Eastern European Baptist History: New Perspectives, 2007

his life under a variety of influ- ences. He began his Christian ministry in the embryonic Russian Baptist church in Tiflis. From there he travelled to the Mennonite community of Molotschna [Molochna] in southern Russia and attended the second confer- ence of the emerging Mennonite Brethren in 1873. In 1874, he attended formal pastoral training in Hamburg offered by Johann Gerhard Oncken and the German Baptists. Hence, in these early years of ministry, he was exposed to Russian Baptists, Anabaptists, German Pietists and German Baptists. After pastoring a German Baptist Church in the Volhynia region (today part of Poland and Ukraine), he moved to St Petersburg in 1875 at the height of the revival among the aristocracy, where he was exposed to Victorian evangelicalism. In 1880 he founded the Baptist movement in Bulgaria, remaining until 1884, when he moved back to St Petersburg and was fully won over to the ideals of the Holiness movement, which he 72 encountered at the Lieven palace.’ The fruits of these various spiritual and theological influences are evident in his later writings, giving him a unique place among the Russian evangelicals. Ivan Kargel was baptised by Nikita Voronin, considered the first Russian Baptist, in Tiflis in 1869.* The Tiflis church contained a unique blend of cultures. It had been started by Martin Kalweit [Kal’veit], a member of the Baptist church in Memel (today Klaipeda, Lithuania), who had been sent by the Memel church as a “tentmaker” artisan to spread the Baptist faith. In a letter to Oncken, he described the early worship services: As some of us are Russian and some German, we use both languages in our services and sing hymns from a Russian collection, as well as from the Glaubenstimme. Some of the hymns are the same, and suit the same tune, but the German are the favourites, even with those who understand Russian best, as the words are simpler and the tunes more lively.‘ Within months of his baptism, Kargel was accepted in the Hamburg Missionary School operated by Oncken, the father of the continental Baptist movement. It was possibly Kalweit who identified Kargel as a potential Baptist leader and, because Kargel’s mother tongue was German, submitted his name to Oncken. In the autumn of 1869, Kargel and sixteen other men from central Europe and the Russian Empire were accepted to the Hamburg school. However, classes were postponed due to the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War. The school was to be reopened in February 1872, but it was postponed until spring of 1874 for lack of funds. ? The home of Princess Natalie Lieven [Nataliia Liven] in St Petersburg was a meeting point for many of the Russian aristocracy influenced by the Victorian Holiness revivals. When the main Russian sponsor of the revivals, Colonel Vasilii Pashkov, was exiled in 1884, the Lieven home became the central meeting point of locals and visiting foreigners interested in the Holiness Mo