The fourth grader stared dejectedly at the toys surrounding him, as the imaginary life that had enthralled and entertained drained from them. Toys lost their fascination, and Robert Fuller’s restless imagination was left without an escape. In sixth grade, salvation came in a book. Robert Fuller entered the realms of limitless creative possibility when his older brother gave him his first fantasy novel, “It opened my whole world up that imagination can be lived out in books. I immediately started writing right after that.”
Twenty-three years later, writing has become more than a creative outlet for Fuller; it has become a way of life and a career, as his imagination continues finding its way onto the page. Fuller has just begun AMI Press, a publishing house, as a division of Antioch Ministries International. Fuller’s childlike enthusiasm at the realization of his dream is uncontainable, “I come to work, and I write. Like I cannot believe that I get to do that as a job. God, you made it happen. I can’t believe it. Like, who gets the chance to do this?”
Fuller’s position as staff writer for AMI Press entails a fifty-hour workweek, thirty hours of which is devoted entirely to writing. Fuller ventures back to his college haunts around Baylor University’s campus, such as Armstrong Browning Library and the second floor of the SUB, to write. Fuller is intentional and present in his world both to write and gather stories: a witness and a chronicler. “Writers are always observing what’s going on around them. They’re listening to people’s stories. They’re observing characters. They’re observing journeys people go on. No writer writes in a vacuum. Everything they experience every day is enlightening and creating the characters they write and the characters they create.” Fuller describes his job as “telling Jesus’ stories.” The books and publications that come out of AMI Press will serve mainly to edify and encourage the church and testify of what God is doing throughout the world.
Fuller’s journey began long before his dream of a writing career was realized. Fuller recalls his childhood, “I just remember being in class, even in first grade, and I would create this world under my desk. A pencil would turn into a spaceship or a drill that was going to the center of the earth. I would make up characters and stories and movies inside my head.” During high school, Fuller wrote his imaginary worlds into stories.
Fuller’s entire family is engaged in the medical profession, and although he would not call himself the black sheep, from an early age he realized he was different. In college, his freshman year transition out of a pre-med biology major initially caused quite a scandal. His life has been a journey of reconciling his uniqueness with the world he lives in. “Even though it was wrong, I would try to be like other people. I would kind of feel like man I’m really weird…I’m so imaginative or I’m so emotional…who spends their study halls in high school writing stories…that’s really weird. I think a lot of times I would shun the way I was made, or shun the creative aspect…and just want to do what’s expected of me…I think I’ve just learned how lame that is and learned not to just be comfortable in my skin, but to celebrate the way I’m made.”
Fuller came to Baylor University in 1994. He was your typical Baylor boy: lived in Penland, rushed a fraternity, and participated in Sing and float. Perhaps not so typical, were the hours he spent in his dorm room rabidly devouring scripture and his commitment to community, discipleship and evangelism. During spring break, 1997, while normal college kids were performing keg stands and enjoying the sun and surf, Fuller was serving the poor on a mission trip in Juarez, Mexico. Then things got interesting. Fuller distinctly heard the Lord direct him to go to Turkey. Upon graduation, Fuller attended Elevate, a yearlong discipleship training school, and then flew to Turkey. He was there for two years, first in Istanbul, then in the college town of Eskişehir. Fuller remembers it as one of the most difficult and wonderful times in his life, “It was rough, but we planted a church.”
Fuller, always the writer, had been communicating with his girlfriend the old-fashioned way, via hand-written letters. After two years in Turkey, Fuller returned to Texas and married Heather. Back in Waco, Fuller worked as church janitor by day and college worship leader by night. Although some would view a janitorial career as a bummer, Fuller embraced it, “It was actually pretty fun. It was monotonous work and I could just pray or listen to sermons or audio books while I’m cleaning stuff.” During his time as a janitor, Fuller learned the value of being faithful in the small things, “Cleaning a toilet at a church or emptying the trash is just as important as leading worship or preaching…if you didn’t do those things, everything would be nasty, and people wouldn’t be blessed.”
Fuller’s life has been marked by this kind of faithfulness. Three years ago, Fuller was on the mountain behind his in-laws New Mexico cabin when the Lord asked him to devote his passion for writing to God’s purposes and to cultivate his writing gift. Fuller specifically felt called to write for one hour everyday, “It required a massive increase in discipline…It was almost like this boot camp…God was testing me in to see if I’d be faithful in it. It was pretty crazy.” He woke up at 4:30 every morning to spend time with Jesus, to write and to run. Consistent writing changed Fuller as both a man and a writer, “[Before,] I just wrote whenever I was inspired…the older you get the busier you get…you can’t wait for moments of inspiration. If you’re going to write, you have to write. Writers write whether they feel inspired or not.” He calls these three years a “test of faithfulness”. Fuller saw his writing improve, and he views this time of testing as the catalyst for the doors that were about to be opened, bringing his dreams to fruition, “The way you get to fulfill the dreams of what God’s put in your heart is you just take it by small steps of obedience.”
At the same time that Fuller had this mountaintop experience and pledged to indefinitely forfeit leisurely mornings, Robert Herber, Fuller’s close friend, was moving to San Diego to begin a new church. Fuller initially assumed he should move to San Diego and support Herber, but God had other plans, “I really felt God speak to me that it was time for me to be a visionary for myself. I’d always just assumed that there were visionaries and then there were the rest of us that were non-visionaries, that our roles in life were to help bring the visionaries vision to fruition.”
Fuller’s fear of failing has hindered his creativity, “Anything I do, I want to do perfect…that kept me from creating things.” God was encouraging Fuller towards audacity, anointing and equipping him to be a “creative visionary”. In 2005, Fuller had begun this journey of creative daring through songwriting. Fuller’s son, David, had near-fatal complications at birth. Out of the ashes of that experience, Fuller created something beautiful. As he learned to trust God with his son’s life, part of the lyrics for Jesus is the Lord, a song now available on I-Tunes, immerged for the world to see. Now, in 2007, on a New Mexico mountaintop, God was calling Fuller to embark on a new faith adventure. The foundation for AMI Press was established: Fuller went away from the mountain with a vision to start a publishing ministry.
Fuller presented the idea to Jimmy Seibert and Jeff Abshire, the pastors of Antioch Community Church. He was enthusiastically received; however, the prospect of a publishing ministry lay in limbo as Fuller continued leading worship by day and writing before the dawn. At this same time, Fuller began Reflect, a literary journal, which gave him a training ground to further hone his skills as a writer and artist while collaborating with other writers and artists.
In 2009, Fuller returned to New Mexico to work on a book, “It was…a dream come true, sitting there, writing in a cabin in the mountains with my family.” Much of Fuller’s inspiration is derived from nature, and he thinks is pictures and metaphors, “Nature is like this massive metaphor to me. Everything I experience, I…see as a tangible lesson God’s trying to teach me.” Ever since he read his first novel, Fuller has also been inspired by the written word, “Writers read. You can’t write unless you read, equally as much. As soon as I started inhaling books, I started writing myself. It’s always been a hand-in-hand thing. What I love…are real stories with real characters, even if they’re fictional they can be real, you…feel them, they seem like they’re a reality.”
In April of 2010, AMI Press was officially created. With the initiation of the publishing ministry, Fuller was not only taking a creative risk; he was taking a financial risk as well. His new position was not included on any payroll. He would have to raise support like a missionary—a literary missionary. “It felt like standing on the edge of a cliff, feeling God was saying jump, but not knowing what was on the other side or on the bottom.”
In the five or six months since Fuller risked his security, staring fear of failure right in its gnarly face, he says that God has answered every prayer. Fuller is on his way to raising the required support, and he successfully sold his house in a buyer’s market. Fuller’s writing is no longer confined to the wee hours of the morning.
When he’s not writing, Fuller is probably with his family. Fuller’s son Daniel, 3, is his carbon copy. Colleagues jokingly call him, “mini-Fuller”. Daniel plays drums and gives inanimate objects their own lives in his imagination’s continuously running script. Samuel is 4-years old and loves hearing stories, “That’s been something I’ve always dreamed of doing, even before I had kids…I got so excited about reading stories to them and writing my own stories for them, where they are the characters in the stories.” Fuller composes quirky ditties for his kids and endearing tunes for his wife, Heather. Fuller is devoted to his beloved partner and best friend. As Owen Wible, Fuller’s longtime colleague and former administrative assistant, attests, Heather is the only person whose calls Fuller answers.
Fuller is an unlikely introvert. Wible calls Fuller, “the comedic relief of really intense meetings”. Fuller describes himself as an “extroverted introvert.” He would rather take a solitary walk in the woods. He has over forty journals filled with ramblings, as he processes life. Fuller’s personality is reflected in his friendships, “I love really deep, rich friendships…I’m not as interested in fluff, a bunch of acquaintances.”
Fuller is not only an unlikely introvert, but he is also an unlikely writer. In college, Fuller’s mentor, Mark Masterson, recalled a line from Chariots of Fire; Eric Liddell professes, “God made me fast, and when I run, I feel His pleasure.” Masterson asked Fuller to fill in the blank: “When I __, I feel his pleasure.” The people who knew Fuller best immediately perceived him as a musician and worship leader, and as such, would have expected him to say that in a place of making music is where he felt most alive and closest to the heart of God. Something quite different came to Fuller’s mind, “The one thing, it just immediately popped into my head, is: when I write, I feel his pleasure.” Now that he’s privileged to write as a form of worship, a creative outlet and a career, Fuller says, “I feel like I’m standing before this vast panorama of possibility, though is sounds kind of cheesy, that’s how I feel.”
