Over the course of 2025, LCPC has enjoyed many of our ministerial friends from across the globe coming to pay us a visit. We were glad to welcome these beloved brothers into our church home, as they shared fellowship and proclaimed the gospel from its pulpit. As a result, we have been blessed with the Word through preachers from all over the world as the year has progressed, forging friendships across hemispheres, sharing prayer with our northern friends, and greeting those whose faithful worship can be found just a few stops away on the London Underground.
Our first visitor was one of our furthest-flung friends, as we welcomed Rev Dr Michael Bräutigam, a Free Church of Scotland minister, currently teaching and preaching in Melbourne, Australia, on February 23. On the 9th of March, Rev Ben Spivey, who has been working in RUF campus ministry in the US and is now bringing RUF to London in partnership with LCPC, visited and preached. Rev Mark Randle (pictured below), the senior minister at Tates Creek Presbyterian Church in Lexington, Kentucky, visited us on March 23, followed by his colleague, the Rev Robert Cunningham (also pictured), former senior minister at Tates Creek and our longtime friend, on April 6. Speaking of old friends, it was a joy to have Rev Kruger de Kock (pictured below), who ministered in London for over twenty years and had attended LCPC, come and visit us again from his home in South Africa, where he ministers at Cross Culture Church, and hear about his work there, alongside the whole de Kock family.
The Sunday of May 25 blessed us with two guest preachers over two services, including Rev Kevin Twit (pictured below), also a campus minister in the US, preaching at Belmont University, followed in the evening by Rev Carl Vermeulen, minister of the Free Reformed Church of Armadale, Western Australia. Closer to home, the Rev Dr Mark Stirling, a Free Church of Scotland minister currently living near Inverness, came to visit and preach to us on June 8, while in London for his work at Oak Hill Theological College. We were visited by a former member and elder of LCPC, Rev Dr Brad Bitner, the following week on June 15, who attended with his family for many years, and was coming out from Escondido, California where he teaches at Westminster Seminary California. He preached the morning service, and in the evening service of the same day we were delighted to welcome Rev Confex Makhalira, the pastor at Christ Presbyterian Church in Blantyre, Malawi, for the second time to LCPC. As this busy month came to a close, Rev Callum Macleod, a retired Free Church of Scotland minister, came to visit on June 22 and delivered a sermon in the evening service that continued our series, ‘A Summer in the Psalms’, preaching on Psalm 110.
Summer passed, and it was on the eve of autumn, Sunday August 31, that we joyfully welcomed back our friend Prof Bob Akroyd to LCPC (pictured both above and below), lecturer and postgraduate supervisor at Edinburgh Theological Seminary and our former interim moderator, who preached our morning service. In the evening service of that Lord’s Day, he was followed by a fellow American, Rev Caleb Willingham, who is a pastor from Church Creek Presbyterian in Charleston, South Carolina. On September 14, we were blessed with preaching from Rev Geoff Murray and Rev David Meredith, as they visited us on behalf of the Free Church of Scotland Presbytery of Edinburgh and Perth, the latter of whom has been visiting us for forty years now. We welcomed another Edinburgh friend only a few weeks later, as Rev Dr Israel Guerrero from Cornerstone Free Church, Edinburgh, was our guest preacher on Sunday, September 28. Our final visiting preacher of the year was a fellow Londoner, Mr Stan Adams of First Wednesday, who came to LCPC and preached on October 26.
Throughout the year we have heard the gospel proclaimed in LCPC by ministers hailing from all over the world, from our many American brothers to those even further afield in Australia and Africa, alongside those ministers and friends working within our own country and denomination. As these preachers, their wives and children have boarded planes, trains and a temperamental Tube system to come and worship with us, God has spread his Word in not just our church, but through the great city of London and beyond, for his glory and our good.
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