Towards Understanding of the Practice of Proclamation: The Core Element of Russian Baptist Worship, Timofey Cheprasov, 2015

ians-Baptists (AUCECB) during the Soviet time, but which exist as independent ecclesial bodies. Due to the limitations of this work | chose to focus specifically on churches that currently form the Russian Union of Evangelical Christians — Baptists (RUECB).”* Chapter 1 shows the important role preaching played in the formation of the first baptistic groups in the Russian Empire. Using the example of Stundist groups, | will argue that the ability to read the Bible and the attempts to interpret it within the community of believers caused excommunication of these groups from the Orthodox Church. Thus preaching in a form of retelling a biblical story with simple explanation and subsequent application became one of the main causes for the separation of baptistic communities from the main body of the Orthodox Church. Chapter 2 deals with questions of context. It would be naive to assume that baptistic Christians in Russia could have developed their theology and practice without any direct and indirect influence of the Orthodox Church, being a tiny minority in a country where Orthodox convictions, spirituality and ethics penetrated all areas of social life. Hence understanding Orthodox views on preaching is important. | will offer a brief overview of Orthodox concepts of Theosis, Sobornost and Charismatic preaching. A number of striking similarities with the way preaching is understood and practiced in contemporary Baptist churches will allow better understanding of various convictions related to preaching and worship, and their origin. In Chapters 3 and 4 | will attempt to build a paradigm of the development of preaching in baptistic churches in Russia. | will show that the oppressive and hostile environment, in which these communities existed, produced a distinct imprint on their preaching — the ministry of proclamation became “over-spiritualised,” with heavy emphasis placed on the spirituality and ethics of the preachers as the most important ™ The above mentioned limitations of my research provide an important clarifying point for a rather brief overview of several important and controversial issues in the history of the AUCECB, particularly its forceful merger with Pentecostal communities in 1945 and the split in the AUCECB of 1961, resulting in the appearance of the Council of Churches. Whilst these issues are extremely important events in the history of Russian baptistic churches, they are outside of the scope of my research. | hope that this thesis will prompt in the appearance of further studies of the above mentioned ecclesial groups. prerequisites for a successful sermon. Eventually, this gave preachers, and particularly the leadership of churches special position and authority, thus bringing issues of power into the realm of homiletics. In my analysis | will rely on magazines published by Baptists and Evangelical Christians in the first half of the 20" century, as well as several books and