Posted on Monday, September 18, 2006 at 05:13PM

Paul and his wife Tineke look after a church in the Northern Beaches area of Sydney. Many years ago they also established a small school called Northern Beaches Christian School which became a large and successful school and which now runs independently from the church.

They love their small church because it is so warm and friendly and has a freedom that they haven't seen in a church before. It is like a real family to them. They also have their own family with three children, Jessica and Matthew and Lucy. Matthew is married to Emma who is just as much a part of the family.

Jessica has a BA with a major in English literature and an MA with Writing for The Media and is a producer at Foxtel Cable Television in Sydney. Matthew is a Bachelor of design and worked in an architect's office in Sydney before completing a post grad course in Project Management and now works with Coffey International. Emma has finished her degree in social work with great grades and is doing social work in the inner city. Lucy has finished her 'gap' years after finishing her HSC and is taking life seriously after finishing her course in Public Relations and starting with Channel Ten in Programming..

Paul was born in the lower North Shore of Sydney and Tineke was born in Holland and came to Australia with her parents and younger brother and sister when she was eight years old. Paul met Tineke when he was a pharmacist and she was a sociology student at NSW University. He had gone back to study medicine at NSW University and after two years decided he would rather marry Tineke. After that they had Jessica and when Matthew had one more month to go before he was ready to greet the world Paul got shot in a drug holdup in an all night chemist shop and spent the next month in hospital with 30 shotgun pellets being dug out of a shattered left hand. (very soon you will be able to click on "Shot" and get the 'full story').

Paul and Matthew and Tineke all got out of hospital in the same week and Paul met his new son Matthew for the first time and they have been best mates ever since.

Paul must have inherited a flair for writing from his daughter Jessica because after hospital he started writing for ABC television and worked with Graham Bond on the first series of the 'Auntie Jack Show'.

Then something happened to him. Tineke had prayed that Paul would find the kind of faith that she had in Jesus. The way Paul tells it is that he was laying awake in bed one night about to go to sleep and having his last smoke for the day when he got terrified out of his wits. He thought he was being spooked by the devil himself and thought he was going to die. He cried out to God to take that black thing away and it went away. But it came back ten minutes later so this time he said "God if you take this thing away I will serve You for the rest of my life."

Well it went away - then Paul realized what he had said. He saw the Bible that Tineke had given him lying next to his bed so he opened it in the middle and read the first thing he saw. It said "I will save you from the terror that comes by night". This happened to be from Psalm 91 but Paul didn't know that and he didn't need to - he just needed to know it was from God.

Everything changed for Paul and Tineke after that. They went to Bible College in Turramurra in Sydney for a year, when Jessica and Matthew were two and a half and one years old. Paul had no intention of becoming a minister but they had sold their house and their pharmacy and never went back to them and two years afterwards they started a church in Gosford an hour north of Sydney. Two years later the four of them went to live in the Philippines for eight months to help a Filipino church get established. Two years after that they came back to the Northern Beaches and started Northern Beaches Christian Centre. Two years later they started Northern Beaches Christian School.

When Jessica and Matthew were 16 and 15 years of age Paul and Tineke decided to have Lucy. Lucy is still very happy about that decision. Dogs and parrots began to fill the house after Lucy arrived and we now have two dogs and a fussy Major Mitchell parrot called Missy. We have one autistic Papillon/chiwawa cross called Muffin, and a perfect Pomeranian called Lola. To be continued...It’s been nice to meet you.