Charlie Kirk’s Pastor Makes One Promise for Memorial Service, ‘Not Going to Have Charlie Kirk’s Name on Their Lips…’

There are moments when words hit deeper than politics, commentary, or even mourning. Pastor Rob McCoy, the man Charlie Kirk proudly called his pastor, delivered one of those moments this week as he prepared to speak at Kirk’s upcoming memorial service.

Pastor Rob is not a celebrity preacher. He is not trying to build a megachurch or land himself on television. He is, by his own admission, a man who has faithfully shepherded a church for 25 years and even jokes that he has “the gift of preaching a church down to a manageable size.” Yet this Sunday, when he stands before tens of thousands at State Farm Stadium in Arizona and millions more watching worldwide, he will seize that moment for one purpose alone: to preach the Gospel.

In a heartfelt conversation, Pastor Rob explained that Charlie never wavered in calling him his pastor, even as Kirk’s influence skyrocketed. “Charlie, your stock has gone through the stratosphere,” McCoy once told him. “You don’t have to keep calling me your pastor.” But Charlie pushed back, insisting, “Rob, not only are you my pastor, you’re America’s pastor.” McCoy laughed it off at the time, saying he belonged more in the “book of Who’s He” than “Who’s Who,” but now he is preparing to carry that mantle, if only for a few minutes.

And what does he plan to do with it? “For 11 minutes in Glendale, Arizona in front of 70,000 people and a billion tuning in worldwide, I’m gonna be the man he wanted me to be,” McCoy said. “I’m gonna be faithful to present the gospel, to share with them that when they leave that building, they’re not gonna have Charlie Kirk’s name on their lips. They’re going to have Charlie Kirk’s Savior’s name on their lips, which is what he always wanted.”

That is powerful. In a culture where funerals and memorials are often turned into platforms for political messaging, McCoy is determined that this service will not be about him and not even primarily about Charlie, but about the One Charlie lived to glorify. It is exactly the kind of testimony Kirk himself would have insisted upon.

So when Pastor Rob steps up on Sunday, the world will hear more than a eulogy. They will hear a pastor honoring his friend the way Charlie Kirk would have wanted: by pointing everyone to Jesus Christ.