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

aiming its ultimate importance in the eyes of the practitioners (no matter how good the style or content of preaching can be), causing damage to the community of faith. Preaching has intentional participants — preachers and listeners, and, of course, God.** Preaching has developed standards of excellence, which in Russian Baptist communities, first of all, would be deep spirituality of a preacher. In Russian Baptist churches preaching has identified goods internal — listening to the “word of God” produces faith, a virtue that enables individual Christians to follow the way of Christ. In 83 Ibid., p 84. 54 According to Campbell, different stages in the history of the church can be characterised by different participants of the ministry of preaching taking its central stage, with the authority and personality of preacher dominating preaching in the second half of the 19" century, followed by God (or the Word of God) taking the central stage as a reaction to liberalism of the 19" century, finally at the present time, the congregation came into the focus of preaching with ‘Congregation-centered preaching’ becoming a ‘characteristic of much contemporary homiletical thought.’ (Campbell, The Word Before the Powers, p 68). 185 my analysis of the understanding of the “ministry of the Word” in Russian Baptist churches, | have arrived at the conclusion that preaching influences churches in more ways than it is traditionally expected (producing faith in listeners by providing them with Christian knowledge). The listeners do receive biblical knowledge and may be motivated through the message they hear. However, as it was shown in the previous discussion on the issues of authority and power in local churches (see Chapter 5), apart from the educational or/and inspirational dimension, preaching produces other results. Various contributing factors need to be considered: 1. The way preaching is understood: in the Russian context it is seen as almost exclusively a result of God’s involvement with the preacher. Hence, a reverent and submissive attitude to both the preacher and his message is expected, and, to a certain degree, enforced through preaching and teaching of the church leaders. 2. Participants: is this ministry open to all members of the congregation? Can only baptised male members, approved by the pastor preach? Or is the ministry of the Word restricted for Ministers only? In most cases, preaching is limited to several male members, selected and approved by the pastor and the church council. Such exclusiveness conveys an important message to the rest of the congregation: the task of biblical interpretation is the prerogative of people with special anointing from the Holy Spirit (with the Holy Spirit abiding predominantly in these selected or appointed leaders). Therefore, whilst the Bible is fairly widely read in Baptist circles, few people go beyond the surface, literal understanding of the Te