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

in the community of disciples, who are actively engaged in both discernment of its meaning and living it out through their relationships, their day to day lives, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.°® In my next step, | would like to focus on the practical aspect of such communal reading - what does it mean to read the Bible in the community? 8.2 Practices of reading the Bible Addressing the subject of communal hermeneutics, the first question that has to be answered is who are the participants of the process of Scriptural interpretation? According to McClendon there are only two — ‘the narrator and the hearers,’ with God, ‘the giver of the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments,’ being the Narrator. The hearers, therefore, must be all the readers of the Bible.*’ Such understanding allows the Bible to become the Holy Scripture, which contains narrative that is normative for our individual and communal living. Furthermore, since no one can claim the position of the Narrator, the reading of the Bible remains a truly communal exercise, that contains a solution to potential intentional and unintentional misinterpretations. The Bible turns into the Book that challenges the convictions of its readers, asks uncomfortable questions, and sets the course for the ongoing transformation of the believers. According to McClendon, °7 Fowl and Jones, “Scripture, Exegesis, and Discernment in Christian Ethics,” p 114. °8 Lesslie Newbigin speaks about the Holy Spirit as a starting point of the life of the Church. The Holy Spirit plays a primary role in Christians’ discerning the will and the way of God. However, such spiritual discernment must be practiced within the family of faith, since the Holy Spirit ‘gives to the Church the necessary gifts’ of discernment. (Lesslie Newbigin, The Household of God: Lectures on the Nature of the Church (New York, Friendship, 1954), p 106). °° McClendon, Doctrines, pp 40-41. 206 Whenever it [the Bible] speaks, its story not only supports and conserves, but challenges, corrects, and sometimes flatly defeats the tales we tell ourselves about ourselves. God’s Spirit who breathed upon the writers of Scripture breathes also on us, sometimes harshly. The consequence is that our stubborn wills are turned, our blind eyes opened, our arrhythmic hearts set beating in tempo. This is not always immediate and is never without ugly exceptions; but it happens often enough to confirm our faith in the Author of the Book.°° Nonetheless, it is important to bear in mind that such a view of the importance of reading the Scripture in the church does not presuppose that mere pronouncing of the words written on the pages of the Bible (which is the process of reading itself) triggers some magical sequence of events. Whilst this might seem like common sense, it should not be taken for granted that reading the Bible in the community takes place in every church. Far too often, church activities t