle, who organized The Call, a Catholic men’s
fellowship, in Washington, D.C.
Michael Franzese, a former organized crime member, and Kent
Jacobs, who funded Death Row Records and once served time for
dealing cocaine, presented their testimonials about how
Christianity replaced crime with a cross.
The Lifting, Something Like Silas and Rock-and-Roll Worship
Circus also performed.
Upstairs, a small prayer circle met in a corner, as a few event
staff grabbed plates of food from a potluck table setting across
the room. The commotion below was barely audible.
“There wasn’t a lot of publicity. A lot of things
just fell through,” said fourth-year English student Lyndee
Hovsepian, an All-American on the women’s swim team and
co-organizer of the event.
She, along with second-year Italian and English student Dara
Ransom, spent the last month booking speakers and donors for the
$56,000 event. As the four-sided screen flashed images of the
stage, and blue lights cast a soft glow, Hovsepian looked pleased
““Â the event turned out “beautifully,” she
said. She turned to watch the speaker behind her.
“Do you have a fire for Jesus?” sounded in the
stadium as the crowd cheered back.
“The show goes on,” she said, emphasizing the
event’s purpose to put God back into the college picture.
“Our main deal is to come back to the heart of God,”
Hovsepian said. “Once you have that, other people catch on to
it, and it produces a wave. When there’s one droplet, it
doesn’t do that much, but when a whole bunch of droplets come
together, it creates a tidal wave.”
Linn, who said she had trouble keeping her faith her first few
years in college, attributes the difficulty to the “party
atmosphere” of college.
“The dorms are right by the fraternities,” she said,
adding that creating a stronger circle of Christian groups can make
for an alternative scene.
A personal endeavor, like that of many participating athletes,
is a Bible study group she formed with teammates.
On balancing her athletic and religious involvement, she said,
“It’s really helpful our head coach is
Christian.”
Keeping with the theme of spreading “the word,” an
alter call invited outsiders of Christianity to make a pledge of
faith.
“If just one person is touched by it, it’ll be a
success,” Rogers said. “If that one person spreads the
gospel, and he has that fire lit in him, and he goes light that
fire in someone else, then that’s a success.”