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

ds historical and theological analysis of how preaching evolved in Russian baptistic churches. At this stage, the summary of the results of the surveys serves, first of all, as an illustration that is based on previous historical and theological study. | hope that this work will stimulate further research of the field of Russian baptistic preaching, including extensive quantitative and qualitative research. | have received 25 surveys from every congregation (100 in total). These included 8-10 preachers (all male); and 15-17 non-preachers, men and women of different age groups. It must be noted that the received responses did not seem to depend on the age or gender of the respondents,” which serves as another confirmation of my previous claim that the existing understanding and form of preaching in Russian Baptist churches has deep cultural, theological and historical roots. Let me try to summarize the findings of the survey in a form of an expanded definition of what preaching is understood to be: 1. Preaching is a vehicle which brings the written Word of God (the Bible) into the lives of the listeners. This happens when the Holy Spirit speaks through preachers. An important issue to point out is that the border between the Written Word of God and the proclaimed Word is rather blurred. Preaching viewed as a Word of God includes both — the Bible is explained, but also that God Himself speaks through the preacher. 32 Due to the limitations and a focus of my research | did not attempt to perform an in-depth analysis of the convictions of different age groups in local churches. This might be an important subject for further studies of Baptist churches in Russia. 125 2. The results of sermons are up to God because it is He who works in acts of proclamation. Preachers believe that they should not have clearly defined aims, which they would like to achieve through their preaching when entering the pulpit. The only result that preaching must hope to achieve (nearly 60% of the respondents mentioned that) is conversion, which is also the result of the work of the Holy Spirit. Mikhail Grytsyk, a pastor of a Slavic Baptist church in Prague (Czech Republic), who comes from a traditional Russian-Ukrainian Baptist background, shared a personal story during our discussion about the need for preachers to use understandable language in preaching. He said, ‘| was coming to a church for two years, not understanding a thing. However, God’s Spirit was at work within me. And eventually | 33 Hence, it is believed that all the was changed, accepting Jesus as my Saviour. preacher should do is to allow the Holy Spirit to work (which first of all is achieved through personal spiritual life, rather than preparation for the event of proclamation). The only other ‘worthy aim’ of preachers is ‘to have hope that people will learn to rely on the Word of God, and will be transformed.’*’ 3. There is no bad