The Bishop of Lichfield will today urge young people contemplating their future to consider a life of service as a priest in the Church of England, telling them: “Don’t settle for anything less than God’s best.”

The Right Reverend Jonathan Gledhill will make his comments at a press conference as he launches a video news report which has been commissioned to be shown in churches this Sunday (10th January) across the Diocese of Lichfield, which covers Staffordshire, the northern half of Shropshire and most of the Black Country.

The video report is the second time in the past three years that the diocese has commissioned television news reporter Robin Powell of Ember Regis media to produce a tv-news-style report for ‘broadcast’ as part of church services.

It marks the start of a major campaign by the Diocese of Lichfield to increase the number of young Christians (18-35 year olds) offering themselves for full time service in the Church.

In addition to the video report, which will also be available from Sunday at the diocese’s YouTube channel – pewtube.org.uk – the diocese is also launching a new vocations website for young adults – itmightbegod.org – and is staging a weekend vocations conference in April at which young adults will be able to explore whether God is calling them to a life of service.

At the press conference, Jonathan Gledhill will say: “One of the most satisfying careers of all is to spend one’s creative energies in building Christian community: in preaching and teaching the Christian faith, leading worship, making new disciples, transforming communities. It is a way to become rich beyond one’s wildest dreams; not financially but in every other way, as all the surveys show.”

And in the video he says: “I am encouraging young people to ask themselves: ‘What might God want me to achieve with my life?’ The moment you start a conversation with God anything can happen. It is my experience that sometimes people are called to the opposite side of the world, a new career, something new in a voluntary kind of way and even for ordination."

In addition to the Bishop of Lichfield, the four-and-a-half-minute video report includes interviews with:

• The Revd Matthew Hird, aged 27, the Curate of Penn, near Wolverhampton
  
  
• The Revd Lynsay Downs, aged 34, the Team Vicar of the Church of the Holy Spirit, Etching Hill, Rugeley
  
  
• Miss Shelley Billingham, aged 27, youth worker in the Bucknall Team Ministry, Stoke on Trent, who is considering ordination
  
  
• Mr John Grice, aged 25, an Ordinand in training at St John’s Theological College, Nottingham