Dear People & Friends of St. Clement’s,

Before I write about the things that are happening on Sunday & during the week following, a reminder and an update about two events which I highlighted in last week’s Weekly Message. Firstly, because the annual meeting between the Old Catholic Bishops & those Anglican Bishops working in continental Europe, is taking place in Prague, starting tomorrow & finishing on Saturday after lunch, at 17.00 tomorrow….

Friday 19th June at 17.00 – Eucharist in the Old Catholic Cathedral of Sv Vavřince on Petřín Hill.
The celebrant will be Archbishop Joris Vercammen of Utrecht and the preacher will be our Anglican Diocesan Bishop Rt Rev’d Dr Robert Innes. As I know Bishop Robert doesn’t speak Czech ;-) , I am sure he will preach in English & I suspect that part of the liturgy will also be in English. So please do take full advantage of this opportunity to hear our Diocesan Bishop if you possibly can.

However, the Mini Pilgrimage planned by Gordon for Saturday 20th June, has been postponed to a date later in the summer because the weather forecast for Saturday is somewhat dire :-(

Then to Sunday…..

Sunday 21st June at 11.00 – Sung Eucharist for the Third Sunday after Trinity
Our Old Testament reading will be Job 38. 1-11 where after thirty-seven chapters recording the debate between Job and his comforters, God speaks! Our Psalm will be Psalm 107. 1-3 & 23-32 which rightly encourages us to ‘Give thanks to the Lord for he is good’. The Gospel reading will be Mark 4. 35-41 which records Jesus stilling the storm on the Sea of Galilee. Our worship will be greatly enhanced by the visiting Choir of All Saints Episcopal Church. Phoenix, Arizona, USA. There will be parallel Children’s Ministry and following worship, Cool Drinks & Light Refreshments served at the back of the Church.

If you are free on Saturday evening, the choir are also giving a concert at the Hlahol Concert Hall, Masarykovo nábřeží 248/16, just down from Národní divadlo tram stop, starting at 18.00.

Tuesday 23rd June – 18.30-20.00 in the small meeting room on the first floor of Klimentská 18.
For our last Tuesday study evening, before we break up for the summer, I will be leading a study, looking at Psalm 74, As usual, the last 15-20 minutes will be spent saying Evening Prayer together. If the outside door of Klimentská 18 is locked, please press the bell marked Kancelář & you’ll be buzzed in!

Sunday 28th June at 11.00 – Sung Eucharist for the Fourth Sunday after Trinity
It being the nearest Sunday to the twenty-fifth anniversary of my ordination as priest, during our worship, I will publicly renew my ordination vows with Jack Noonan and Rev’d Dr Karen Moritz again asking me the questions which were originally put to me by Rt Rev’d John Taylor on 1st July 1990.

Following worship, there will be a Summer Picnic in the Park. Full details can be found here The idea is that you can print out copies to invite your friends to come and join you, putting your contact details in the box at the bottom! Please bring picnic food that can be shared, enough for you and a bit extra, so we can also invite visitors to Church to join us as well. More details in next week’s Weekly Message but put the date in your diary now & think who you could invite.

Three other things for this week…..

A message from Tasci Gibson about Cool Drinks & Light Refreshments over the summer
Evelyn Zimmerman has very graciously and efficiently organized Cool Refreshments so that anyone is able to set up in a matter of minutes. (Thank you, Evelyn!!!) There are several bags in the church vestry with paper and plastic goods, trash bags, cookies/chips/pretzels and drinks. All that is needed is for the bags to be moved to the back of the church before service, the goodies to be set out and for clean up to occur. All the hard work of preparing snacks has been done for you! If some new people would be interested in helping out, that would be super! Evelyn will be away during the summer and I’ll be looking for volunteers to help out with Cool Refreshments. Contact Tasci: tgibson02(at)gmail(dot)com

In addition to volunteers for setting up, I would like to build up a supply of snacks so that the burden of bringing all the cookies/chips/pretzels doesn’t fall on one person and perhaps it will make it easier for people to get involved. If you would like to help, please bring a package of something tasty that will not perish quickly (ex PIM jaffa cakes, Tatranky wafers, Lays Potato chips, Coke/Pepsi, etc.). These will be kept in a bag in the vestry to allow quick and easy set up, and also supplement when extra snacks are needed (like the choir coming this Sunday!!)

Sermon Recording
As those of you who were present in Church last Sunday will know, the electrics in the Church went down a few minutes before the service was due to begin. The cause of the problem was David Hellam plugging in his laptop computer in the vestry, so he could set it up to record my sermon. Why the electrics should fail last Sunday, when David has done exactly the same thing on so many previous Sundays, is beyond my understanding. But as a result, my sermon from last Sunday wasn’t recorded. However, virtually every sermon preached since the beginning of this year, together with many others from previous years, are all available to listen to by visiting http://susanaj10.sg-host.com//sermons/ The most recent is that preached by Jack Noonan on Sunday 7th June.

The European Anglican magazine
I collected copies of the new Summer Edition from the post office today and they will be available free of charge from the table at the back of Church on Sunday.

That’s more than enough for this week.

Best wishes

Ricky