Dear People & Friends of St. Clement’s,

Last Sunday morning, I and the rest of the congregation, had a wonderful surprise. During the previous week, our host congregation installed completely new lighting within the Church building. Whilst I knew that plans had been drawn up for this work – they have been on display at the back of the Church & in the hall on third floor of Klimentská 18 for some months – I had no indication as to when they were going to be implemented. It is such a wonderful improvement, especially on dark cloudy winter mornings, and will be much appreciated at our Service of Lessons & Carols on Sunday 15th December & our Midnight Eucharist on Christmas Eve. If you didn’t experience the new lighting last Sunday, make sure you are there this Sunday!

Sunday 24th November at 11.00 – Sung Eucharist for the Sunday next before Advent – Christ the King

This coming Sunday is the last Sunday of the Christian or Church Year, the new year starting the following Sunday, which is Advent Sunday. On this coming Sunday, we celebrate the reign of Christ with the Sunday being known as Christ the King. Our preacher on Sunday will be my friend and colleague Rev’d Dr Karen Moritz. There will be parallel Children’s Ministry and following worship, there will be Coffee Hour in the hall on the third floor of Klimentská 18.

Tuesday 26th November 18.30-20.00 in the small meeting room on the first floor of Klimentská 18

Our Study & Fellowship Meetings continue looking at the Letter of James. This will be our last Tuesday evening session until the New Calender Year and we will be looking at James 4. 13 – 5. 20. We’ll finish our time together by saying Evening Prayer together.

Collections at the back of the Church

A very big ‘Thank you‘, to everybody who has contributed to the various collections at the back of the Church. A few reminders & updates.

Billa stickers for soft toys. If you have any stickers from Billa supermarkets, please can you make sure you bring them to Church this Sunday. Zannah Downs from International Church of Prague, who is organising the collection, will be picking the stickers up from me during next week so she can claim as many soft toys as possible & then arrange their distribution to disadvantaged children.

Used postage stamps for the Intercontinental Church Society ICS. It was nice to find the collecting envelope on the noticeboard, overflowing this past week, so I’ve brought all those used stamps home to the Chaplaincy Flat, ready to send off to the ICS organiser in the UK. Therefore there is now plenty of room for more used stamps!

Salvation Army wheelie bins. As you may have noticed, the wheelie bin for warm winter clothing which we are collecting to support the Salvation Army in their work with the homeless in Prague, has also been full to overflowing. Therefore on Tuesday evening, I met with František Pekárek who heads up the work of the Salvation Army with the homeless, and he took all your donations away to be sorted and put to good use. Once more we have a wheelie bin with plenty of room :-) There is also still plenty of room in the other wheelie bin for tinned food to help with their feeding programme with the homeless. Please can we have some more ‘clunks’ into that wheelie bin this Sunday?

Coffee Hour on Sundays

A message from Tasci Gibson, who is masterminding our rota, regarding Coffee Hour.

‘I’d really like to get more people involved. My goal would be a solid core of 8-10 volunteers so that we have plenty of back up when needed and no one feels too stressed to manage it all the time. We are half way there :-)!’

We are half way there because we have four or five volunteers. But please can we have a few more, particularly people who don’t feel able to read publicly or lead intercessions. This can be a way of contributing to our congregational life, without needing to be up in front of people in Church. Please speak with me or email Tasci, tgibson02(at)gmail(dot)com . Tasci is very willing to explain what’s involved & show people where to find everything.

Finally for this week…..

We still have a small number of packs of Christmas cards of one design, with English text, from those that we had produced two years ago. Packs of ten cards with envelopes for CZK 200, will be on sale at the back of Church this Sunday.

Best wishes

Ricky