Dear People of St. Clement’s,
As I wrote in a brief email message yesterday, cancelling all my normal Wednesday activities, I’ve gone down with a streaming cold/flu/call it what you will !!! Thank you to several people who promptly wrote back, both offering their commiserations as well as best wishes for a speedy recovery. All messages were much appreciated.
Because I still feel quite unwell, my contribution to this Midweek Message will be relatively brief. May I also apologise to several people who have written me emails over the last few days to which I have yet to reply. I will seek to do so in the next couple of days, once I begin to feel a bit better and can concentrate somewhat more than I feel able to do at present.
Therefore, a good part of this Midweek Message has been written by our St. Clement’s Church Webmaster………
From the Webmaster:
If you have visited our website www.anglican.cz recently, you will have noticed some additions to it. These resulted partly from the answers to the questionnaire that the Church Council asked you to fill out earlier this year. One thing that stood out in the answers was the limited, available time everybody has, especially during the week, which makes it impossible for many of you to attend midweek events at St. Clements, the Chaplaincy flat or elsewhere in Prague. Another point the Church Council discusses frequently, is the question of how to make our Church more known to the wider expat community here in Prague. The additions to the website are a direct result to all of this. Let me talk you through each, and then you can follow St. Paul’s advice which he wrote in his first letter to the Church in Thessalonica ;-)
“Put all things to the test: keep what is good.” 1.Thess 5,21
If you are a Twitter user, you can now follow St.Clement’s at http://twitter.com/AnglicanPrague Updates on the website, events, etc will now be tweeted. If you want to help us spread the word on Twitter that there is an Anglican-Episcopal presence in Prague, please follow us and re-tweet our tweets.
You can find our new Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Anglican-Episcopal-Church-Prague/157144104321089 If you are on Facebook, it would be great if you could recommend it to your friends, especially to those who live in Prague. Facebook is a hugely popular social media site and could really help to spread the word about St. Clements. We will use the page mostly to post special events, such as the upcoming joint service, carol services etc. One word of warning: Your webmaster (Sybille) and your chaplain (Ricky) are pretty new to Facebook Pages, so you ‘might’ get double or triple notifications and invitations from us ;-) We also have our separate Facebook accounts, so chances are, that if you are a friend of both of us, you will get things twice. In all cases, it would be really great if look around your Facebook friends and forward upcoming event invitations from St. Clement’s to those that might be interested in them.
Forum
Whilst the two things above, Twitter and Facebook, are very much an advertisement and outreach effort, the third one is far more geared towards building community amongst St. Clement’s member themselves, as well as being a platform for new people to ‘check us out’. The forum is located at http://susanaj10.sg-host.com//forum/ and consists of two parts. One is the publicly visible one, the one you see when you are not logged in. There is also a members only area available, that is only visible for members of St. Clement’s when they are logged in. The reason for setting it up like this is to a) provide basic information to guests whilst b) avoiding problems with spammers and maintaining a certain level of online security and privacy for everybody. The forum is a bit empty at the moment, so it would be really great if you could sign up at http://susanaj10.sg-host.com//forum/index.php?action=register What happens next is that I will have to activate your account (that is in order to prevent spammers from posting) and then you are good to post. If I or Ricky ‘know’ your email address, you will be also get access to the members only area. If you are using an email during registration that is unknown to us, please drop us a note, in order to achieve the same. At the moment we would like very much to receive feedback on the forum in general, how to improve it and what features / topics you would like to see in the future. There are plans to run, via the forum, an internet based bible study which is geared especially towards those that can’t, for time and location reasons, attend midweek bible studies in person. Any further suggestions you might have are highly welcome! Ideas we’ve had so far include:
- Online study groups / workshops
- A map that shows where members of St. Clement’s live (That one would be obviously NOT visible to non-members and would only show the area, not exact addresses.)
- Your idea here ;-)
Website in general
Our website is doing pretty well and gets visitors every day. If you want to spread the word about it and especially if you have an own website or blog, please consider linking to us, ideally with words like ‘Anglican-Episcopal Church Prague’, ‘English-speaking Church Prague’ or even ‘English Church Prague’. Remember, people that don’t know about us, are much more likely to search for terms like this than for names like ‘St. Clements’!
And from the Chaplain, a reminder about this coming Sunday
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 Újezd.
The Prague Integrated Pubic Transport network has a wonderful website http://idos.dpp.cz/idos/connform.aspx?tt=pid&cl=E5 which talks to you in English! Put in where you want to travel from – your nearest metro/tram/bus stop. And then put your destination as Petrín LD & hit the ‘Search’ button. Up will come the details of how to get to Church on Sunday! There are also details, together with a map and photos, on our website http://susanaj10.sg-host.com//sunday-31st-october-2010-at-11-00/ There is also the possibility of 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.
Following the service, there will be a Buffet Lunch at the rear of the Cathedral laid on by the Old Catholics.
Please also note that on Saturday night/Sunday morning, the clocks go back one hour, giving you an extra hour to get to Church!
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. I look forward to seeing very many of you on Sunday.
Best wishes
Ricky
