Businessman Found New Life, Calling at First Super Bowl Breakfast

Neil Konitshek was 32 when God reached into the darkness of his life and provided light. But he says he never really experienced living until he received Christ as Lord.

“I was raised in a dead church and really never had any fruit. After my dad died, we quit going and I basically became an agnostic or atheist, with no desire for God at all,” Neil says.

A successful real estate agent in San Diego, Konitshek was on a path of ambition and wealth but knew his life was empty. An associate in the insurance business gave him tickets to Athletes in Action’s first Super Bowl Breakfast, being held in San Diego the Saturday before the big game in 1988. Little did he know that God was setting up a divine appointment to get Konitshek’s attention and radically change his life.

Joe Gibbs, then head coach of the Washington Redskins and a strong believer in Christ, was the keynote speaker for the breakfast. Along with video clips about previous bowls, testimonies from NFL athletes and a nice meal, the breakfast plan included an invitation to enter a personal relationship with Jesus Christ given by Gibbs himself at the end of his speech. Konitshek had no idea that was coming.

“At the breakfast, it really hit me. Joe Gibbs spoke about his family and the important things in life,” he recalls. “Here I was losing my wife and kids because of my behavior but I didn’t want to admit that.”

When Gibbs led the audience in the prayer for repentance and acceptance of Christ, Konitshek prayed along. The next day, he says, he felt a true change in his heart.

“I felt clean and had a new start,” he says. “I noticed there was a change in me and I wanted to do this right.”

Change came slowly

The next few months were a time of spiritual warfare as he struggled with living out his new-found faith and overcoming past issues of anger at the church and personal materialism. He struggled with getting plugged into a church and even consulted a psychologist before finally handing the reins completely to God and trusting Him to make a real change.

God was faithful. Konitshek began to live more by the Spirit, allowing God to guide and grow him daily. He began seeking the Bible for wisdom and encouragement, and he began sharing with his wife, who also prayed and received Christ into her life about four years later. Konitshek studied evangelism to learn more about other religions, in hopes of discovering how to talk about Jesus with people of different faiths.

A new purpose

As God was changing Konitshek’s heart, he was doing a major work on his career ambitions as well. Suddenly, the real estate business that had brought him so much worldly success was an uncomfortable world of questionable practices.

“My desires completely changed. I stayed two years or so but basically I had no desire to do work in the world anymore. I just wanted to talk about the Lord,” Konitshek says. “A lot of my former real estate friends are multimillionaires, but I don’t look back at that at all with regret. God pulled me out of that into something that’s eternal.”

Konitshek admits his world as a new believer was 180 degrees from his former life. “Because I was in such darkness, it was a shock to me.” He learned that there were a few believers in his office but they had never shared because “they figured I was the least likely person to become a Christian.”

With a new desire to share the good news with others, Konitshek changed his career path completely. He runs a few websites from home but his primary focus is evangelism. In particular, he feels called to minister on the college campuses in his hometown, such as the University of California - San Diego and San Diego State University.

“I like that age group. That’s when I really struggled in my own life, and these kids are getting destroyed while in school,” he says. “I see some come with minimal faith and by the time they leave, they’re atheists. They get bombarded with humanism, relative moralism and such at these colleges, and it’s destroying their faith. It’s a war happening across the college campuses across the nation.”

Konitshek is active in a local church and often joins with people from various churches in street evangelism or outreaches in the city’s bustling nightclub scene. He knows the results might not be seen so quickly, but he trusts God is still at work.

“We try our best to plant some seeds, but it’s hard. There is a lot of resistance to the gospel, but occasionally we get some fruit,” he says. “We try to love them and show them God is there for them, and sometimes God breaks through and they’ll get saved. But we know at least we’re planting seeds.”

Seeds taking root

Konitshek is thankful for the man who planted that seed at the Super Bowl Breakfast. He even went so far as to write Coach Gibbs to thank him for the role he played in his life. A few weeks later, during his morning prayer time, the phone rang and it was Gibbs, then manager for the Redskins. The memory is a special one for Konitshek as Gibbs encouraged him and gave him some pointers in continuing his walk with God.

Looking back nearly 25 years after that life-changing February day when Gibbs’ testimony touched him, Konitshek knows if he had known there would be religious content at the breakfast, he would not have gone. He is continuously grateful for the outreach of AIA and that first event, all orchestrated to bring him new life.

“The Super Bowl Breakfast was the start, the seed planted that allowed God an opening in my mind and my heart,” Konitshek says. “When I went to that breakfast, I was completely in the dark. I didn’t know anything about God.

“That was the biggest fruit that came out of it, saving my marriage,” he adds, noting that he and his wife have been married 32 years and have two grown children who are actively living their faith. “It was destroyed before I came to Christ. How God was able to restore our family has been amazing.”

By Teresa Young, AIA Communications

Photos courtesy Neil Konitshek

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