Ryaboshapka, Ivan Grigorievich

Ivan Grigoryevich Ryaboshapka - a preacher and missionary , one of the pioneers of Russian Stundism and Baptism , presbyter of the church in the village of Lyubomirka, Kherson province .

Ryaboshapka Ivan Grigorievich
Date of Birth	OK. 1831
Date of death	February 5, 1900 ( 1900-02-05 )
Place of death	Sofia , Bulgaria
Nationality	Russian empire
Occupation	missionary presbyter

External Images
The petition of Ivan Ryaboshapki to Alexander II
	Article with photo of Ryaboshapki and scanned request text

Ivan Ryaboshapka was a serf of the landowner Shibeko, from a poor Orthodox family ^[1] . In his youth, in search of work, he went around many villages and cities in southern Russia. After marriage, he entered the landowner mill. His family suffered a great test: three children died one after another.

After the abolition of serfdom, Ivan Ryaboshapka met Baptist Martin Gübner from the German colony of Old Danzig . Through communication with him and studying the Bible, Ivan Ryaboshapka himself became a Baptist ^[2] . People began to gather in his house to listen to the gospel.

Ryaboshapka, on an opportunity, preached even at fairs. He climbed onto the cart and called the audience with shouts: “Found, found”! When a sufficient group of listeners gathered, he said that his find was the truth about God and the salvation of the soul. Ryaboshapka took the gospel out of his pocket and began to preach ^[3] .

For the sermons, Ryaboshapka was arrested twice, in 1867 and 1868. In 1870, due to the oppression of the rural and rural municipality authorities, Ivan Ryaboshapka appealed to the Novorossiysk Governor General Pavel Kotseb with a request to allow him and another 20 families (45 people in total) to secede and to reside “on free steps” in order to conduct joint farming ^{[4] [5]} . This was the first attempt to create an evangelical agricultural commune (in the 1920s, this practice was spread among the evangelical Protestants). However, Kotzebue refused the request ^[4] .

Ivan Ryaboshapka was baptized in April 1870 from Baptist Efim Tsimbala. On June 8, 1871, Ryaboshapka himself baptized Mikhail Ratushny and with him 48 souls in Odessa county ^[2] .

Not later than 1873, Ryaboshapka, together with the Town Hall, Johann Wheeler and G. Kushnerenko, compiled the “Rules for the Religion of the Convert Russian Brotherhood” ^[6] (another name: “The creed of Michael Ratushny”) - the first or one of the first creeds of Russian Baptists ^[7] .

Ryaboshapka participated in the conference of believers of the Gospel confession, held in 1882 in the colony of Rückenau ( Tauride province ); he was a delegate to the united congress of representatives of the gospel movements in St. Petersburg in 1884 and the first congress of the Baptists in Novovasilyevka in the same 1884. At this congress, the Union of Russian Baptists was established. The congress participants sent Ryaboshapka to preach the gospel to the Kiev province ^[8] .

At a conference in Vladikavkaz , held in 1885, Ryaboshapka was elected an evangelist in the Kherson and Kiev provinces.

In 1894, during the period of brutal repressions ^[9] , Ryaboshapka was expelled for five years under police supervision in the Caucasus, to the city of Erivan ^[10] . On the basis of a circular that allowed exiles to go abroad forever, without the right to return to Russia, he filed such a petition. But the answer came when the 5-year exile period in Erivan was already running out. He received permission to go to Constantinople, and from there he moved to Bulgaria, to Sofia, where he died on February 5, 1900 ^[2] .