A very special Sunday morning

Silvia (Slovak), Karen (American), Ata (Iranian), Yours Truly (English) Jack (Irish) © Sybille Yates

To worship at St. Clement’s, Prague on any Sunday is always a great joy, with the possible exception of a few occasions in the depths of winter when coping with the cold can be a little difficult 🙁 But our worship yesterday morning was particularly special for two reasons.

Firstly, my good friend and ministerial colleague, Rev’d Dr Karen Moritz, was our preacher. As I have explained in two previous blog posts, ‘Welcome to another Karen‘ and ‘Pentecost in Prague‘, Karen is an ordained minister of word and sacrament in the Presbyterian Church (USA), and since September 2010 has been a Mission Co-worker with the Ceskobratrská církve evangelické / Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren, (Lutheran – Presbyterian), working in the Ecumenical Department at their denominational headquarters. The CCE / . . . → Read More: A very special Sunday morning

A Wedding and a Baptism

The interior of St. Clement’s Church, set up for the wedding © Ricky Yates

Last weekend, I had the privilege of officiating at two ‘occasional offices’, to use the term by which baptisms, weddings and funerals, are collectively known within the Anglican Church. On the afternoon of Saturday 7th September in Prague, I conducted my second wedding of 2013, whilst on the evening of Sunday 8th September, I conducted my first-ever baptism in Brno.

Unlike my earlier wedding this year, this second wedding took place in our worshipping home in Prague – Kostel sv Kliment/St. Clement’s Church. This has several major advantages from my point of view, not the least being that getting there was far less problematic than travelling to Bouzov Castle 🙂

As I have frequently written and said previously, the geography of a building, does impact on the way a . . . → Read More: A Wedding and a Baptism

A Baptism

Allison, Jan & Martin with me outside St. Clement’s Church, following the baptism © Ricky Yates

One of the privileges of being a Christian Minister is being part of what sociologists call people’s ‘major life events’ when I conduct baptisms, weddings or funerals. And because of the somewhat unusual nature of the Prague Anglican congregation, I have conducted relatively few of each of these over the past almost four years I have been here. This in turn has meant that I have been able to give each of these ‘occasional offices’, (as they are collectively known), more attention to detail than might normally otherwise be possible.

All but two of the weddings that I have conducted since arriving in Prague have been cross-cultural – between an English-speaker and a Czech/Slovak/Belarusian. These have inevitably raised cultural and linguistic issues about which I have written previously . . . → Read More: A Baptism