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

xt, and the majority find it hard to apply the Message to their lives. 3. The way preachers are positioned in churches: In Russian churches, preachers are not treated as ordinary members, accountable to the whole assembly. Instead, they form some sort of spiritual elite of a church, being “above” the rest. Often, they are literally positioned “above” the congregation, being provided a platform to sit on during worship services, with pulpits being elevated even further. In addition to such visible signs of “specialness,” preachers (particularly those who form the leadership of local churches) and their families are treated differently, especially in the 186 way church discipline is applied to them in a far less strict fashion.®? Furthermore, preachers are seen as “God’s anointed,” and thus, unable to err. Therefore, any criticism towards their personalities or ministry is seen as dangerous activity, which can bring retributions from God. 4. Finally, the way listeners are treated: Unfortunately, the listeners are rarely encouraged to reflect and engage critically with the message from the pulpit and the biblical text used. Instead, they are told to listen and absorb the message unquestionably, as incontestable truth of God. The heavy emphasis on preaching, as the central and the most important practice of the Baptist church in Russia, and its practitioners, as people with special anointing and authority, has resulted in pulpits becoming a power attribute, effectively alienating Christians from the involvement in individual in-depth Bible study, and creating two categories of church members — lay and clergy.*° If the cornerstone of Baptist identity is understood in a form of a hermeneutical vision as suggested by McClendon, which implies the necessity for individual and congregational involvement with biblical text, which must become a guide for the life and practice of a community, then it is possible to speak of the destructive power of preaching, as a force that removes such in-depth engagement with the Bible from people’s lives, leaving it in hands of a few carefully selected practitioners. The primary danger of preaching is that it can suppress communal reading of the Bible, substituting it with the “pastor’s message” (no matter how good and polished it might be), thus separating the Story from the community of faith. Preaching may teach doctrines, but they remain as disjointed moral or religious utterances or even less so, slogans that people proclaim but rarely believe and follow. Hence, preaching becomes de-formative or even destructive for the baptistic identity as it removes the major mark, the core conviction that constitutes the identity of the group. Therefore, this raises an important question of safe- 85 Eg. A. Popov, “The Evangelical Christians-Baptists...,” pp 259-260. 8° A. Popov notes that various publications in the BV were targeting different audiences. Devotional read