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

cause the readers can have the same religious experience as biblical characters. In this, Baptists differ from other 160 emphasizes that Paul’s conversion as described in Acts with its themes ‘of confrontation with a living Jesus, suffering, testimony, and mission’ was something like a ‘type-story’ for Baptists.°* The examples previously used from the history of Russian Baptists, who identified themselves with biblical people, when they spoke about their story being a story of Exodus, serve as another illustration of this approach. “Then is now,” the second, eschatological part of the vision, is directed into the future.*’ Yet this future outlook is not simply some data of what is to come, ‘rather, this is information about what is of ultimate importance here and now,’®” thus defining the mundane life of Christians. It sees the church of today as the church of judgment day and seeks the Holy Spirit in directing the church into the future. The important emphasis to be made here is that this vision looks both backwards and forward, as a prophetic vision, a pattern that has been used by baptistic Christians throughout their history. The existence of such a vision explains why Baptist communities cannot have a rigid creed - they read the Bible not as a book with propositions, not as a book of rules, but as a book of stories, the book of their story. Moreover, this story is always new because the people are always changing, passing through different places in their journeys. “This is that” is a powerful way for people to see themselves, and make the old Story relevant and liveable for their immediate life. However, the eschatological dimension, “then is now” adds something to the vision, which makes continuous contextual interpretation and reinterpretation possible. This is the prophetic element Christians, for whom Scriptural authority lies primarily in its ability to issue right commands, directing to salvation. For Robinson, the Bible is not a “text-book,” but a “source-book”, allowing believers to live through the written story. (The Life and Faith of Baptists (London, Kingsgate Press, 1966), pp 7-18.) = Randy Hatchett, “The Hermeneutics of Conversion,” in Gary Furr and Curtis W. Freeman eds., Ties That Bind: Life Together in the Baptist Vision (Macon, Georgia, Smyth and Helwys Publishing, Inc., 1994), pp 34-35. For more examples of using the biblical story as a “type-story” see lan M. Randall, “Eastern European Baptists and the Evangelical Alliance, 1846-1896,” in Corrado and Pilli, Eastern European Baptist History, p 15. 84 Cf. Bill J. Leonard speaks about eschaton as a paradox, since ‘it is at once present and future.’ (“Eschatology,” in Stacy, A Baptist’s Theology, pp 206-207.) Cf. Jurgen Moltmann, The Church in the Power of the Spirit (New York, Harper and Row, 1975), p 192. 8 Jolly, “Biography, Baptists and the Book,” p 10. 161 of the vision, the understanding that the Bib