Ivana Prochazkova

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Having grown up in the most secularized country of Europe, Ivana Prochazkova (*1971) did not begin attending church until 1992.  She became a believer and was baptized in 1993.  One year later she decided to study theology at the Evangelical Theological Faculty at Charles University in Prague.  These were her second studies, as she already had finished her master’s studies of musicology and aesthetics.  In 2006, she started her doctoral studies.  Five years later she defended her doctoral thesis focusing on the meaning of the Old testament metaphor God-King and earned her PhD.

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Ivana Prochazkova is married to Petr Prochazka, the District Superintendent of the UMC in the Czech Republic, and she is the mother of three children.

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She was ordained an elder in 2001.  Currently she is serving Prague 2 (Nove Mesto) UMC, to which also Sedlcany UMC belongs.

Ivana was, together with members of the Protestant Church of Czech Brethren, also involved in the development of the very successful course, With Children on the Journey of Faith, which meets many needs of people involved with ministries with children.  In addition to these responsibilities, Ivana is a member of the Governing Board of the Methodist E-Academy, and she is involved in the coordination of higher theological education of the Methodist Related Theological Schools in Europe (MTSE).

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Ivana is an inspiring example of how the investment in theological education bears multiple fruit with regard to the principles of teaching.  She successfully developed and implemented theological courses for laity using resources from the Methodist E-Academy, which combines distance learning and on-site seminars.  She also, together with others, developed the content for the course With Children on the Journey of Faith that has an impact far beyond the UMC in the Czech Republic and will help in shaping a new generation of Christians.