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

only to the new-comers, but also to its * Savinskii, Istoriia Evangelskikh Khristian — Baptistov, Vol. 2, p 117. On Marxism as religion in relationship to Christianity, see Parush R. Parushev, “Marxism and Christianity,” in Tim Noble, Tim Grass, Martin Davie, John McDowell and Steven Holmes, eds., New Dictionary of Theology, revised (Nottingham, England/ Downers Grove, Ill: Inter-Varsity Press, forthcoming). 49 long-standing members. This highlights the growing need of identifying the core convictions, the constants of the baptistic identity and learning to preserve those constants, thus freeing the church from the constraints of less significant elements of the communal life and worship, which therefore, could be dropped without fear of compromising its identity. 3.1 Formative years The first 35 years of the baptistic movement in the Russian Empire is a significant period, which is almost impossible to cover in a short overview. As it has been shown through my narrative up to this point, there was a vast variety of situations where churches appeared and grew, from small communities of peasants in Ukrainian villages, Baptist churches in Tiflis (nowadays Tbilisi, Georgia), to the meetings in the palaces of high aristocracy in St Petersburg. Multitudes of people were the driving force behind the spread and growth of the movement. Michail Ratushnii, Ivan Ryaboshapka, Vasilii Pashkov, Modest Korf,? Nikita Voronin, and Ivan Kargel® were just a few amongst countless evangelists, preachers, and teachers. Finally, the fascinating journey that baptistic communities in Russia have made, developing from small Bible-study groups to full functional organizations that attempted to form a Union to coordinate their mission and ministry. The complexity of all these circumstances might be a sufficient reason to give up even an attempt to characterise the ministry of proclamation at this stage. ° Count Modest Korf was born in a wealthy aristocratic family that played an important role in Russia’s politics. He became interested in evangelical Christianity at the age of 24, through a meeting with a representative of a British Bible Society, which eventually led to his conversion through the preaching of Lord Radstock in 1874. A close friend of Pashkov, he became a prominent leader of Evangelical Christians, as well as provided support for Stundist communities in the south of the Russian Empire. He was exiled together with Pashkov in 1884. (Istoriia Evangelskikh Khristian-Baptistov v SSSR [The History of the Evangelical Christians- baptists in the USSR] (Moscow, VSEKHB, 1989), pp 81-82). ® Ivan or Johann Kargel is one of the most prominent leaders of the Russian baptistic movement. Born in a family of German colonists in Georgia, Kargel became an Evangelical Christian through Pashkov, and after his exile from Russia in 1884 became a pastor of the St. Petersburg congregation of Evangelical Christians. As noted by Greg