Dear People & Friends of St. Clements,

Before highlighting the events of this coming busy weekend, I want to start with a note of thanks to everyone who made Bishop Geoffrey’s visit last weekend such a success. Particular thanks to all the members of your Church Council, who gave up quite a chunk of last Saturday in order to have a Council meeting with the Bishop being present. I believe that the guidance and clarification he has given to us will help us take the work of St. Clement’s forward into the new year.

Thank you too, to all of you who came to worship on Sunday morning, particularly giving support to our two confirmees.

Now to this weekend……

Saturday 10th December

Please click image to enlarge!

At 4.00 pm on Saturday afternoon, there will be an Ecumenical Family Christmas Carols event held in St Clement’s Church. Full details are on the left. We are hosting the event rather than organising it but, as I said last week, it is a wonderful opportunity to make the existence of St. Clement’s more widely known in the English-speaking expat community. It will also be something more ‘child friendly’ than our own traditional service of Lessons & Carols on Sunday evening. Warm refreshments will be served in Klimentská 18 afterwards.

Sunday 11th December – Advent 3

11.00 am Sung Eucharist for the Third Sunday of Advent. Once more, the theme of the Gospel reading is John the Baptist who prepared the way for the coming of Jesus. This Sunday we get St. John’s account taken from the first chapter of his Gospel, verses 6-8 and 19-28. There will be parallel Children’s Ministry and the service will be followed by Coffee Hour.

6.00 pm A Service of Lessons & Carols . An opportunity to once more here the good news from scripture of the coming of Jesus Christ into our world, interspersed with congregational Christmas Carols and some solo items. We won’t be quite as long as last year as we’re only having seven, rather than nine, lessons! There will be (hopefully – see below) appropriate seasonable refreshments following the service in Klimentská 18.

And onwards towards Christmas……

Because of a combination of many of the regular congregation heading off to their respective home countries & everyone’s general busyness in advance of Christmas, there will not be any more midweek events in 2011. Our Tuesday Evening Fellowship & Study will resume on Tuesday 10th January 2012. However, there will still be regular Sunday worship right through this period.

On Sunday 18th December at 11.00am there will be a Sung Eucharist for the Fourth Sunday of Advent. Then in the evening, we will hold our first ever (so far as I know!) Anglican Service in Brno, A Service of Lessons & Carols very similar to the Prague service this coming Sunday evening. Full details can be found on the Brno page of our website  . Since we started publicising this service, the Brno page of our website has received 27 direct hits when I last checked Google analytics.

A number of people have already indicated that they would like to travel down to Brno with me to support this service. It really would be nice to get a good group together to travel there by train on Sunday afternoon & back on Sunday evening. Providing I know exactly who wants to come, we should be able to get a group ticket at a reduced price. The expected time schedule is to leave on the 13.42 train from Praha hl.n. & return there on the 20.40 train from Brno that gets back to Prague about 23.15. Interested? Then speak to me ASAP!

For those of you who are here at Christmas, there will be a Midnight Eucharist on Christmas Eve commencing at 11.30pm. On Christmas Day, which is also a Sunday, there will be a Family Eucharist starting at our usual time of 11.00am. Details of all of these services are on this website.

Other quick but important notices

St. Clement’s Christmas Cards will be available for sale once more at all our services this weekend. It will still be two weeks before Christmas – plenty of time in which to write & post them to family & friends.

The new edition of The European Anglican arrived this week & will be available free at the back of Church on Sunday.

Also at the back of Church on Sunday will be a large clothes basket for any unwanted/old warm winter clothing & especially warm winter shoes, boots and socks (for men AND women) which will be collected by the Armáda Spásy / Salvation Army here in Prague to pass on to the homeless. And so, if you have any of these which you no longer wear or need, please bring them with you to Church & place them in the collecting basket.

Don’t forget to save all the used postage stamps from the cards & parcels you receive this Christmas. Cut them out carefully with about a 5mm border around the stamp. Then place them in the collecting envelope on the noticeboard at the back of Church. They will be forwarded by me to the UK where they will be sold to raise money for the Intercontinental Church Society who have supported St. Clement’s both financially & prayerfully since 2000. The only used stamps not required are standard British ones with just the Queen’s head which are worth very little because they are so common.

And finally – plea for help!

I only had one response to my plea in last week’s ‘Weekly Message’, for help with refreshments following the two Carol Services this weekend. Since then, we have managed to get the Saturday event covered. But I still need people willing to help provide &/or serve mulled wine, something hot but not alcoholic, together with things to nibble, following Lessons & Carols on Sunday evening. Can you help? If so, please reply to by email ASAP!

And finally, finally……

Thank you to everyone who dropped me a note about how much they enjoyed the link to the Advent reflection by Archbishop Rowan Williams I posted at the end of last week’s ‘Weekly Message’. If you haven’t watched it yet, give yourself ten minutes to do so. Follow this link.

Wishing you all a continued Blessed Advent

Ricky