Section

Documents

Oral History

Interview with P. (Moscow)

If your browser does not show the audio player, click here to open the audio file in a new window

Click here to view/download the transcription in XML format.

Key information

Title: Interview with P., AHRC AH/I025883/1/2
Date: 04/04/2012
Interviewer: Miriam Dobson (MD)
Interviewee: Interviewee, P. (P)
Transcriber:
Duration: hour(s) 58 minutes and 15 seconds
Location: Moscow

Conversation

MD Err, you said that you went to Moscow Central Baptist Church. Did you attend services as a child, or only when you got older, as an adult?
P. This is good question. As a child we had some restrictions. So it was really prohibited to take your children openly to the service. So what usually happened, our parents and some I will say brave leaders, youth leaders etc, they organise a kind of, you know, underground Sunday school. So you can go the worship service but when you are a child and a teenager what really open the Christian world for me when parents will organise home Bible studies. So it was really great. And almost every Sunday we will go to different homes, to different apartments. We will meet, drink tea, read the Bible, memorise the scripture, sing songs. So it was really good spiritual experience. And for that our leaders, you know, have been arrested, and some of them suffered, so I will say it was good step because worship service is usually one purpose, fellowship and youth leadership kind of group, it's another context. So this was very positive. Of course police watched, but it was always carried out like in real life. They will do this kind of, in Russian, рейды, акции. So it will be time they have to check everybody. So they will come, they will write all the names, they will make short-time arrest to put more fear, to make the, по-русский, скажем галочки поставить. So they will do their work and they will release. In the same time some people were reported or discriminated because they worked on these Christian sunday schools especially because the work with the children was always sensitive. It was watched, under special control. So I have to give the credit to our parents. Not just mine but to many others. And to the youth leaders who have been brave to do their youth ministry, children ministry, for...
MD Yeah, sure.
P. At that time. 60s, 70s, 80s. They did a great job.
MD And when you started to go to the church itself, what were your first impressions? What was the service like?
P. I really don't remember. Err, I will say I adjusted to any services because I was child of the Christian parents. I respected my parents very much. My grandparents. So it was really experience of worship. Of course sometimes you can dislike it. It was really, erm, uneasy sermon. You don't understand what he is talking about. And you would like to understand everything. Sometimes you are not happy because it was too many people in the church. And you really cannot have fresh air. Or sometimes something else, I don't know. But generally I have really, right now years later, I am so grateful for their stable work, for the hard work of the preachers who have not been paid, who worked on the scripture and prepared sermons, who for their songs, but especially work, I really was impressed. I still remember the story of Elijah. It was probably a six-month study on Elijah. Generally sermons, we have at least three sermons during the worship. The style is still in some classical baptist churches. First will really be devotion, calling to pray. So people will pray after the first sermon. Short, usually ten, fifteen minutes. Second one is Bible exposition. So preacher will give Bible exposition of one of the texts. So it will be Bible lesson. And third one it will be evangelist who will present the gospel. So people will repent, will know about Christ, how to be saved. So this is really good combination. And this is special. And what was good in Central Baptist Church, Lord provided youth leaders who ran small groups which grow. It was not just in church, also we met in different homes. In Moscow and oustide Moscow. Due to this leaders, many young leaders grew up.
MD I'm interested in these youth groups. You were a member of a youth group. Was it mostly students, or young people who were workers? I am interested in the social background a little bit.
P. You know it was mixed. Err. I really don't know how it was organised, how people will be attracted. Normally people knows a person so he will invite another one. So I was put in one group, then I was put in another one. When you are a child, or a young man, you are really led by someone to go to this group .... So we had this one group and I will call this group intelligentsia. Really almost all of this group, 90% of them, studied in different universities. So another group was kind of, you know, blue collar people. So they have been really workers. And they enjoyed that. But in reality it doesn't matter. So it was mixed in both situations. And different ones. The joy was opportunity to serve the Lord. What was good usually, especially in eighties, seventies and eighties, it was traditional, it was the habit, for the young people in Central Bapitst Church to leave on saturday evening, or early early sunday morning, and to go to different churches in the Moscow region or maybe far away. To visit, to serve the Lord there, to sing songs, to preach, and to come back to Moscow for the evening service. Usually it was evening time when we would be in the church. During the morning we will go somewhere. If you will look on this map So this is Moscow. And so we will go to Smolensk, to Tver, to other places you see here this area. Sometimes we will make big trips. To Petersburg. To Petrozavodsk, to Kiev. It was big trips. But usually once a month we will go to one of the churches in the region. So this was missionary work of the Central Baptist Church. It was really good time. It trained us. Because you cannot preach in the Central Baptist Church, but when you are coming to a group of 20-50 people. And this is twelve young people coming. So we will sing, we will have music, band, guitars you know.
MD You played guitars?
P. Guitars, everything you know. Accordions. So good times. Poems. Brothers will preach. Super. It was good time. Of course we had some difficulties. But difficulties is part of life. Doesn't matter where you are. So, difficulties, and some will say, of course my sister was arrested. We have been once in Briansk for the baptism service. Usually leaders, leaders who is organiser, will be arrested. So in Briansk brother had been arrested for three years. But 5000 people, maybe more, 6000 people who came to this special event have been disappeared [dispersed? MD], I would say. Because a lot of police, a lot of forces. But it is normal. And it trains you. I will think how to do this better, how to do more effectively. Because our battle not against the state,
MD Sure.
P. Our battle really how to grow spiritually, against the evil spiritual things. So it was just our context. Soviet context. So, Miriam, you know what I will say right now. I have been in the West, I lived in the West a little bit in the United States of America. And when I was there, it looks like for me it is much easier to live spiritually in the country where you have some kind of control or discrimination or persecution. Easier because other people will say to you this is not right, you're a believer you cannot be here. You cannot drink, you cannot smoke, you cannot curse. If you a believer, go out, this is for sinners.
MD
P. They will say for you. In the free West, where values really now unclear, where Christian morality and values, they have been really the basis and foundation of society, but now now erosion kind of eated them. So this is another extreme where anyone can do anything, kind of. And freedom can be interpreted as my personal freedom. If I would like to say no to everybody, I will say no to everybody. And, err, people don't understand really responsibility. And I think it's much harder to live spiritual life in the West, in the freedom. Because you have to have responsibility. You have to know how to grow spiritually. To take responsibility. Because it doesn't matter where you live you have to deny yourself, take up your cross and follow Jesus. We can say we are believers, but how to follow Christ? How to love him? How to be light in the twenty-first century? This is great question and this very important.