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

s understood and taught as a practice“ rather than a mere rhetorical skill, it would be hard to open the way for further development and growth. Employing the concept of powerful practices as developed by James W. McClendon Jr.,”° | will point out that 3 | am aware that when addressing such subjects as “preaching” or “teaching preaching” a definition of “success” enters a very subjective area of individual expectations (of teachers and students, and churches that eventually hear the end product) and various theological convictions (what is the measure of success depends heavily on how preachers and their listeners understand theirs and God’s work in the world and in the church). However, | |” deliberately use the word “unsuccessful” for several reasons. Firstly, at present, preaching in Russian Baptist churches can be characterised as low quality from both rhetorical and theological perspectives. Many preachers are aware of it, yet not sure how they could address the problem. Their listeners have learnt to have low expectations of preaching, as a consequence, there are fewer people attending churches today than there were 20 years ago. Secondly, it is still not uncommon to hear dismissive remarks about theological education in general and preachers’ training in particular. Thus, even though various training programmes have produced quality preachers (both successful communicators and_ excellent hermeneutists), the impact of these schools and programmes is limited to their graduates, with the majority of churches and pastors still not showing their support of theological education, which is clearly seen in the lack of financial support and declining numbers of prospective students. “1 am using the term “practice” as Alasdair MacIntyre defines it, as ‘any coherent and complex form of socially established cooperative human activity through which goods internal to that form of activity are realized in the course of trying to achieve those standards of excellence which are appropriate to, and partially definitive of, that form of activity, with the result that human powers to achieve excellence, and human conceptions of the ends and goods involved, are systematically extended.’ (Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue, 2 ed. (Notre Dame, University of Notre Dame Press, 1984, originally published in 1981), p 187). ** |am applying the theological method of James Wm. McClendon, Jr. (as presented in his trilogy Ethics: Systematic Theology, Volume |; Doctrine: Systematic Theology, Volume II! (Nashville, Abingdon Press, 1994); and Witness: Systematic Theology, Volume III (Nashville, Abingdon Press, 2000)) to perform a study of the practice of proclamation of Russian Baptists. (Baylor University Press (Waco, Texas) reprinted Systematic Theology in a three-volume set in 2012). when teaching or evaluating preaching, its “success” should not be measured based solely on listeners’ perception of separate acts of proclamat