Baptistic Theologies, 2009

att aus der Brudergemeine 36, 10 (1878). 6 Ibid. 7 Microfilm edition of the Pashkov Papers, fiche x/x. Letter 022, Library of the International Baptist Theological Seminary, Prague, Czech Republic. Ivan Kargel and the Fulfilment of Revival 25 revivals. Kargel continued Pashkov’s attempts to realise the dream for an Evangelical Alliance in Russia. He spent considerable time with Dr Baedeker, travelling across the Russian empire visiting prisoners. He became a leader amongst the Evangelical Christian Union which later merged with the Baptist Union. Ivan Kargel as a Baptist Ivan Kargel graduated from the Hamburg School in 1874 and was ordained as a Baptist preacher upon graduation. He served as pastor to two German Baptist churches, first in the Volhynia region and then in St. Petersburg, Russia. During these pastorates he received financial support from the German Baptist Union and was in full agreement with the Hamburg Statement of Faith and was committed to spreading the Baptist faith. After his marriage to Anna Alexandra Semnoff and his move to Bulgaria, both in 1880, he began to move away from a commitment to certain denominational distinctives as the basis for church membership, to the thought that ‘being in Christ’ is what was crucial, with denominational distinctives being played down. He began to seek a broader unity outside of the German Baptist movement among the evangelical Christians in the Russian Empire. Ivan Kargel as a Teacher Kargel’s overall influence of the Russian speaking baptistic church was carried out through his teaching at the Bible School in St. Petersburg with Prokhanov, as well as his writing. The preparation for ministry among the various evangelical works in Russia in the late nineteenth century was carried on by means of local Bible or Missionary courses which were taught in centrally located churches during slow seasons of the agricultural year. Between 1883 and 1905 Ivan Kargel travelled to various areas (Odessa, Samara, Kovno, Volhynia, Poland and Ruckenau) to teach month¬ long courses in pastoral preparation and missions. Beginning in 1905, the educational habits of the evangelical church began to develop a new phase when I.S. Prokhanov, the organiser of the Evangelical Christian Union, arranged a six-week course of residential study in the capital city of St. Petersburg on preaching and ‘general educational knowledge and useful o information from the experience of Christians from various nationalities’. The classes were designed to be practical in nature, to prepare the men for the sowing of God’s word. 8 9 The classes were attended by students from 8 Istoriya Evangelskikh Khristian Baptistov SSSR (History of Evangelical Christian Baptists of USSR) (Moscow: VSEHB. 1989), p. 167. 9 For a list of classes which were taught, see I.V. Kargel, Sobranie Cochinenij (St. Petersburg: Biblija dlja Bsekh, 2000. This publication is a collection of many of Kargel