Gavin Peacock played Premier League football in the 1990s. He was later a pundit for the BBC before moving to Canada in 2008 to pursue pastoral ministry. In 2025, he returned to the UK, where he is locum pastor at Bethersden Baptist Church.
JT: Can you talk through your decision to leave Canada and come to Kent?
GP: It was a big decision; I’d been in Canada for 16 years, pastoring in a church in Calgary for almost 13 of them, and my grown-up children and grandchildren have remained there. On the other hand, both my wife Amanda and I are British, we have relatives here, and we lived in the UK for the first 40 years of our lives. It’s very much home for us.
I first went to Canada so that I could carry out ministry studies with some anonymity. I didn’t want people mixing up my past as a professional footballer and TV pundit with my new work in pastoral ministry. Nevertheless, over the years doors opened for ministry beyond Canada, and I took opportunities to speak at events in the USA, Africa, China, and back here in the UK. I would preach at churches or speak at conferences, often addressing the topic of biblical manhood – an issue close to my heart and a hot-button topic of our day.
These engagements in the UK increased in recent years, and my wife and I sensed a growing call to return here with a view to pastoral ministry. In 2024, I spoke at the Grace Baptist Partnership annual conference. Between meetings I got chatting to an elder at Bethersden Baptist Church in Kent and became aware that the fellowship was struggling and in need of a pastor.
