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

ptist Identity (Nashville, Tennessee, Broadman and Holman, 2001), pp 15-22). 142 pattern by which people... shape their thought and practice.’”® Therefore, another way of identifying Baptists is needed, which is neither a historic identity not a baptistic way of doing church (although both will be looked at), which implicitly refers to practices and beliefs. Instead, it might be helpful to use another term, a guiding vision, which carries a sense of moving forward, yet leaving space for a variety of contexts and cultures. This should be a vision that is clearly reflected in baptistic practices, and helps to explain the origin for the most important baptistic convictions. It should not be a simple list of convictional beliefs, but instead should serve ‘as the touchstone by which authentic baptist convictions are discovered, described, and transformed, and thus as the organising principle around which an authentic baptist theology can take shape.’”” Thus, the focus is shifted from a recapitulation of major baptistic beliefs to a search for a guiding vision that can generate or cohere all the beliefs or convictions stated above. Moreover, this vision should provide a clear lead to the people who share it. Most importantly, it should explain how it affects people and their beliefs and practices. This search for a vision does not reject previous attempts to single out baptistic identity by pointing at their distinctives, but asks what causes them to be different. From this perspective, this is an attempt to discover convictions that precede visible implications of baptistic beliefs.” | would like to proceed with a story, which provides an insight into a life of a particular Christian community. Since identity is formed through participation in social life of a community,** reviewing and analysing community practices may serve as a mirror that reflects real convictions of that community. 8 McClendon, Ethics, p27. * Ibid. 3° This, according to McClendon, is one of the tasks of theology, which is ‘the discovery, understanding or interpretation, and transformation of the convictions of a convictional community, including the discovery and critical revision of their relation to one another and to whatever else there is.’ (McClendon, Ethics, p 23) 31 The concept of identity development through social interaction is developed by Peter L. Berger in The Social Construction of Reality (Garden City, Doubleday, 1966) and The Sacred Canopy (Garden City, Doubleday, 1967). 2 James Wm. McClendon Jr., Biography as Theology: How Life Stories Can Remake Today’s Theology (Nashville, Abingdon Press, 1974), p 19. 143 6.2 A story of the Dobrovolets [Volunteer] community The history of the Baptist movement in Russia has attracted a lot of attention in recent years. However, although more and more work has been undertaken on previously neglected territory, such as life of various churches, regional association