Eastern European Baptist History: New Perspectives, 2007

vement and evangelical activity. Kargel held Bible classes at the home. > Kargel wrote that he was converted [bekehrt] in Tiflis in 1869. Johann G. Kargel, Zwischen den Enden der Erde unter Briidern in Ketten (Wernigerode am Harz: Licht im Osten, 1928), p. VIII. Princess Sophie Lieven [Sofiia Liven] wrote in her short tribute to Kargel after his death that he had told her that he sang in a church choir as a youth and was brought to knowledge of his sinfulness by the words of the songs. See S.P. Liven, “Kratkii ocherk zhizni i deiatel’nosti brata I.V. Kargelia’, Evangel’skaia vera, vol. 9, no. 1 (1940), p. 8. * M. Kalweit, “Extension of the German Baptist Mission into Asia and Africa’, Quarterly Reporter of the German Baptist Mission, vol. 47 (October 1869), p. 382. 73 Mennonite Brethren Kargel, however, did not waste his time waiting for classes in Hamburg to begin. In 1873, he found his way to the Mennonite communities in the Molotschna region (now part of Ukraine). One year earlier, in 1872, the first official meeting of the Mennonite Brethren had taken place in the German settlement of Andreasfeld. The Mennonite Brethren are a group within the Mennonite community influenced by Pietistic Lutheran preachers and German Baptists. They became convinced in 1872 that religious renewal of the individual must be evident after conversion and that immersion was the Biblical mode of baptism, rejecting the historic Anabaptist use of the mode of pouring. Kargel attended their conference in Klippenfeld in 1873, and during these meetings, received his calling into fulltime ministry.’ There he met Karl Ondra, a Polish-born German who had been ordained in 1866 to serve as a Baptist missionary among the Germans in Poland. Ondra had already baptised over seven hundred people in Volhynia by the time he met Kargel. It is likely that Ondra was sent to the Germans in Molot- schna because they wanted to learn about immersion from the Baptists. At Ondra’s suggestion, Kargel moved to Soroczin [Sorotschin], Volhynia (in present-day Poland) to pastor a German Baptist church. While involved in this ministry, he received word that the school in Hamburg was to be reopened. Both he and Karl Ondra, a returning student, left their minis- tries in Poland to attend the Hamburg Missionary School. One of the important influences passed on by German Baptists to the Mennonite Brethren was their style of leadership and organisation. The Mennonite Brethren learned skills and practices from the German Baptists which led to a new administrative structure altogether. This included sched- uled business meetings, standardised worship services, mission strategy and an overarching conference structure.® Kargel learned these things well while in Hamburg. He also took hold of Oncken’s version of the Baptist faith, including a strong Calvinistic approach to scripture, the centrality of pastoral authority and a strong emphasis on missions and evang