Forget Match of the Day – Gavin Peacock is more interested in Match of the Pray.
The former Newcastle and Chelsea striker was becoming a popular TV pundit after retiring – but quit in 2008 to become a full-time pastor.
Peacock, 46, now works as a minister at Calvary Grace Church in Calgary, Canada, and also travels telling his story. He enjoys teaching the Bible and regularly studies Greek and Hebrew. He said: “It was all going very well, I might even have been better known as a TV pundit than I was as a player. But around 2006, I started to get a real calling to take up full-time ministry. I had been a Christian since I was 18 and preached as a lay preacher. Around that time, though, the calling became even stronger.
“I started doing some preliminary Old and New Testament studies. I knew then I was being called to it full-time. I call it my joyful compulsion. I love it, but I must do it.”
Peacock says his conversion to Christianity caused quite a stir in the football dressing room and even today people are shocked that he is so committed to his faith. He added: “Lots of people talk to me about my faith in Jesus Christ and it’s almost like they think it’s a superstition.
“Why has he given up the BBC and gone to live in the mountains? He must be a lunatic. I knew from a young age that money, fame and reputation wasn’t our purpose. We were created to love God and live for him.
“Football was my god as a youngster. All I wanted to do was follow my dad Keith and play football. But it ultimately didn’t satisfy. I was empty. If I played well, I was up. If I didn’t, I was down.
“This is why you get players suffering. They earn big money and everything seems great, but they are depressed and they don’t know why.
“I realised that Jesus is around us all the time.
“He is here with us now and it is that reality of knowing Christ that really came home to me so I made a commitment. From then on it was a growing gradual realisation of God in my life.”