By Paolo Hooke

A young, professional couple in their early 30s with a baby daughter, Greg and Suzie Atkin were first drawn to St Martin’s Killara as they were looking for a church to get married in. Greg had a Christian background but had never really committed to Christianity, while Suzie had grown up in a non-Christian environment and had never attended church.

Before they were married in March 2002, they started attending the St Martin’s evening service. Greg and Suzie say they found it to be a warm and friendly environment, where commitment and caring was not only preached, but lived out.

At around the same time Greg and Suzie attended an introductory course at the church explaining the basics of Christianity. As Suzie describes it , there was no way that creation and the universe is a fluke, the way it works with absolute precision. “For Suzie since there has to be a God, I needed to find out what He wanted from me. I embarked on a fact-finding mission to increase my knowledge about God.”

This in turn helped her husband regenerate his interest in God. As Greg explains, “I knew in the back of my mind that I would come back to Christ..” Now they are seeking to share Christ with their friends, no longer ashamed of the gospel. One event proved to be a watershed.  During their honeymoon, they were driving in the Sunshine Coast when they noticed on the back of a Ute a bumper sticker. It read: “Romans 1:16: I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile.”

For Greg and Suzie, who came across St Martin’s by chance, it now feels like home, a close-knit community of Christians seeking to share the love of Christ with others.