JUSTIN INVERGO

Justin Invergo said he grew up in a Christian home, but decided in his middle school years that he didn’t believe what his parents believed. By the time he got to college, he described himself as a “staunch atheist.”

After he was married, Justin’s wife, Emily, asked him to go to church with her. Justin agreed to go, but said he only wanted to be involved in a church that wasn’t going to “judge me, look at me funny, ask me questions, be pushy — anything like that — because I wasn’t a believer. I was an atheist.”

The Invergos felt at home at CrossTown Church and soon Emily asked Justin to attend a small group with her. Even as an atheist, he had enjoyed studying religions, and he saw a small group Bible study as another way to do that. However, looking back, he said he realizes now that God was must have been working on his heart even then.

A big turning point in Justin’s spiritual journey was after the birth of the couple’s first child, Ava. She was born with a birthmark on her face, which doctors believed might lead to a condifion called Sturge-Weber Syndrome. When Ava was only a few weeks old, doctors wanted to do an MRI on her, and they had to put her under anesthesia. “I didn’t like that,” Justin recalled. “It scared me to death.”

While sitting in the waiting room, Justin said he was in “all-out panic mode,” and he felt a prompting in his heart to pray.

“I couldn’t find a way to calm myself down, and I just felt this pressing on my heart that ‘I need to pray and I need to pray right now,’” he said.

That was the beginning of Justin’s relationship with Jesus Christ, which he made public during an altar call at church.

Today, Justin is a leader in the KidsTown program, overseeing Baby Boulevard. He and his wife Emily are parents to Ava and Rhys.

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