The new parish priest for St John’s Church, Locks Heath, was born in Brazil, loves football and is passionate about sharing Jesus with all, especially families.

Bishop Jonathan has appointed the Rev Luiz Lima to be the next priest-in-charge at St John’s. He’s currently the vicar of Christ Church and St Luke’s Churches in Worksop. The father-of-two, who has nine years of experience in youth ministry, trained for ordination in Bristol before becoming a curate in Worksop.

He moved to his current position in 2017, and has transformed the number of children, families and young people coming to church. Among his initiatives was a pirate-themed party service for families, which featured TV presenter Gemma Hunt, from the CBeebies programme Swashbuckle.

“St John’s seems like such a wonderful community, and they have been doing well without a vicar,” he said. “I want to empower them, to love them, to encourage them, and I hope that my family will become part of their big family.”

Luiz was born in the north-east of Brazil, by the coast, and became a Christian at the age of 15. He became part of a large Anglican church of 5,000 people and was used to worshipping with 1,000 other young people.

He love music and learnt to play the keyboard and guitar so that he could lead worship in church. After a gap-year in Canada, he came to the UK and worked as a youth minister – in Bradford and then in Nottinghamshire. He married Jessica 20 years ago.

He felt called to ordination and studied for three years at Trinity College, Bristol. It was there that their first son Nathan, now 11, was born. He was ordained in 2014 and became a curate at St Anne’s, Worksop and St Mary’s, Norton Cuckney. Their younger son, Sebastian, now 8, arrived during this time.