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The college years are a time when students work out what they can achieve as adults in society, what kind of world we live in, what constitutes the good life, the relationship between intimacy and sex, what is truth—among many other issues. If they are Christians, they need help connecting to the rich biblical and theological truths that help them sort out these questions.

I spent six years as a campus pastor and religion teacher. I remember with special fondness the intense and authentic relationships I had with those students.

Between my years of campus ministry and my now nearly 19 years at Christianity Today, I spent four wonderful years working for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship (IVCF). The organization gave me an opportunity to combine my communication skills and my campus experience and work on HIS, IVCF's magazine for college students.

One of the student readers of HIS became a good friend and is now an associate editor of CT. While studying journalism at Louisiana State, Doug LeBlanc helped critique each issue of HIS and kept us editors in touch with the campus. I asked Doug to summarize InterVarsity's contribution to his life. "InterVarsity was the evangelical ministry most willing to take my doubts and fears seriously," Doug wrote, "and to help me move toward a confident and informed faith in God."

Managing editor Mark Galli also counts himself as an IVCF alum—though his student fellowship at the University of California-Santa Cruz had an "anti-establishment mood that precluded being attached to any national organization." That didn't stop a nearby IVCF staff worker from supporting the group and including them in area conferences. The bottom line for Mark? "InterVarsity helped me think about and live out my Christian faith with hope and courage in an academic context that was, for the most part, hostile to Christian faith."

Associate news editor Stan Guthrie met his wife, Christine, through an IVCF chapter. Stan says IVCF taught him how to study the Bible inductively, how to lead, and how to evangelize. It taught him "that Christians can be normal, thinking people." It also kindled in him a lifelong passion for missions.

But IVCF taught Stan "that while Christians can have doctrinal and other differences, our common faith in Jesus Christ goes much deeper. We had different denominations and races, but we were all brothers and sisters in Christ."

And here we segue into this issue's feature on InterVarsity's long pursuit of becoming a multiethnic organization. It has been a model for organizational transformation. Please read "One Lord, One Faith, Many Ethnicities", which was prepared by another IVCF alum, former CT assistant editor Helen Lee, a Korean American.

In the early '80s I was part of InterVarsity's task force challenged to create a new multiethnicity initiative. It was a bruising experience. But it was also a rewarding one. And as I look at 20 years of progress, I take satisfaction in what our IVCF friends have accomplished.

Copyright © 2004 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

One Lord, One Faith, Many Ethnicities is available online.

InterVarsity Christian Fellowship's web site provides more information on the organization.

Other articles about InterVarsity include:

Campus Collisions | Why InterVarsity Christian Fellowship was "derecognized" at some of America's leading universities. (Oct. 03, 2003)

InterVarsity Group on Probation | Tufts University says group violated school's nondiscrimination policy by excluding lesbian student from leadership. (Nov. 27, 2000)

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January 2004, Vol. 48, No. 1