For the love of Prague

I arrived in Prague in the sweaty heat of August 2006. DH and I had been married just over a year and we were here to try to figure out what we should be doing with our lives (obviously that was going to only take a year or so!) I began my Masters in Applied Theology, DH was teaching English and we lived on campus at IBTS. I could never have imagined how changed I would be in the three years that we lived in Prague. During those years, and as a member of Sarka Valley Community Church (SVCC), I began discerning a call to ministry, I had the opportunity of working with the European Baptist Federation, and DH and I began experiencing and exploring a faith that was political, holistic and radical. As part of a seminary community: living, studying and worshipping together, we had a huge variety of conversation partners, many fascinating and challenging theories, theologies and ideas to interact with. We were both encouraged, challenged and stimulated in this environment.

As part of SVCC and worship at IBTS, we grew accustomed to hearing prayers in different languages, singing songs that actually said something of meaning, and experiencing the beauty, mystery and rhythm of the Christian calendar. We drank (fruity, non-British) tea with students and visiting professors and teachers from all over the world: Lebanon, Russia, Kazakhstan, Belgium, Ukraine, Hungary, Spain, Estonia, and the USA, to name a few. We made friends with people and swopped stories of life and hopes for the future.

DH and I began feeling a godly restlessness and a gut-stirring calling through our worship, our study, our sharing of life with others to put into practice what had been poured into us. I know that Shadwell, and our church there, is the answer to the question that God placed in us. It is there that we wrestle with our scriptures, that we struggle with our convictions and our beliefs, that we live alongside others who are so different to us. It is there that we are working out what it is to be radical, Jesus-centred, peace-making disciples. By no means do we have the answers, but we do have some of the tools to be able to think, to reflect, to begin to try to form practices that can be lived out faithfully in our complex community. We have God, the community of IBTS and SVCC to thank for playing such a significant part in who we are and why we are where we are now.

And as we say goodbye to IBTS as we have known it, we have some very special memories that we hold on to. Staring out from my window this evening, I am struck again by the beauty of the Sarka Valley, the calm of the campus, the sweetness of the rain-soaked spring grass. Thankfully for us, we have many precious friends all over the world that we still make time to see. The depth of our friendships after many years is testament to our time spent together in IBTS. I am so pleased that I have been able to show my children, young as they are, this place that was so significant to us, and where one of them was thought-up and born! 🙂

As IBTS prepares to move to Amsterdam in the coming year, my prayer is that this institution will build on their past and continue forward with courage and confidence to engage with the complex challenges and opportunities that face Christianity and the church today in Europe. I pray that they will not be too cautious or fearful, but be prepared to take risks and follow the wild goose of the Holy Spirit. I pray that IBTS might become a byword in European Christian education for creative Jesus-centred risk taking: theologically groundbreaking and radically disciple-making. I pray that women and men would be sent out to be leaders, organisers, dissenters and protesters.

I am excited to see how this story unfolds…