http://spek.evangnet.cz/international
Dear brothers and sisters, colleagues,
we cordially greet you from the Czech Republic and introduce our association to you.
SpEK is a voluntary association of pastors of the Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren. Its aim is to educate preachers, strengthen their fellowship and support members who find themselves in social or professional need. The association seeks to guard the reputation of the pastoral profession.
Those who have other professions can become members as well. There are following types of membership:
Besides a regular membersip (confined to ordained members of the ECCB), there is a founding membership (for sponsors) a honorary membership (for merits of various kinds that SpEK wants to honour) and a contributing membership (allowing to participate in SpEK activities without having the right to vote and requiring a lower fee).
Activities:
- Financial support for pastors and church workers in need (SpEK has a limited budget but it coordinates the distribu1on of foreign financial aid too).
- Fostering fellowship and mutual support of preachers.
- Nurturing contacts with foreign ministers' associations, sharing their experiences, concerns and hopes.
- Conversation with church leadership about the current needs of the pastoral profession, actually: living in parishes, nature of ministerial work (its transformations and evaluation), supervision and training support, support for assistant preachers.
- Conversation with the Protestant theological faculty in Prague about preparing students for their pastoral profession and about lifelong learning.
- Annual course for preachers, open to ecumenical and international guests and theology students.
We appreciate our international cooperation so far and look forward to new meetings!
Michael Pfann, Chair of SpEK and Alžběta Hanychová, Contact for international relationship
SPEK, Jungmannova 9, pošt. přihr. 466, 111 21 Praha 1
e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., web: http://spek.evangnet.cz,
INTL: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., +420 733 424 080
About Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren:
The ECCB is the largest protestant church in CZ: 200 pastors, 67,000 members in 248 congregations, 0,5% of population (ca. 10 % catholic church, some evangelical and pentacostal churches, high level of the secularization), anyway the ECCB represents the traditions of the Bohemian as well as of the European reformation in czech lands.
The ECCB was founded in 1918 (union of reformed and lutheran churches in CZ with strong relationship to CZ reformation), emancipation of the state after the fall of Habsburg monarchy, missing German and Polish speaking congregations. After the Second World War the CZ society became very homogenous, with the majority of ECCB members czech as their mother tongue. Minorities inside the church: Slovakia, few Germans and Poles mainly in the border regions. In the Prague region (seniorat) 1 German and 1 Korean congregation.
News within the church
We have adopted a new hymnbook and are crea1ng a new liturgical agenda.
We are actively debating the role and structure of the church during the transition to self-financing and preparing for changes. We were affected by major changes in the "church traffic" during the pandemic, we are looking for a new rhythm (impact on services and the mental condition of members). Many churches house refugees (e.g. the use of unoccupied parishes, liturgy/sermon translation in UA).
A strong generation of pastors retires, we have a weaker generation of students, we invite development of assistant preachers.