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

unity formation.’ He also proposes the existence of several categories of subpractices that form clusters contributing to community formation: witness, worship, works of mercy, discernment, and discipleship. ’* Kallenberg argues that participation in these practices is essential for participation in the tradition called Christianity, as people are ‘unable to grow in Christlikeness unless we participate 744 McClendon names Eucharist, the Covenant Meal, as a in Christianity’s practices. formative practice of the New Testament Church, ‘At the fundament of missionary, Gentile Christianity, there is a rite, not magical or even (in many usual senses of the term) “sacramental” - but moral and ethical first of all; a rite aimed at the shaping of the 715 common life of Christian community.’”” Then he adds forgiveness as a skill required for ” NMancey C. Murphy, “Using Macintyre’s Method in Christian Ethics,” in Murphy, Kallenberg and Nation, Virtues and Practices in the Christian Tradition, p 31. *3 Brad J. Kallenberg, “The Master Argument of Maclntyre’s After Virtue,” in Murphy, Kallenberg and Nation, Virtues and Practices in the Christian Tradition, p 22. ™ Ibid. *° McClendon, “The Practice of Community Formation,” p 92. 168 the continuous existence of the community of individuals from a variety of backgrounds.”® All of the above points to the importance of the concept of “social practice” for a project dealing with a church practice’’ (preaching) that is attributed a leading role in shaping identity of a community. In the next step | will turn to Maclntyre’s view on practices and their interconnectedness with virtues as well as the importance of authoritative narrative. MacIntyre defines practices 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.”® Following this definition, a football-game or medicine, or marriage are practices, while ‘bricklaying is not’ (notice that architecture is).’? The difference between an activity and a practice (hitting a ball vs. playing football for example) is in its purposefulness, only 720 when an action or ‘a skill finds its point in connection with some practice.’~ This makes the range of practices almost endless as ‘arts, science, games, politics in the Aristotelian sense, the making and sustaining of family life, all fall under the concept.’~* Macintyre further explains the concept of practice with the example of a child learning to play chess. At the beginning, the child can participate in the game without having any interest or desire to play, being tempted only