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

in the New Testament. It must ‘imitate Christ’s 7101 preaching,’ which means that preachers can only interpret the great truths of Christ and help their listeners to apply them to their lives. Hence, the following rules must be applied to a sermon’: (1) a sermon must contain some personal experience of a preacher. Its absence makes preaching dry and unrealistic. (2) The main purpose of a sermon must be the salvation of human souls. Although edification and teaching of believers must be present in preaching, its main purpose has to be a message of salvation. (3) Every sermon must have Jesus in its centre. A sermon without Christ is mere reflections of a preacher, rather than preaching. °° Prokhanov also mentions a number of recommendations for a preaching event — preacher’s gestures, intonation, appearance, the length of a sermon, the style of speaking (including clarity of the argument, repetitions, etc.), and many others. His final remark, however, is something that hasn’t been practiced at all, ‘The preacher should leave no critical remarks about their sermon without attention, whether they come from friends or enemies. In no situation he should be offended by people’s criticism. Instead he should be grateful for that, taking it into account and correcting mistakes. Our critics are out best teachers.’?™* As | will show in the next chapter, the practice of preaching gradually became over-spiritualized, leaving no space for critical evaluation, considering it inappropriate or even sinful. 1° Ibid., Chapter 9. 10 Ibid., Chapter 10. 12 It must be noted that these recommendations are still closely followed by the majority of Russian Baptist preachers. | will address this issue further in Chapter 4. 1°3 Prokhanov, Kratkoie Ucheniie o Propovedy, Chapter 10. 14 Ibid., Chapters 16, 17. 79 Let me draw a brief summary of the argument so far. In this section, | have addressed an important and fruitful period in Russian baptistic history. Relaxation of governmental restrictions on the work of non-Orthodox churches among ethnic groups traditionally seen as Orthodox (Russians, Ukrainians, etc.) led to an unprecedented growth and maturity of the baptistic movement. It grew numerically, but, which became very important for the next period of severe persecutions, it developed structurally and gained clear denominational identity. Baptists and Evangelical Christians have made considerable efforts in developing tools for educating their communities and their leadership. Publications, training seminars and conferences, and eventually Bible schools — all geared towards one goal, the evangelization of the whole Russian Empire (before Revolution 1917) and later Soviet Russia. With a growing number of educated people, their greater exposure to international community, and perhaps most importantly, the vanishing novelty factor of the biblical message proclaimed outside of the traditional Ortho