As the Lord provides, we hope in future conferences to have two guest speakers each year: one returning speaker and one new to our Conference.

Returning from Scotland as a 2012 Conference speaker will be the Rev. Gavin Beers. Rev. Beers, a native of Northern Ireland, has been pastor of our Free Church congregation in Ayr, Scotland since 2006. He is married to Alison, and together they have six children. Gavin was converted to faith in Christ from an atheistic background in 1997 at the age of twenty, subsequently feeling a call to the ministry he trained first in the Whitefield College of the Bible in Northern Ireland, and then the Free Church Seminary in Inverness where he was later appointed lecturer in Old Testament and Hebrew. Rev. Beers spoke at our 2009 Conference. Those messages are posted here.

For the 2012 Conference we are also privileged to have for the first time, the Rev. James Gracie, pastor of our Edinburgh congregation and Secretary for the Free Church of Scotland (Continuing) "Training of the Ministry" Committee (TOM). Rev. Gracie was born and brought up in Glasgow, Scotland in a Christian home. On leaving school, he followed a career in agriculture. After his conversion to faith in Christ and a subsequent call to the gospel ministry, he studied for four years in the Free Church College in Edinburgh. He served in pastoral charges on the Island of Arran and on the Island of North Uist before being subsequently called in 2003 to the Free Church congregation in Edinburgh where he now serves. He and his wife, Catriona, have three daughters: Rachel, Alison and Lydia.