Paula Fuller, InterVarsity’s Vice President and Director of Multiethnic Ministries, was interviewed for our new student website, StudentSoul.
I was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. Although I was raised in the church and had made a decision to follow Christ as a child, I didn’t have a strong spiritual foundation to help me with the issues I faced as a college student. I wasn’t aware of InterVarsity when I was an undergraduate student at U.C. Berkeley. I can remember vividly many of my struggles: adjusting to a much more rigorous level of study, wrestling with career decisions, struggling with my ethnic identity as an African American, and worrying about dating and making good decisions about friendships and relationships.
Looking back, I would have benefited from a college fellowship to provide me with a safe space to share my struggles. I would have enjoyed building lifelong relationships, growing in my knowledge of God through worship meetings, small group discussions, scripture study, global projects, and on-campus events. Instead, I stopped attending church after my first semester during my freshman year.
In my junior year, I met a friend who was a strong Christian. She asked me some challenging questions about what it meant to be a Christian and how I lived out my faith. I started attending church again, and one weekend attended a young adult conference sponsored by a local church. As I was walking along the beach, I fell in love with Jesus. I continued to have many of the same struggles, but I found new strength and perspective as my faith grew.
After college, I got involved in a number of leadership roles in the church and I’ve continued to grow in my relationship with God and what it means to live as a woman of faith over the years.
