Dear People & Friends of St. Clement’s,
Yes – Lent began last Wednesday! Thank you to all those who took the trouble to attend our Ash Wednesday evening Eucharist and to Larry who kindly re-jigged his own itinerary in order to play the organ for us. Once again, the new lighting installed by our host congregation last November, came into its own and provided such a contrast to the previous Ash Wednesday evening services I’ve conducted at St. Clement’s. Now let’s look forward to Lent 2014.
Sunday 9th March 2014 at 11.00 – Sung Eucharist for the First Sunday of Lent
As always on the first Sunday of Lent, we reflect on the ‘forty day & nights’ that Jesus spent in the wilderness, before beginning his public ministry. Our Gospel reading is St. Matthew’s account of that time – Matthew 4. 1-11. The supporting readings are the account of the Fall – Genesis 2. 15-17 & 3. 1-7 and St. Paul’s explanation of the redemptive work of Christ – Romans 5. 12-19. There will be parallel Children’s Ministry thanks to David Hellam, and Coffee Hour will follow the service thanks to Ata and Silvia who have kindly volunteered to run it this Sunday.
Following Coffee Hour & a meeting of your Church Council, I shall be travelling down to Brno, for our regular monthly evening service starting at 18.00 in the Czechoslovak Hussite Church, Nové sady 32a, Brno. As many of you may already have heard, we have rapidly got to find a new venue for the Brno congregation to meet from the beginning of April, as our current hosts are moving their regular service from Sunday morning to 17.00 on Sunday evening. We are planning a brainstorming session over post-service refreshments this Sunday evening & I’ve already been given details of one possible venue to investigate. But I do ask for your prayerful support as I and the Brno congregation, try to find a satisfactory and speedy solution to this problem.
Tuesday 11th March 18.30-20.00 in the small meeting room on the first floor of Klimentská 18
Our Lent Course begins. Would you like to make Lent meaningful this year? Do you want to deepen your spiritual life? Join us for a five week study using the book ‘Discerning Your Spiritual Gifts‘ by Episcopal priest Lloyd Edwards. Through a fun interactive process you’ll discover your spiritual gifts and how to bring them to life.
Though not essential for attending the course, copies of the book will be available on Sunday for purchase at the subsidised cost of CZK 200. More details can be found on the noticeboard at the back of Church or by following this link. The course will be led by Rev’d Dr Karen Moritz. We shall continue with our normal Tuesday practice of ending our session by saying Evening Prayer.
Several more things to highlight
- Copies of the new March-April edition of the ICS News & Prayer Diary and the new Spring edition of the European Anglican magazine have arrived in the past week & will be available free to take away from the table at the back of Church this Sunday. You may like to note that supporters of ICS are praying for us today!
- You can listen to every Sunday sermon that has been preached at St. Clement’s in 2014 by following this link & clicking on the one(s) you want to hear.
- I mentioned in my Ash Wednesday sermon, the interesting idea of giving up busyness for Lent :-) The website that explains the idea and how to put it into practice is here.
- We still have both Salvation Army wheelie bins at the back of Church. One for warm winter clothing for both men & women, still needed despite Spring seeming to be on the way. The other is for tinned food. All donations will go support the work of the Salvation Army with the homeless in Prague.
Finally for this week……
As previously advised, the Annual Church Meeting will take place following worship on Sunday 6th April 2014. At that meeting, two Churchwardens, two Archdeaconry Synod reps, together with up to nine ordinary Church Council members, will be elected. In order to vote or to stand for election, your need to be a member of our Church Electoral Roll(CER). The current CER is displayed on the noticeboard at the back of the Church. If your name appears there, you need to do nothing! However, your Church Council will be looking at the current CER this Sunday at their meeting, and deleting, (as we are allowed to do), five or six names of people who we know no longer live in in the Czech Republic, the area of our Chaplaincy.
If you are not on the CER but would like to be, then application forms are available in a folder pinned to the noticeboard at the back of Church. To apply, you need to be baptized and a member of the Church of England or any of the other Anglican or Old Catholic Churches in full communion with the Church of England & be normally resident in the Czech Republic. Or, you need to be baptized and be a member in good standing of a Church which subscribes to the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, and to have ‘habitually attended public worship’ with us for at least the last six months, and be normally resident in the Czech Republic.
Application forms need to be completed and returned by no later than 22nd March 2014. Please feel free to speak to me or drop me an email, if anything in the previous two paragraphs is unclear.
Best wishes
Ricky
