Gavin Peacock: a Chelsea fan I admire!

A couple of years ago I had the pleasure of meeting former professional footballer Gavin Peacock. He was speaking at an event at which he told of the great highs he had experienced in his career as a footballer but how being a Christian towered above all of this. I'm doing him a disservice with such a trite summary: his passionate faith and incredible story were wonderful. Perhaps even more impressive was the patience and generosity he displayed in staying at the event for around an hour afterwards as people pestered him for photos, myself included!

At that time he was still lighting up the Football Focus and Match of the Day 2 sofas but he has since disappeared from our screens. In this well-written article from The Times you get to hear his reasons for leaving a dream job to study and prepare for ministry. Which is clearly his dream.

I loved reading what he had to say, as he pulled no punches: "Are we radically living for Christ or are we living in a lukewarm, plastic kind of Christianity? ... We’re preaching a man-centred, therapeutic gospel now. It’s a make-you-feel-good gospel and it’s a small gospel. I see a lack of respect for the authority of scripture. We need to see who He really is and we need to live in response to that.”

Amen to that.

Here's a great piece of work he did whilst with the BBC: