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Reverend Matthew Stafford is Team Rector for the Wenlock team, covering the area around Much Wenlock in south Shropshire. Church Army trained, he wanted to be a vicar since he was 5 years old and loves nothing better than a good church wedding.

He previously worked in urban areas before jumping at the chance to be a rural rector in one of the diocese’s most northerly – and picturesque - parishes.

He’s the biggest fan of Much Wenlock since moving there three years ago and is determined to put the market town on the map, even if that means getting the Bishop – in full regalia plus hard hat - to bless the new nave roof whilst aloft in a cherry picker.

Reverend Ruth Hulse, Team Vicar in West Hereford, was brought up a Baptist in the East Midlands and describes herself as “the good Christian girl at school”.

She felt called to ministry in the Church of England while attending the festival, Soul Survivor before going home to tell her husband, John.

She can’t imagine being a vicar anywhere else but Hereford and loves the distinctiveness of all the churches in which she serves. With a heart for people, she supports her terminally ill churchwarden and parish stalwart, Barbara in her final days before stepping in to help a youth training centre, which is in danger of closing.

Father Matthew Cashmore, Assistant Curate in West Hereford, is fresh out of college and full of ideas - he wants to change the World (or at least Hereford).

Giving up a successful executive career, he sees God’s spark in everyone and wants to help people find it for themselves.

Determined to wear his ankle-length black cassock at all times, he’s spent his first few months providing practical help and love to some of the most vulnerable and marginalised, including a homeless woman who had resorted to living on a roundabout and taking the fruits of the parish’s harvest festival to the soup kitchens of the Calais refugee camps.

Reverend Nicholas Lowton is Rural Dean of Abbeydore and Vicar of the Black Mountains Group of Parishes.

After university at Oxford, where church music, especially at the Cathedral, led him to Christ he spent a career teaching in schools while also finding time to train for the priesthood.

In 1984 he found an escape from school life with a house in the depths of Herefordshire, and many years later he was fortunate in being chosen to be Vicar there when the vacancy came up. He has since become Rural Dean of Abbeydore, where he has developed a new pattern of ministry that spares clergy from the care of some very fine historic church buildings and allows them to concentrate more on building a vibrant church community in this wonderful part of the world.