A transgender Christian who is living as a man will take part in a renaming ceremony at a church in south London this weekend.
The ceremony at the Oasis church in Waterloo will be presided over by Baptist minister Steve Chalke on Sunday, within the church's regular mid-morning service.
The man, Luke, will be prayed for by friends and by Chalke and he will be renamed before being presented with a Bible with his new name written in it.
The BBC will be on hand to film the occasion, at which Luke will speak about his life.
Chalke told Christian Today that Luke is "a totally committed Christian – a fantastic guy. He's the kind of person you'd die for being in your church. There are some people that are there on a Sunday and there are some people that are really there. They are committed to God's kingdom – they are committed for living out their life for Christ and he is one of those."
He described this weekend's ceremony as a "pretty rare event". He added that Luke "came to church as a woman to start with around seven years ago...and has been coming for years".
In recent weeks the Oasis church has also witnessed a baptism of a transgender man who became a woman. The woman, Ruth, also gave testimony, describing how when she was a little girl she just wanted to be a "mummy" and played with dolls but felt guilty about this.
Chalke said: "She told her parents that she was going to have a sex change – Ruth had been baptised as a man and is a very committed Christian – and found the courage to talk to his, then, parents – and exactly the same thing as the Luke story, her parents said 'We'd never told you this but when you were born, you were inter-sex and we had to make a choice.'"
The names in this story have been changed.
