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Former QPR, Gillingham, Newcastle United and Chelsea footballer Gavin Peacock returns to UK as pastor at Bethersden Baptist Church near Ashford

Gavin Peacock lived the dream, playing Premier League football and appearing in an FA Cup Final in a career of almost two decades in which he played professionally more than 600 times.

But he found himself called to become a Christian minister, leaving his homeland for a new life as a pastor thousands of miles away in Canada. Now he has returned to lead a church in a Kent village, and we sent reporter Rhys Griffiths to meet him…

At the age of 18, Gavin Peacock appeared to have the life that every young boy who grew up with a football at their feet would dream of.

After a promising rise through the ranks of youth football that had culminated in appearances for the England Schoolboys team, he had signed professional terms with top-flight London club Queens Park Rangers and a career at the pinnacle of the game beckoned.

But still the teenager felt a nagging sense that something was missing.

“I had grown up really just thinking football's everything. It's everything that will make you happy - it’s the schoolboy dream,” the 57-year-old explained over breakfast at a cafe close to his home in Bexley.

“And then when I got it, because football was my God if you like, if I played well I was up, if I played bad I'm down, up and down. And I'm thinking, wow, my sense of happiness and purpose is tied up in football alone.

“So I’m questioning a little bit the purpose of life and all of that.”

At the time Peacock was still living at his family home in Barnehurst and one day he dropped into a local Methodist church, where the minister told the teenager about a youth group he hosted every Sunday evening.

“I pulled up to that meeting that night in my Ford Escort XR3i, a proper little 80s sports car,” he recalled.

“I've got the job,

Read more on kentonline.co.uk
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