Dear People of St. Clement’s,

Now that I’ve been back from my recent holiday for just over a week, I plan to resume my practice of sending out a Midweek or End-of-Week Message on a regular basis, to keep everyone in touch with what is going on at St. Clement’s as well as to pass on my thoughts and reflections on the Christian life and faith. I’m always grateful for feedback so don’t be afraid to click on ‘Reply’ if you want to get in touch with me!

A big ‘Thank You’…….
……to everyone who went out of their way to make Rev’d Kathy Ferguson so welcome during her 15 day stay as Locum Chaplain. Kathy thoroughly enjoyed herself and has asked me to pass on her thanks and greetings from her home in Mid-Wales to which she safely got back on the evening of Thursday 14th October. She has expressed a willingness to come again next year and I will be discussing dates with her to see if we can find ones that both work for Kathy & Sybille & myself. As one Church Council member remarked last Sunday, it is always nice to have a Locum Chaplain who has been before because they are already familiar with the way St. Clement’s functions and know some of the people already. It is a sentiment with which I too fully agree!

Did you have a good holiday???…….
………..is a question Sybille and I have regularly been asked in recent days. Firstly – many thanks to all those who have asked. Secondly – Yes – we did! To answer the normal follow-up question, “Where did you go?”, we spent our time exploring various parts of the Czech Republic outside of Prague with brief forays into Poland, Slovakia, Austria & Germany. I’ve started writing about it on my blog www.rickyyates.com and hope to put up a second post later this evening once I’ve written and sent out this message & completed other tasks to enable worship to happen smoothly on Sunday.

Financial update
I am very pleased to be able to report that, six months on from our Annual Church Meeting in April 2010, our financial situation is looking vastly healthier than it was then. This is mainly for two reasons.

The first is the wonderful response that we have had from many of you in the congregation who have taken out new regular standing orders or increased your existing ones, together with those of you who have joined or increased your giving through the dated envelope scheme. I recently sent out thank you cards/letters/emails to 27 ‘people’ who have done this & several of those are couples which indicates that around 40 people in total are supporting St. Clement’s in this way. To all of you once again – Thank you!

The second main reason is the additional financial support that the Intercontinental Church Society (ICS) have made available to us over and above their normal contribution in recent years of about 10% of out running costs. We have also had an offer of help from the Diocesan Development Fund (DDF) of which we haven’t yet needed to avail ourselves.

Our Treasurer H.K. was able to tell your Church Council last Sunday that, provided our income in October, November & December comes in as anticipated and we incur no unexpected extra expenditure, we are likely to have small surplus of income over expenditure at the year end, without having to avail ourselves of any further ICS or DDF funds. In very simple figures, our income to the end of September, including the additional ICS funding, was just over CZK 1.2 million. Our expenditure to the end of September was just over CZK 1 million.

I hope to be able to paint a clearer picture for everybody sometime in January, as to how things will look in 2011. We are not out of the woods yet, but we are certainly heading in the right direction.

Christmas is coming……
Yes it is – I saw my first chocolate Santas in Billa earlier this week! But Christmas is also a wonderful opportunity to invite your non-worshipping or very irregular-worshipping friends, to come to Church. So please get the following dates into your diaries & think about who you might like to invite to come with you.

Our traditional Service of Lessons & Carols will be held at 6pm on Sunday 12th December 2010. This date has been deliberately been chosen as it should be in advance of the many of you leaving Prague to visit your own home countries for Christmas.

Your Church Council at its meeting last Sunday, also decided to try a new venture and provide an additional more ‘child friendly’ Carol Service‘ to which families with children that many of you might know through your contacts with the various international schools, could be invited. I was hoping to be able to give you a date & time for that but I’ve just had an email from Pastor Eva Halamová to say we can’t have the Church for the date & time we had originally thought of – for once the disadvantage of not owing our own Church building! There will therefore need to be a quick re-think and I hope to be able to give a firm date & time next week.

For those of you who will be here over Christmas, there will be a Midnight Eucharist starting at 11.30pm on Christmas Eve and a Family Eucharist at 11am on Christmas Day.

Three requests…..
Sadly, as we all know, sometimes things wear out and need to be replaced. To avoid incurring additional Church expenditure, can anyone help with the following?

Computer – This is a repeat of a request I made earlier in the year. The Chaplaincy computer, on which I’m writing this, is getting positively ancient. It operates using Windows 2000 © Microsoft Corp. 1999, and frequently makes noisy complaints. Recently, the keyboard died but fortunately, Sybille had a spare one which I’m currently using. If you work for a company who are updating their computers, would it be possible to lay hands on one of the computers being replaced, particularly if it runs on Windows XP?

Office Chair – Does anybody have a spare one? A wheel keeps coming off the one I’m currently sitting on & I’m getting frustrated at having to try & stick it back on again only for it to come loose once more, ten minutes later!

Long-armed stapler – I’m happy to pay for one of these but I can’t find a shop to sell me one! The one I had, (which Gerry Turner kindly got from a shop somewhere in Prague), broke whilst I was recently trying to staple some additional Orders of Service. Does anyone know of a good office supplies or stationary shop that has one? I’ve been in several but can only find the short-arm variety & I already have one of those. And what is ‘long-armed stapler’ in Czech?

Any help that you can offer regarding these three requests will be most gratefully received.

Services the next two coming Sundays
This coming Sunday 24th October at 11am – Family Eucharist followed by Coffee Hour in Klimentská 18. The preacher will be David Hellam who I’m sure will involve the children in his talk. The Gospel reading is Luke 18. 9-14 which tells of two different approaches to prayer……

Sunday 31st October at 11am – Joint Eucharist with the Old Catholic Churches in Prague
We shall be using our regular Anglican liturgy. Some parts will be in Czech but the Order of Service booklets will have the complete text in both English & Czech. I will be the preacher and Bishop Dušan will be the celebrant. The service will be held in Sv Vavřinec Cathedral on Petřín Hill. The best way to reach the Cathedral is by using the funicular railway from Ưjezd. The Old Catholics have also offered to provide a minibus shuttle service from a convenient point, direct to the Cathedral door, for anyone who needs it. Please let me know if you would like to avail yourself of this offer.

This is the return service to the one we had at St. Clement’s just over a year ago on Sunday 20th September 2009 when all four of the Old Catholic Churches in Prague closed down & their congregations came to worship with us. I still recall the many expressions of appreciation I had made to me at the time for that service.

For anyone worried about possible visitors not knowing about this & turning up at St. Clement’s instead, this service is already highlighted on our website (which is how nearly every visitor finds us) and there will be a notice on the Church door from this Sunday for anyone passing by during the week.

Please also note that on Sunday 31st October you will have one hour extra to get to Church because the clocks go back one hour the night before!

For anyone who is unable to get to this Joint Eucharist in the morning, there will be a service of Evening Prayer (BCP) at St. Clement’s that evening commencing at 6pm. Fuller details about both services will be in next weeks message which I promise will be of the Midweek variety!!!!

I look forward to seeing many of you this Sunday.

Best wishes

Ricky