Dear People & Friends of St. Clements,
Last Sunday, we celebrated the end of the 50 days of the Easter Season by marking the Feast of Pentecost. As of last Monday, we entered what is known in the Church Calendar as ‘Ordinary Time’ which continues this year until 26th November 2011, the day before Advent Sunday. It is often referred to as the ‘Green Season’ as that is the liturgical colour we use during this time with one or two exceptions. One exception is this coming Sunday which is Trinity Sunday when we revert to white/gold, about which more in just a moment.
Our preacher last Sunday was Jack Noonan. If you missed his sermon or just want to listen to it once again, a recording of it has now been uploaded to our Church website. Just click here . My thanks to David Hellam for his technical skills in making the recording via the Church sound system & to Sybille for getting it uploaded to our website.
This coming Sunday 19th June is Trinity Sunday, the only Church Festival that celebrates a doctrine rather than an event from the life of Jesus or the life of one of the saints. I suspect that many of you know that you should believe in the doctrine of the Trinity but are often rather unsure about it, or certainly unsure how to explain it! In my sermon at our 11am Sung Eucharist, I will hope to try & explore a little of the mystery of the Holy & Undivided Trinity. There will be Children’s Ministry, led by Diane Tvaroha and the service will be followed by Coffee Hour in the hall on the third floor of Klimentská 18.
Then on Tuesday 21st June between 6.30-8.00pm in the small meeting room on the first floor of Klimentská 18, we will have the last of our Tuesday evening meetings before taking a summer break. Our visiting speaker on Tuesday will be Rev’d Gerhard Frey-Reininghaus who will speak about The Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren (ECCB) who are our host denomination, the owners of Kostel Sv. Klimenta where we worship. Gerhard heads the Church’s ecumenical department at their administrative HQ here in Prague & is therefore Rev Karen Moritz’s boss! Some of you may have met him when he came to hear Karen preach at St. Clement’s on Sunday 1st May this year.
Several people have said to me how informative & helpful these recent Tuesday evening events have been. Even if you haven’t attended any of the previous ones, there’s no reason not to come on this coming Tuesday!
Looking slightly further ahead……..
Sunday 26th June at 11am – Family Eucharist for the First Sunday after Trinity
Preacher; David Hellam. After the service, we are holding a Shared Family Picnic at the Park on Lannova which lies between the Church & the Vltava River, (click here for more information about the playground and how to get there) from 12.30pm until roughly 14:30, but in reality it will be ‘open ended’! We have organized a clown and some interactive games like musical islands, parachute games and balloon sculpting.
The idea is to have a shared picnic together after Church, but Church attendance is NOT compulsory in order to come ;-) Equally, if you want to bring something to eat and drink to share, feel free, but there will be also enough extra food and soft drinks available for those that can’t bring anything.
Thursday 30th June between 12.30-2.00 – Ethics at Lunchtime at Mlýnec, Novotného Lávka 9, Prague 1
The next in our series of lunchtime discussions organised jointly by St. Clement’s and the British Chamber of Commerce in the CR.
Discussion topic “The Big Society – is civic participation essential to a properly functioning democracy”
Full details & how to register can be found here
And looking further ahead to the Autumn/Fall
I’m very conscious that by the end of this month, many of you will be away from Prague for several weeks. Regular Sunday worship will continue but most of our other activities will take a summer break and resume in September. Sybille and I will ourselves be away between Monday 11th – Monday 25th July inclusive.
Your Church Council will be meeting next Monday evening & one of the things we shall be considering is what sort of programme of events – spiritual, social, fundraising – we should offer between September and Christmas. I have some ideas & so have some of the Church Council members. But if there is a topic you would like addressed on a Tuesday evening, or you have an idea for a social event – especially one that might help newcomers to Prague settle into expat life here – please drop me an email or speak with me or any member of the Council. And if you would be willing to help with organising it – even better :-)
It was also suggested by David Healey, the head of ICS when he was here in early March, that we should consider running a course in Christian Basics such as Emmaus, Christianity Explored, or even one of our own design. I would be interested in hearing from anyone who might be interested in being part of such a course which I would anticipate running on a weekday evening for about 10 weeks during the Autumn. Even better if, as well as attending yourself, you could bring along a non-believing/agnostic/not-sure-what-I-believe friend to keep you company. Again, I’d love to hear from anybody to whom this idea appeals to help me gauge the level of interest.
That’s more than enough for this week – please join us for worship on Sunday if you possibly can
Best wishes
Ricky
