Intercontinental Church Society

Looking ahead into 2015

Since the beginning of this new year, aided by the ‘Forward Planner’ in my new Church Book & Desk Diary 2015, I’ve been looking ahead at what is in store for me and what I want to achieve in the coming year. In the past, I’ve frequently not been the best at forward planning, so with the new year comes a determination to do better.

In particular, I’ve been trying to decide when I can and want to take my annual leave, allowing for Easter and Christmas when I have to be in Prague, weddings at which I have agreed to officiate, and the Eastern Archdeaconry Synod and the ICS Chaplains Conference, at which my attendance is expected. By the end of this week, I want to have something firmly booked and begin organising cover for the Sundays I’ll be away.

Apart from the obvious ongoing important task of leading, caring for, and seeking to grow, the Prague and Brno congregations, one goal I have set for myself, is completing writing my book, ‘How to be Czech’. This has been a work in progress for over a year, since I commenced working on the project in August 2013. One of my favourite mantras is, ‘If you aim at nothing, you’re certain to hit it’. Therefore I have set myself a deadline of the end of March, to complete the text.

Having written that and put it in the public domain, means I can be held to it. You read it here and therefore you can publicly rebuke me if I don’t hit my target!

I’m very much looking forward to this year’s ICS Chaplains Conference which will take place during the last week of April. This is for two reasons. The first is that, because I work in a very isolated situation, the opportunity of meeting with colleagues for fellowship and mutual support, combined with some theological input and teaching, is highly valuable.

The second is that the conference is being held at Elspeet, in the Netherlands. Despite being fairly well-travelled in Europe, surprisingly I’ve never previously visited the Netherlands. The added bonus is that to get there, will involve driving across some interesting parts of Germany that I’ve also never seen before.

Then at the end of September, the Eastern Archdeaconry Synod meeting will be held in Zagreb, capital of Croatia. As with the ICS Chaplains Conference, the Synod meeting is always a great opportunity for fellowship and mutual support. The theme of our time together this year, will be ‘Fresh Expressions of Church’ and how these might or might not work in our continental European context. That should certainly be stimulating.

Whilst I have previously been to Croatia in 2009, and also in 1975, when it was called Yugoslavia, I’ve never been to Zagreb, only along the Adriatic coast. So once more, some new sights and experiences await me.

For the first time in nearly seven years, at the beginning of June I will conduct a wedding according to the law of England and Wales. I’ve been invited by Adam, the long-standing best friend of my son Phillip, to officiate at his marriage to his fiancée Claire. The wedding is to take place in one of my former parishes in North Oxfordshire, where Adam’s parents still live. Guess who will be the best man? It should be quite an interesting as well as being an enjoyable experience 🙂

My grandson Finley & my daughter Christa © Ian Margieson

Being in the UK for Adam and Claire’s wedding, will be part of one week of my annual leave. I shall obviously be able to spend time with my son Phillip as part of the marital celebrations. But I will also take the opportunity to visit my daughter Christa, son-in-law Ian, together with my grandson Finley. I suspect the young man will have grown some more since this delightful photograph was taken three weeks ago.

With regard to weddings, I have one definite and two others awaiting confirmation, here in the Czech Republic. All are English-speaker marrying a Czech, and all are of the more common variety of English-speaking male marrying a Czech female 🙂 It is one of the great privileges of my vocation, to be part of people’s major life events, if you will forgive me using the language of sociologists 🙂

Taking all of these commitments into account, it looks as though the best time to take at least two weeks of my annual leave, will be in October, soon after I return from Zagreb. My intention whilst living in Prague, has always been that we should take advantage of our Central European location, to visit surrounding and nearby countries. High on my ‘bucket list’, (to use a very American expression 🙂 ), has been exploring Poland and the Baltic States. My plan this coming October, is to begin ticking those two off my ‘bucket list’.

Finally for this post, 2015 will see two significant anniversaries – one historical and one personal. Monday 6^th July will be the six-hundredth anniversary of the martyrdom of the early Czech Church reformer, Jan Hus. Major events are being planned which are promised to be ‘friendly to English and German-speaking participants’ according to a publicity leaflet. Unfortunately, this website , to which the leaflet refers, is currently only in Czech 🙁 , whilst the second, just has a couple of articles in English though there are a few more in German.

A few days earlier, Wednesday 1^st July will be the twenty-fifth anniversary of my ordination as a priest by the Rt Rev’d John B. Taylor, in the Cathedral and Abbey Church of St Alban. I’m planning a little celebration for 28^th June, which is the nearest Sunday to that significant date in my own personal journey of faith.

ICS Chaplains Conference at Hothorpe Hall

Hothorpe Hall Conference Centre © Ricky Yates

I spent the week (Monday 12^th – Friday 16^th May 2014), attending the annual Intercontinental Church Society (ICS) Chaplains and Families Conference at Hothorpe Hall, which lies adjacent to the Northamptonshire-Leicestershire border, a few miles outside Market Harborough. Attending the conference was one of the two reasons for my two-day drive from the Czech Republic to the United Kingdom, that I described in my earlier post.

As I explained in my post about the 2013 Conference, ICS is an international Church of England mission agency seeking to make known the good news of the Christian Gospel to people who speak English, who find themselves living, studying, working or holidaying away from home in countries where English is not the main language. ICS mainly works in continental Europe and other countries that surround the Mediterranean, and has financially and prayerfully supported the Prague Anglican Chaplaincy since August 2000.

The conference struck a nice balance between prayer, worship and teaching with some free time each afternoon, to explore the delightful surrounding countryside. As so often with conferences of this nature, some of the most valuable time was spent talking informally with colleagues over coffee or on occasions, something a little stronger 🙂 All of us work in somewhat isolated situations with rarely any opportunity to meet with each other except at this annual gathering.

The area around Hothorpe Hall was somewhere I had previously explored by foot or on my bicycle during my teenage years when living in Coventry. On the Wednesday afternoon, I made a circular walk of around 13 km to see the staircase flight of ten locks at Foxton on the Leicester section of the Grand Union Canal, a place I last visited about forty years ago

Top end of the remains of the Foxton inclined plane © Ricky Yates

Bottom end of the remains of the Foxton inclined plane © Ricky Yates

As well as the locks, a remarkable feat of engineering in their own right, I was fascinated to see the remains of the neighbouring inclined plane, built at the beginning of the twentieth century but abandoned in 1928 because of being too costly to maintain. The whole site, which used to be totally overgrown, has in recent years, been completely cleared and landscaped.

My path through a field of flowering oil seed rape © Ricky Yates

I took a different and slightly longer route to return to Hothorpe Hall, one that avoided a section of busy main road and which took me through a field of flowering oil seed rape.

On the final evening of the conference, a celebration dinner was held. We were encouraged to dress up a little and several of the ladies wore dresses or skirts, rather than the usual jeans and I wore my suit, together with my favourite tie which features a series of white sheep with just one black sheep in the middle.

During the dinner, a tradition started at the 2013 conference was continued with a fun ‘awards ceremony’, known as the ICS Carrot Awards. Last year, little mementos were presented which were made of carrots – this year there were printed certificates featuring a smiling carrot logo. Clearly my suit and tie were impressive as was given the prestigious ICS Carrot Award in recognition of being the best dressed man during the conference 🙂

The Parish Church of St. Mary the Virgin, Wilby © Ricky Yates

Whilst the weekend following the conference, was meant to be the first part of my holiday, on the morning of Sunday 18^th May, I undertook a deputation visit on behalf of ICS and was the preacher at two supporting parishes, St. Mary the Virgin, Wilby and St. Mary Magdalene, Ecton, two villages near Wellingborough in Northamptonshire. As well as preaching, I was also interviewed at both services by the Rector, Rev’d Chris Pearson, asking me to explain about my ministry in the Czech Republic and how ICS supports that work by finance and prayer. It was a most worthwhile morning, tinged by a little bit of déjà vu as I drove between services through the Northamptonshire countryside, echoes of my fifteen and a half years of rural multi-parish benefice ministry in the Oxfordshire countryside 🙂

My two-day drive from the Czech Republic to the United Kingdom

My DFDS Seaways cross-channel ferry © Ricky Yates

At the beginning of last week, I drove all the way from Prague to the East Midlands of England, in order to attend this year’s Intercontinental Church Society (ICS) Chaplains and Families Conference, followed by a week of annual leave visiting family and friends. Both before setting out from the Czech Republic and on arrival in the UK, I’ve had many expressions of surprise for undertaking the trip as well as numerous questions as to my route and what the journey entails. So here is a blogpost by way of explanation.

I should start by saying that it is a journey that I have undertaken once previously, albeit in the reverse direction. For when Sybille and I moved to the Czech Republic in September 2008, we drove all the way from our old home in North Oxfordshire, to our new home in Prague, along with Oscar the cat. But in the nearly six years since our arrival in the Czech Republic, the five return UK visits I’ve previously made, have always been by air.

I set out on my journey on Sunday 11^th May, having first celebrated the Sunday Eucharist at 11.00, followed by a brief visit to post-Eucharistic Coffee Hour. I would have preferred to have driven from the Chaplaincy Flat to Church, rather than using public transport, so I could set off directly afterwards in the ‘Carly’. Unfortunately, that Sunday was the day of the annual Prague Marathon which results in many street closures. So instead, I packed the car first thing on Sunday morning, leaving it parked by the Chaplaincy Flat, and then travelled to Church and back again by tram, as we normally do.

It was therefore not until 13.25, that I set out on my journey. Fortunately, once I reached the Pražský okruh/Prague ring road on the western side of the city, the rest of the my journey to Dunkerque in France on the coast of the English Channel, was almost exclusively on motorway, or dálnice, Autobahn, autoroute, autobaan, depending on the language of the country through which my route passed.

From the Pražský okruh/Prague ring road, I took the D5 which heads westwards towards, and then around, Plzen, before heading for the German border. Most confusingly, nearly all the road signs tell you that, beyond Plzen, you are heading towards Rozvadov, rather than towards Germany or Nürnberg, the first major city over the border. Where or what is Rozvadov? It is a small village, just off the D5, the last one in the Czech Republic!

There are several interesting differences between a Czech dálnice and a German Autobahn. Czech motorway signs are green with white lettering whilst German ones are blue with white lettering. The Czechs use blue signs with white lettering for their ordinary roads! Czech motorway intersections are numbered according to how many kilometres they are from the beginning of that motorway, usually starting in Prague. German motorway intersections are just given consecutive numbers. Many Czech over bridges have advertisements on them which I find both unsightly and distracting whilst there is a total absence of such things in Germany.

One contrast I particularly noticed as I drove up into Ceský les, the hills that lie in the very west of the Czech Republic and form the border with Germany, is the almost total absence of human settlements – there are just forests and open fields. Yet once across the border and driving down through the Oberpfälzerwald, there are a succession of villages amongst the woods and fields. Of course, there is a reason for the contrast. The area on the Czech side is part of what was known as the Sudetenland from which the Sudetendeutsche population were expelled in 1945. Within a couple of years, the area had become a restricted zone which only those trusted by the regime, were allowed to enter for fear that all others might try to escape from their Communist paradise to capitalist West Germany.

Being aware that petrol is cheaper in the Czech Republic than in Germany, I filled up just before crossing the border. I was fairly sure that a full tank would take me right across Germany, all the way to Luxembourg, which it duly did. I also knew from many years of travelling in continental Europe, that petrol is cheaper in Luxembourg because of low taxation, hence I planned my route to pass through the duchy, in order to fill up once more.

It took me five hours to drive across Germany passing near Nürnberg, Heilbronn, Speyer, Kaiserslautern and Trier. Whilst Germany does have an excellent Autobahn network, parts of it are beginning to show their age with several bridges and viaducts that I crossed being under repair, including the one across the Rhine.

One thing that again brought a smile to my face whilst driving in Germany, was seeing every exit from the Autobahn being marked by a sign saying ‘Ausfarht’. It always reminds me of my first ever visit to Germany in 1975 when I was travelling with a coach party consisting mainly of Australians, most of whom had not previously been to Europe. After travelling for some time along the Autobahn, one of the party turned to me and said, “This place called Ausfarht must be really big as I’ve seen so many signs to it” 🙂

Passing around Trier, along one very small section of my route which was not motorway, I then entered Luxembourg and within about thirty minutes, had driven from one side of the country to the other! Just before the border with Belgium, I pulled into a service station at the side of the autoroute and took full advantage of the low price of fuel. Then it was over the border to the town of Arlon where I stopped for the night in a hotel located in a service area without a fuel station, as everyone buys cheap petrol over the border in Luxembourg 🙂 So by 20.45 that evening, I had driven through four countries and covered 760 km/473 miles.

Next morning after breakfast, I set off on the Belgian autoroute, heading towards Brussels. Of course, according to the road signs, I was heading towards Bruxelles, until suddenly the signs instead said Brussel. The reason for the change is crossing the boundary between a French-speaking province and a Flemish speaking one. Both French and Flemish-speaking Belgians do not believe in bilingual signs which can be most confusing when the name of a town or city differs considerably more than Bruxelles/Brussel.

From past experience, the one part of the journey I was a little concerned about was driving around the Brussels ring road where I have previously experienced congestion. However, apart from a short delay getting onto the slip road giving access to the ring road, the rest of my trip around the Belgian capital went smoothly. This was followed by an equally smooth journey on towards the coast near to Ostend and then just inland but parallel to the coast, over the French border to Dunkerque.

Courtesy of having such an easy journey, I arrived two hours in advance of the departure time of my ferry crossing. The Dunkerque-Dover crossing takes two hours, but with the change from Central European Summer Time(CEST), to British Summer Time(BST), I left Dunkerque at 14.00 CEST and arrived at Dover at 15.00 BST.

Once off the ferry, it took me a further three hours to drive from Dover to Hothorpe Hall near Market Harborough, along the M2, M25 and M1. En-route, I had the first of what were to be many experiences of discovering how expensive life in the UK has become. When I last used the Dartford Crossing east of London, the toll was £1.00. It came as quite a shock to discover the 100% increase to £2.00 🙁

So I arrived at Hothorpe Hall, safely but somewhat tired, at 18.20 on Monday 12^th May having driven a further 688 km/430 miles. The evening meal was to be served ten minutes later and, in the meantime, one of my fellow ICS Chaplains bought me a much needed drink from the bar. Thank you Hazel!

2014 – The year ahead

Prague Castle from Charles Bridge © Ricky Yates

On the first day of 2014, it seems good to think and write about the year ahead and what it might have in store for Sybille and I, for the Anglican congregations in Prague and Brno that I lead, and for the wider Czech Republic. What follows is what I’m currently contemplating, but as always, God might have other ideas 🙂

New leadership of State and Church

It does appear that, more than two months after elections at the end of October, the Czech Republic will once again, shortly have a properly functioning government which is able to command a majority in the lower house of parliament. It will be a three-party coalition, with Bohuslav Sobotka, the leader of the Social Democratic Party (CSSD), as Prime Minister.

However, one can never be sure, especially as all ministerial appointments have to be approved by President Miloš Zeman. Whilst the three political parties who will form the coalition have agreed on the number of ministries they will each control, the names of those proposed as ministers have yet to be made public. Several likely ministerial candidates from the CSSD are people Zeman fell out with before leaving the CSSD some ten years ago. Apparently, according to press reports, the President has indicated that he might refuse to formally appoint some of these individuals, should they be nominated.

If this happens, the matter will probably end up with a complaint to the Constitutional Court, seeking a ruling as to the extent of presidential powers. I do hope that all sides will see common sense and put the well-being of the country ahead of settling old personal and political scores.

It also does appear, that sometime in the coming Spring, the name of the next Anglican Bishop of the Diocese in Europe, will be announced. He, (sadly no chance of ‘she’ just yet), will succeed Rt Rev’d Dr Geoffrey Rowell, who retired in early November 2013. If you want to know more about what lies ahead for my next Bishop, see this link to the ‘Description of the Diocese and Statement of Needs‘.

I do find it absurd that, having known since early 2013, the date of Bishop Geoffrey’s retirement, it is only now that the process of appointing his successor is underway. What other major organisation, knowing the date of the forthcoming retirement of its CEO, would not have appointed their successor and had them ready to take over straight-away, thus ensuring a smooth transition? I do think that this is where the Church of England does need a complete rethink. I experienced a very similar situation previously in the Diocese of Oxford where we were without a Diocesan Bishop for around eighteen months.

The Liturgical Year ahead

This year, Easter Day is quite late, falling on Sunday 20th April. This is vastly preferable as far as I’m concerned, in comparison to 2013 when Easter Day was 31st March, the clocks went forward one hour overnight the night before, and there was snow on the ground in Brno.

What it also means is that there is a far longer period of ‘Ordinary Time’, between the end of the Epiphany season on 2nd February, the Feast of the Presentation of Christ in the Temple, and the beginning of Lent on Ash Wednesday, which with Easter Day being late, in 2014 falls on Wednesday 5th March.

Therefore, with now being in Year A of the three-year cycle of readings from the Revised Common Lectionary when the Gospel of Matthew predominates, throughout February, the Sunday readings focus on sections of the Sermon on the Mount. This should certainly make for interesting preaching material!

However, I note that during Lent, we also get several large chunks of the Gospel of John each Sunday. Appropriate Lenten penance, both in the time it takes to read the passages as well as then trying to expound them 🙂

Family, holidays and travel

I am looking forward to my son Phillip and his girlfriend Lisa, coming to Prague for a long weekend visit at the end of February. The dates of their visit were partly governed by when jet2.com are scheduled to resume their East Midlands Airport – Prague flights after a post-Christmas/New Year hiatus of seven weeks.

Phillip & Lisa during their previous visit in January 2013 © Ricky Yates

But I’ve since discovered that the weekend they are here, is when the Czech Gambrinus Football League resumes matches following their current mid-winter break. It means that Phillip and I can go and see Dukla Praha play in their stadium which lies directly behind where the Chaplaincy Flat is located, something we’ve talked about doing for the past four years. Dukla will be home to FK Teplice – a fourth versus third-in-the-table clash, which should be most enjoyable. Sybille has promised to take Lisa for a ‘Girls night out’ 🙂

After last year’s Intercontinental Church Society (ICS) Chaplains and Families Conference being held in Switzerland, this year the ICS conference will be in the UK, between Monday 12th – Friday 16th May, in a Conference Centre on the Leicestershire-Northamptonshire border, near Market Harborough. As this location lies almost equidistant between my daughter and son-in-law’s home in Daventry, and Phillip’s home in Nottingham, my plan is to take a week of annual leave following the conference, and spend time with both of them.

I have also been doing some price comparisons and have decided that probably the cheapest, and certainly the most convenient way to travel, will be to drive back to the UK, meaning the first time my right-hand-drive car, will have been driven on the left side of the road, for nearly six years. This will allow me easy movement around the UK which will hopefully also include a trip to the south coast to see one or both of my sisters.

The other big family news I hinted at, in reply to a comment on an earlier post about ‘Discovering the Way of St. James in the Czech Republic‘. Probably starting in late May/early June, Sybille is planning to make a long distance pilgrimage and walk from Prague, all the way to Santiago de Compostela in north-west Spain. We reckon that she will need somewhere in the region of four months to complete the journey, meaning that she will not be back in Prague until probably early October.

Provisionally, I am planning to take a couple of weeks of annual leave in July-August, and walk with her through part of France. I may well be able to bring back some things she will not require in Spain, thus lightening her load.

Eastern Archdeaconry Synod

Further ahead, at the end of September, there will be the annual meeting of the Eastern Archdeaconry Synod which in 2014, as I previously indicated, is being hosted by the Prague Anglican congregation. I’m very much looking forward to it, especially if we by then, finally have a Diocesan Bishop who is able to join us. But there is a lot of planning and organisational work to undertake in the meantime.

A Wedding and a Baptism

The interior of St. Clement's Church, set up for the wedding © Ricky Yates — 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 wedding is conducted. As this wedding was the sixth wedding that I have conducted in St. Clement’s Church, I was thankfully far more at ease than normal. My only real concern as always, was being sure I had everything I needed either with me, or already in the Church, before setting out from the Chaplaincy Flat.

I got to Church more than an hour before the marriage service was due to begin, mainly to allow Larry the organist, plenty of time to practice all the music he was to play, well before the arrival of any of the guests. But it also allowed me to get the Church ready without any undue haste, and then to take the picture above.

Here is a close up of the table that I set up in the chancel apse where the necessary paperwork is completed. Rather than signing two marriage registers, as would be the case under the law of England and Wales, instead a four page marriage protokol has to be signed. But just like in England and Wales, the protokol has to be signed by the couple, as well as by two adult witnesses, and by me as the officiant. However, it being the Czech Republic, it also most importantly, needs to be stamped!

As you can see, I have pen, protokol and stamp in place, together with an Osvedcení, saying that the couple have fulfilled all the legal requirements allowing a religious marriage to take place, and an annotated protokol, to remind me as to who needs to sign where, to ensure I do not foul up anything!

Maria & David with me, following their wedding © Ricky Yates

The happy couple were David, an Englishman, and Maria, an American citizen from Puerto Rico. Both have lived in Prague for a number of years and for both, it was their second marriage. The supportive congregation was made up of family members, some of whom had specially flown in from the USA and the UK for the occasion, together with their friends, a mixture of expats and English-speaking Czechs. I could tell that there were a large number of expats present, by the laughter that followed my usual quip of saying, “This is the most important part of a Czech wedding ceremony”, followed by very firmly stamping the protokol 🙂

Sunday evening in Brno was a very special occasion, when I baptised Amelie Gabriela, the daughter and first child of Philip and Lenka Read, whose wedding I conducted in September 2010. This was the first-ever baptism for the Brno congregation since I started conducting regular monthly services there in January 2012. As I wrote in my earlier post in April, Phil and Lenka are having a house built just south of Brno, with a view of moving there permanently from England, later this year. Phil had two job interviews lined up for this week and I’m hoping to hear of a successful outcome, very soon.

Phil, Lenka & Amelie with me. the words in Czech on the wall behind us say 'God is love' © Ricky Yates — Phil, Lenka & Amelie with me. The words in Czech on the wall behind us say ‘God is love’ © Ricky Yates

Just like the wedding the previous day, my greatest fear was not having with me in Brno, everything I needed for the baptism service. When you are more than 200 km from home, it isn’t possible to pop back and pick up something you forgot! I also had the logistical problem of the Czechoslovak Hussite Church that we use for our Brno services, not having a font! I overcame this problem, by having a glass bowl on the altar, which can be seen on the right of this photograph.

Amelie's amazing baptism cake © Ricky Yates — Amelie’s amazing baptism cake © Ricky Yates

After worship in Brno, we always share fellowship over refreshments. Last Sunday, our refreshments included large helpings of this amazing cake, made especially to celebrate Amelie’s baptism. Supporters of the Intercontinental Church Society (ICS), will also notice that I was busy distributing copies of ICS News and Prayer Diary and the recent Prayer Diary supplement. The financial and prayerful support of ICS has been a major factor in the establishment of the Brno congregation.