Tag: St Clement’s Church

Inaccurate assumptions about the Prague Anglican Congregation

St. Clement’s Church spire from Letna © Ricky Yates

From time-to-time I get emails, or comments here on my blog, each of which make wholly inaccurate assumptions about the Prague Anglican congregation that I serve as Chaplain. So this post is intended to explode a few myths and instead, try to paint a more accurate picture.

We are the Brits abroad – Wrong!

Many people are surprised to discover that only about a third of our regular congregation are citizens of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, to give my home country its correct full name. The other two-thirds come from a variety of English-speaking nations from around the world. Or, they are second or even third language English-speakers, happy to worship using the medium of English. Every Sunday, you can almost guarantee that there will be double-figure nationalities making up the congregation.

We are funded by the UK government – Wrong!

Yes, we are part of the forty-fourth diocese of the Church of England, the Diocese of Gibraltar in Europe. And yes, the Church of England is the ‘Established Church’ in England, (but not in Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland). But despite being ‘established’, we receive no money whatsoever from the British government to pay the clergy or meet running costs. Contrary to popular opinion, the Church of England is NOT the spiritual arm of the Department of Social Security, nor here in the Czech Republic, the spiritual arm of the Foreign & Commonwealth Office!

We are a bunch of wealthy expats – Wrong!

Many people assume that my congregation consists of wealthy business people and/or diplomats. It doesn’t! Back in the 1990s, and even in the very early years of the new millennium, there were English-speaking expats living in Prague, who were here to set up and run the newly established Czech branch of major international companies. And several of these did worship at St. Clement’s and were generous financial supporters. But now, these jobs are held by well educated Czechs who will be able to speak English, but will not be looking for an English-speaking Church in which to worship.

Instead, the congregation currently consists of teachers of English, teachers in the various International Schools, students (numerous University courses here are taught through the medium of English), the English-speaking half of a Czech-English-speaker marriage, etc. Very few congregational members come anywhere near the category of ‘wealthy’.

We are all Anglicans – Wrong!

A survey undertaken a couple of years ago, revealed that only about half of the congregation are Anglican/Episcopalian by background. All the rest come from a wide variety of other Christian traditions. Fortunately, the Church of England allows those members of other Christian Churches who ‘habitually worship’ with us for at least six months, to join the Church Electoral Roll and fully participate in our congregational life. We use Anglican liturgy in our worship, we follow the laws of the Church of England which govern the way our congregation is administered, but we are far from all being Anglicans.

Amusing assumptions

A couple of assumptions that I’ve read or heard could probably best be described as ‘delusions of grandeur’ and each brought a smile to my face. One was a Czech lady, a member of the Old Catholic Church in the Czech Republic, who thought I was the Anglican Bishop of this country!

The other was a female Canadian lawyer who worshipped with us whilst visiting Prague at Easter, two years ago. A couple of weeks later, I received a letter from her, saying how much she had appreciated the service and enclosing 300 Kc in cash. Her request was that I ‘ask my assistant to send her a couple of postcards of the Church as she had forgotten to purchase them when she was there’. I did smile at the assumption that I have a full-time paid assistant!

Consequences and complications

Having a congregation with such a mix of nationalities and Christian traditions is a great joy. But it also raises a number of interesting issues, especially in two important aspects of our worship – liturgy and the hymns we sing.

The liturgy of the Church of England in various places asks us to pray for ‘Elizabeth our Queen’ and on occasions, for ‘the High Court of Parliament’.  For many in the Prague congregation, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II is not their Queen! Fortunately, by producing our own Orders of Service, we can omit the inappropriate words. The formula those who lead intercessions often use is to pray for ‘….the President and government of the Czech Republic and for the leaders of all the nations represented here today’.

I had long been aware that in England, Anglicans and Free Church people often sing the same hymn but to different tunes. For example, Charles Wesley’s great hymn ‘Love divine, all loves excelling’, used normally to be sung by Anglicans to John Stainer’s tune called ‘Love divine’, whilst Methodists and others would sing it to the Welsh tune ‘Blaenwern’. In more recent times, many Anglicans have taken to using ’Blaenwern’ thus lessening the issue.

But what I have discovered since being in Prague, is what might best be described as the ‘transatlantic divide’. Americans and Brits know many of the same hymns but sing them to totally different tunes! We use a British Hymnal with a very wide range of hymns and more modern worship songs. But they frequently are not set to the tunes that Americans are familiar with.

One further practical problem also arises. What other important days beyond those of the Christian calendar, do you celebrate? For British and Irish people, last Sunday, the Fourth Sunday in Lent, was Mothering Sunday or Mother’s Day. But for Americans, Australians and many other nationalities, Mother’s Day, (or specifically for Americans, ‘Mom’s Day’), is the second Sunday in May.

Life might be simpler if the Prague Anglican congregation who I have privilege to minister to, would be monochrome. But I’m glad it isn’t, as it is much more fun to work and worship with such a diverse and fascinating group of people, even allowing for all the issues that arise.

 

My first wedding of 2012

Myself with Kristin & Petr following their wedding service © Sybille Yates

On Saturday 3rd March, I conducted my first wedding of 2012 when Petr, a Czech, married Kristin, an American. The wedding took place at St. Clement’s Church with a congregation made up of Petr’s Czech relatives, a small number of Kristin’s American relatives, together with numerous mutual friends.

This wedding presented all the usual problems that arise when I conduct a Czech to English-speaker marriage. Petr’s parents and older relatives do not understand or speak English. None of Kristin’s family speaks Czech except for Kristin herself who has lived in Prague for twenty years and has her own business here. How was I to conduct a service that would be understood and appreciated by everyone present?

As with previous Czech to English-speaker weddings, I got Petr and Kristin to produce a completely bilingual order of service to allow everyone present to follow the liturgy and Bible Readings, even when they were not being spoken in their own native language. But I also got my good friend Kvetoslav, Lay Vice President of the Czech Old Catholic Church, to help me with saying parts of the liturgy in Czech, as well as translating my words of welcome and explanation at the beginning of the service.

Petr & Kristin outside St. Clement's Church following their wedding © Ricky Yates

Therefore, Kvetoslav helped Petr make his vows to Kristin in Czech whilst I helped Kristin make her vows to Petr in English. And the couple chose two Bible Readings, one read in English by Kristin’s mother, and the other read in Czech by Petr’s niece.

We even managed to sing one hymn, admittedly only in English. We sang ‘Joyful, joyful, we adore thee’ which is an American hymn that appears in the ‘The Hymnal’ of the American Episcopal Church. Both Kristin and her parents are from the Episcopalian tradition in the USA. Fortunately, the hymn is set to Beethoven’s ‘Ode to Joy’, the official anthem of the European Union, so it did seem quite appropriate for a transatlantic marriage!

The wedding reception took place in the cupola on the top of a wonderful cubist style building located half-way up Václavské námestí/Wenceslas Square, which currently belongs to the Landesbank Baden-Württemberg. From the cupola, there are amazing views right across Prague as well as looking down on Václavské námestí/Wenceslas Square.

Together with some excellent food and wine, the guests were also entertained by a splendid jazz trio. And throughout the afternoon, both Sybille and I constantly received compliments as to how much everybody had enjoyed the service in Church, especially the way it had enabled both Czech and English speakers to participate and fully understand all that was being said and done.

Particularly from young Czechs, I got expressions of both appreciation, but also of surprise, in that they found the way I led the service both warm and welcoming and in total contrast to their past experience of attending occasional Czech Church services. Whilst it is always nice to be appreciated, it does sadden me that the experience of so many Czechs, is that the Christian Church is both cold and unwelcoming.

It is not the primary purpose of my being here in the Czech Republic, to minister to the spiritual needs of Czech people, but rather to the spiritual needs of native English-speakers. But I increasingly feel that the main reason that the Czech Republic is as atheistic or agnostic as it appears to be, is not because of a deliberate rejection of Christian faith by its population, but rather as a result of the failure of the Czech Christian Churches to be an attractive advert for the Christian faith.

Petr & Kristin at their wedding reception © Ricky Yates

Václavské námestí/Wenceslas Square from the cupola © Ricky Yates

Czenglish corrected!

Dreams are comming soon????? © Ricky Yates

Spelling corrected! © Ricky Yates

Last Wednesday, 29th February, I was walking past a newly renovated building at the western end of Klimentská, the street in which St. Clement’s Church is located, when I spotted the graphic design work illustrated in the photograph on the left above, with the blatant misspelling of the word ‘coming’. Later that evening, I posted the photo on Facebook, asking what it cost to create the artwork and why those who commissioned it were not willing to spend a few more Czech crowns by asking a native English-speaker to check their text.

My posting on Facebook has since attracted 14 comments, many of them humorous. But one of the most telling was that of Karen who remarked, ‘When a luxury place can’t spell, they look cheap!’ That was my immediate reaction too, as soon as I saw it.

What I didn’t say when I posted the photo on Facebook was that, as I stared incredulously at this absurd error, two young ladies came out of the building and saw me with a look of amazement on my face. So I said to them in English, “Do you realise how stupid that looks?” To be fair, once I pointed the mistake out to them, they both immediately acknowledged that there was a serious spelling error.

My past experience when I have pointed out examples of Czenglish, is that the perpetrators rarely see any reason to correct what they have previously written or printed. Therefore I was most surprised that when, 48 hours later, I once more walked past the building, the spelling error had been corrected as can be seen in the right-hand photograph.

On close inspection, I realised that, rather than going to the expense of completely re-doing the artwork, instead a sticker had been made with ‘coming’ correctly spelt, and placed over the previous error. But I have to say that, of all the examples of Czenglish that I have previously highlighted, this is the first one I have ever seen corrected. I just hope it isn’t the last!

 

Celebrating my 60th birthday

Standing on the end of the Baba ridge on my 60th birthday © Sybille Yates

As many readers of my blog will already know, today Sunday 26th February 2012, I celebrated my 60th birthday. As I wrote in a previous post, just like Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, in 2012, I am also celebrating my Diamond Jubilee.

Overall, I have quite positive feelings regarding reaching this landmark. As I wrote previously on this blog, in October 2011, I passed the age my father was when he died. Over the past year, I’ve shed around 10 kg in weight and feel fitter now than I have for a number of years. I can still keep wicket in a forty overs-a-side cricket match and just over half a year ago, I successfully climbed the highest mountain in the Czech Republic.

The one thing I have become aware of during the past year is how much greyer my hair has become. But whilst the hairline does continue to recede and the hair becomes increasingly thinner on top, I still have more hair than I can ever remember my father having.

I firmly believe that God has a great sense of humour. This was very clearly brought home to me when I sat down on Saturday 25th February, the day before my birthday, to say Morning Prayer. The Psalm set was Psalm 71. In particular, two verses brought a smile to my face as I read them. In verse 9, the Psalmist pleads,

‘Do not cast me away in the time of my old age;

Forsake me not when my strength fails.’

And further on in verse 18 he cries,

‘Forsake me not, O God, when I am old and grey-headed,

till I make known your deeds to the next generation and your power to all that are to come.’

The ‘old and grey-headed’ bit did somewhat ring true. But I also liked the challenge of the second half of the verse – my responsibility to make God’s deeds and power known to the next generation. It is a reminder to me that I still have at least a further five years of full time ministry ahead of me before I can consider retiring. And even when I am retired, so long as my health permits, I intend to apply for ‘Permission to officiate,’ to whichever Anglican bishop’s jurisdiction I am then living under.

So how did I celebrate my birthday today? Well, I had known for quite some time that my 60th birthday would fall on a Sunday – a working day. Of course, as all clergy have heard ad infinitum, it is the only day we work! But any proposed celebrations became much further curtailed when two days beforehand on her own birthday, Sybille went down with a hacking cough and cold.

Then this morning started off even more inauspiciously, when the first sound I heard as a woke up at around 06.45, was our elderly black and white cat Oscar, being sick somewhere. Fortunately, it was only on the floor of our bedroom and therefore fairly easy to clean up. A little while later, as Sybille awoke, I was greeted with ‘Alles Gute zum Geburtstag’. But not wanting to pass on her infection, Sybille decided that her best course of action was to stay home, rather than accompany me to Church.

However, it was at Church this morning that the highlight of my day occurred, not least because it caught me completely unawares. In the absence of our regular organist, Professor Michal Novenko, the organ was being played by Larry Leifeste, a Texan who moved to Prague with wife Celieta, in August last year and have both joined the St. Clement’s congregation. Since then, Larry has very happily deputised on the organ, whenever Michal has been ill or away.

I duly announced the first hymn from the back of Church as Hymn 190, ‘Forty days and forty nights’. But instead of striking up the tune ‘Auf der Tiefe’, to which the hymn, so appropriate for the First Sunday of Lent, is set, Larry instead started playing ‘Happy Birthday to you’. The congregation soon twigged, (several of them already knew it was my birthday), and they duly joined together and sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to me as I walked up the aisle.

Early this afternoon, after I got back to the Chaplaincy Flat, Sybille said she felt well enough to walk up the hill through woods behind the Podbaba complex, to Restaurace na Staré Fare where we ate a late Sunday lunch. By the time we had finished eating, there was sunshine and bright blue sky, in contrast to the mixture of rain and snow of the morning. So before returning home, we walked out to the end of the Baba ridge where there is a wonderful view across Prague and where my 60th birthday photo at the top of this post was taken.

 

Lessons and Carols in Brno

The Prague crew, together with Katka, gathered around the organ. From l to r, David Hellam, Karen Moritz, Katka Bánová, Larry Leifeste, Celieta Leifeste, Gordon Truefit, Ricky Yates © Celieta Leifeste

As I wrote in my previous post, last Sunday evening, 18th December 2011, the Prague Anglican congregation created a little bit of history by holding the first ever English-language Anglican service in Brno. In the appropriately named Betlémský Kostel / Bethlehem Chapel, we held a Service of Lessons and Carols for Christmas.

Brno is the second largest city in the Czech Republic with a population of about 400,000 people. It is home to a number of high tech companies together with numerous university and research institutions therefore meaning that there are quite a large number of English-speakers living there. But unlike Prague (population 1.3 million), where St. Clement’s Anglican Episcopal Church is one of eight mainstream English-speaking congregations, in Brno there are only two – a Roman Catholic one and an small Evangelical Fellowship with no Pastor. In terms of the Christian spectrum, there is a large gap in between for which there is currently no provision whatsoever.

Officially the whole of the Czech Republic is my ‘parish’ and in the more than three years I have been here, I have had a couple of enquiries from individuals spending a few months in Brno, asking if we ever hold English-language services in the city. Sadly, I’ve always had to reply saying that we don’t. In recent months, as I have talked with members of the Church Council as to how we might ‘grow the congregation’, it has often struck me that we ought to look at doing so away from Prague in places where there is ‘far less competition’ (if you will excuse that expression this context) and where there is almost certainly far greater need.

Earlier this year whilst I was pondering all of this, I had a totally unexpected phone call from a fluent English-speaking Czech young lady from Brno called Katka. I should really say extremely fluent as she makes a living as a freelance interpreter and translator. What Katka wanted was any old hymnbooks we might have, so that the Czech congregation to which she belongs, could occasionally sing a hymn in English. Taking her phone call as the prompting of the Holy Spirit, I put to her the idea I had of trying to start a satellite English-speaking Anglican congregation in Brno.

Fortunately, Katka was immediately enthusiastic and has since spent numerous hours doing research on my behalf, finding possible Church buildings to use, and helping to organise publicity, particularly via the Brno Expat Centre. The project has also involved me in two day trips to Brno by train, in order to meet people and look at venues. But all of this preparation led to the successful holding of our first ever service last Sunday evening.

I’ve also been most encouraged by the support and enthusiasm of members of the Prague Anglican congregation regarding the Brno venture. As can be seen in the photograph above, five of them volunteered to come with me to Brno for the service. All of them first came to our Sunday Eucharist at 11.00 in the morning in Prague, then managed some quick refreshment at our post-service Coffee Hour, before taking the tram for three stops to the main railway station in order to catch the 13.42 train for Brno. The return train got back at to Prague at 23.15 meaning that we didn’t get back to our respective homes until around midnight.

Larry & Celieta Leifeste at the organ with no volume pedal! © Ricky Yates

Our organist was Larry Leifeste who with his wife Celieta, only joined our congregation in August when they moved from Texas to Prague. It was obviously the first time he had ever played the organ in the Bethlehem Chapel and he found that much to his surprise, it had no volume pedal. How then did he increase the volume? By literally ‘pulling out all the stops’!

Celieta sang two wonderful solos – a setting of the Magnificat and an American spiritual ‘Sweet little Jesus boy’. David Hellam and Gordon Truefit both read a lesson and together with me, sang the individual verses of ‘We three kings’; Gordon as ‘gold’, myself as ‘frankincense’ and David as ‘myrrh’. David along with Karen Moritz also did the important job of welcoming all those who came.

Katka also read a lesson as did three other Brno people that she successfully recruited. Katka also helped to lay on some wonderful post-service refreshments giving me the chance to talk with several of those who attended.

Several of the thirty-strong congregation filled out contact forms with various expressions of interest in being part of future services. Currently, these are planned to start on a monthly basis on Sunday 8th January 2012 using a smaller nearby venue belonging to the Czechoslovak Hussite Church. More details can be found on the new Brno page of our website.

I am really quite excited about starting a satellite congregation in Brno. I suspect that we will be quite small to start with but, as Jesus said, “For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them.” Matthew 18. 20 TNIV Or alternatively, ‘from small acorns, large oak trees grow’. Watch this space!