International Churches of Christ

The International Churches of Christ (ICOC) is a body of decentralized, co-operating, religiously conservative and racially integrated Christian congregations. In March 2024, the ICOC numbered their members at 112,000. A formal break was made from the Churches of Christ in 1993 with the organization of the International Churches of Christ.

Former members of the church have alleged that it is a cult and have accused it, along with the International Christian Church, of covering up sexual abuse of children. Janja Lalich, an academic expert on cults and coercion, has stated that in her view, the ICOC has at minimum some of the "hallmarks of a cult". , some US branches of the church were the subject of multiple lawsuits.

Origins in the Stone-Campbell Movement


The ICOC has its roots in a movement that reaches back to the period of the Second Great Awakening (1790–1870) of early nineteenth-century America. Barton W. Stone and Alexander Campbell are credited with what is today known as the Stone-Campbell or Restoration Movement. There are a number of branches of the Restoration movement and the ICOC was formed from within the Churches of Christ. Specifically, it was born from a discipling movement that arose among the Churches of Christ during the 1970s. This discipling movement developed in the campus ministry of Chuck Lucas.

In 1967, Chuck Lucas was minister of the 14th Street Church of Christ in Gainesville, Florida (later renamed the Crossroads Church of Christ). That year he started a new project known as Campus Advance (based on principles borrowed from the Campus Crusade and the Shepherding Movement). Centered on the University of Florida, the program called for a strong evangelical outreach and an intimate religious atmosphere in the form of soul talks and ''prayer partners. Soul talks'' were held in student residences and involved prayer and sharing overseen by a leader who delegated authority over group members. Prayer partners  referred to the practice of pairing a new Christian with an older guide for personal assistance and direction. Both procedures led to "in-depth involvement of each member in one another's lives".

The ministry grew as younger members appreciated many of the new emphases on commitment and models for communal activity. This activity became identified by many with the forces of radical change in the larger American society that characterized the late sixties and seventies. The campus ministry in Gainesville thrived and sustained strong support from the elders of the local congregation in the 'Crossroads Church of Christ'. By 1971, as many as a hundred people a year were joining the church. Most notable was the development of a training program for potential campus ministers.

From Gainesville to Boston: 1970s–1980s
Among the early converts at Gainesville was a student named Kip McKean who had been personally mentored by Chuck Lucas. McKean was introduced to the Florida Church of Christ's controversial recruitment style in 1967. Born in Indianapolis, McKean completed a degree while training at Crossroads and afterward served as campus minister at several Churches of Christ locations. By 1979 his ministry grew from a few individuals to over three hundred making it the fastest growing Church of Christ campus ministry in America. McKean then moved to Massachusetts, where he took over the leadership of the Lexington Church of Christ (soon to be called the Boston Church of Christ). Building on Lucas' initial strategies, McKean only agreed to lead the church in Lexington as long as every member agreed to be 'totally committed'. The church grew from 30 members to 3,000 in just over 10 years in what became known as the 'Boston Movement'. McKean taught that the church was "God's true and only modern movement". According to journalist Madeleine Bower, "the group became renowned for its extreme views and rigid teaching of the Bible, but mainstream churches quickly disavowed the group".

David G. Bromley and J. Gordon Melton, sociologist and historian of religion respectively, note how International Churches of Christ grew quickly in the 1980s, but that "Even as ICOC developed, however, its relationships with several established institutional sectors deteriorated". The church's "doctrine signaled the movement's self-perceived superiority to other Christian churches in teaching that it alone had rediscovered biblical doctrines critical to individual salvation and insisting on rebaptizing new members to ensure their salvation". They note that further tensions developed as a result of the church's "aggressive evangelizing tactics" and use of 'discipling' or 'shepherding' practices, whereby new members were provided spiritual guidance and had their personal lives closely supervised by more established members. "Members were taught that commitment to the church superseded all other relationships", write Bromley and Melton. As a result, "the main branch of the Churches of Christ disavowed its relationship with ICOC; a number of universities banned ICOC recruiters; and ICOC became a prominent target of media and anticult group opposition".

In 1985 a Church of Christ minister and professor, Dr. Flavil Yeakley, administered the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator test to the Boston Church of Christ (BCC), the founding church of the ICOC. Yeakley passed out three MBTI tests, which asked members to perceive their past, current, and five-year in the future personality types. While over 900 members were tested, 835 individuals completed all three forms. A majority of those respondents changed their perceived or imagined personality type scores on the three tests in convergence with a single type. After completing the study, Yeakley observed that "The data in this study of the Boston Church of Christ does not prove that any certain individual has actually changed his or her personality in an unhealthy way. The data, however, does prove that there is a group dynamic operating in that congregation that influences its members to change their personalities to conform to the group norm". By the end of 1988 the churches in the Boston Movement were for all practical purposes a distinct fellowship, initiating a fifteen-year period during which there would be little contact between the CoC and the Boston Movement. By 1988, McKean was regarded as the leader of the movement. It was at this time that the Boston church initiated its program of outreach to the poor called HopeWorldwide. Also in 1988 McKean, finding that running the organization single-handedly had become unwieldy, selected a handful of men that he and Elena, his wife, had personally trained and named them World Sector Leaders. In 1989 mission teams were officially sent out to Tokyo, Honolulu, Washington, DC, Manila, Miami, Seattle, Bangkok, and Los Angeles. That year, McKean and his family moved to Los Angeles to lead the new church "planted" (a euphemism the church uses for "established") some months earlier. Within a few years Los Angeles, not Boston, was the fulcrum of the movement.

The ICOC: 1990s


In 1990 the Crossroads Church of Christ broke with the movement and, through a letter written to The Christian Chronicle, attempted to restore relations with the Churches of Christ. By the early 1990s some first-generation leaders had become disillusioned by the movement and left. The movement was first recognized as an independent religious group in 1992 when John Vaughn, a church growth specialist at Fuller Theological Seminary, listed them as a separate entity. TIME magazine ran a full-page story on the movement in 1992 calling them "one of the world's fastest-growing and most innovative bands of Bible thumpers" that had grown into "a global empire of 103 congregations from California to Cairo with total Sunday attendance of 50,000". A formal break was made from the Churches of Christ in 1993 when the group organized under the name "International Churches of Christ." This new designation formalized a division that was already in existence between those involved with the Crossroads/Boston Movement and "original" Churches of Christ. In September 1995, the Washington Post reported that for every three members joining the church, two left, attributing this statistic to church officials.

Growth in the ICOC was not without criticism. Other names that have been used for this movement include the "Crossroads movement," "Multiplying Ministries," and the "Discipling Movement". Since each city had a single church, its membership might be large and geographically disperse; if so, it was divided into regions and then sectors of perhaps a few small suburban communities. This governing system attracted criticism as overly-authoritarian, although the ICOC denied this charge. "It's not a dictatorship," said Al Baird, former ICOC spokesperson; "It's a theocracy, with God on top." The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported in 1996 that "The group is considered so aggressive and authoritarian in its practices that other evangelical Protestant groups have labeled it 'aberrational' and 'abusive'. It has been repudiated by the mainstream Churches of Christ, a 1.6 million-member body from which it grew".

Growth continued globally and in 1996 the independent organisation "Church Growth Today" named the Los Angeles ICOC as the fastest growing Church in North America for the second year running and another eight ICOC churches were in the top 100. By 1999, the Los Angeles church reached a Sunday attendance of 14,000. By 2001, the ICOC was an independent worldwide movement that had grown from a small congregation to 125,000 members and had planted a church in nearly every country of the world in a period of twenty years.

The ICOC: 2000s
Membership growth slowed during the later half of the 1990s. In 2000, the ICOC announced the completion of its six-year initiative to establish a church in every country with a city that had a population over 100,000. In spite of this, numerical growth continued to slow. Beginning in the late 1990s, problems arose as McKean's moral authority as the leader of the movement came into question. Expectations for continued numerical growth and the pressure to sacrifice financially to support missionary efforts took its toll. Added to this was the loss of local leaders to new planting projects. In some areas, decreases in membership began to occur. At the same time, realization was growing that the accumulated costs of McKean's leadership style and associated disadvantages were outweighing the benefits. In 2001, McKean's leadership weaknesses were affecting his family, with all of his children disassociating themselves from the church, and he was asked by a group of long-standing elders in the ICOC to take a sabbatical from overall leadership of the ICOC. On 12 November 2001, McKean, who had led the International Churches of Christ, issued a statement that he was going to take a sabbatical from his role of leadership in the church:

During these days Elena and I have been coming to grips with the need to address some serious shortcomings in our marriage and family. After much counsel with the Gempels and Bairds and other World Sector Leaders as well as hours of prayer, we have decided it is God's will for us to take a sabbatical and to delegate, for a time, our day-to-day ministry responsibilities so that we can focus on our marriage and family. Nearly a year later, in November 2002 he resigned from the office and personally apologized citing arrogance, anger and an over-focus on numerical goals as the source of his decision.

Referring to this event, McKean said:

This, along with my leadership sins of arrogance, and not protecting the weak caused uncertainty in my leadership.

The period following McKean's departure included a number of changes in the ICOC. Some changes were initiated from the leaders themselves and others brought through members. Most notable was Henry Kriete, a leader in the London ICOC, who circulated an open letter detailing his feelings about theological exclusivism and authority in the ICOC. This letter affected the ICOC for the decade after McKean's resignation.

Critics of the ICOC claim that Kip McKean's resignation sparked numerous problems. However, others have noted that since McKean's resignation the ICOC has made numerous changes. The Christian Chronicle, a newspaper for the Churches of Christ, reports that the ICOC has changed its leadership and discipling structure. According to the paper, "the ICOC has attempted to address the following concerns: a top down hierarchy, discipling techniques, and sectarianism". In the years following McKean's resignation, the central leadership was replaced with "the co-operation agreement" with over 90% of the churches affirming to this new system of global co-ordination.

Over time, McKean attempted to re-assert his leadership over the ICOC, yet was rebuffed. Sixty-four Elders, Evangelists and Teachers wrote a letter to McKean expressing concern that there had been "no repentance" from his publicly acknowledged leadership weaknesses. McKean then began to criticize some of the changes that were being made, as he did in the 1980s toward Mainline Churches of Christ. After attempting to divide the ICOC he was disfellowshipped in 2006 and founded a church that he called the International Christian Church.

Church governance


The International churches of Christ are a family of over 750 independent churches in 155 nations around the world. The 750 churches form 34 Regional Families of churches that oversee mission work in their respective geographic areas of influence. Each regional family of churches sends Evangelists, Elders and Teachers to an annual leadership conference, where delegates meet to pray, plan and co-operate world evangelism. Mike Taliaferro, from San Antonio Texas, says "The co-operation plan is a far better way of co-ordinating and unifying a church family of the size and global nature of the ICOC. No longer can one man make sweeping decisions that affect all the churches, considering that many of those churches he may never have visited. Building unity and consensus through prayer and discussion takes time but is worth it. The spiritual fruit of the Delegates Conference in Budapest is testimony to the success of this much less authoritarian approach to that which we had in the past." "Service Teams" provide global leadership and oversight. The Service Teams consists of an Elders, Evangelists, Teachers, Youth & Family, Campus, Singles, Communications & Administration, and HOPEww & Benevolence teams.

Ministry Training Academy
Since 2010, the education and ministerial training program in the ICOC is the Ministry Training Academy (MTA). The MTA consists of twelve core courses that are divided into three areas of study: biblical knowledge, spiritual development, and ministry leadership. Each course requires at least 12 hours of classroom study in addition to course work. An MTA student who completes the twelve core classes receives a certificate of completion.

ICOC's relationship with mainstream Churches of Christ
With the resignation of McKean, some efforts at reconciliation between the International Churches of Christ and the mainstream Churches of Christ are being made. In March 2004, Abilene Christian University held the "Faithful Conversations" dialog between members of the Churches of Christ and International Churches of Christ. Those involved were able to apologize and initiate an environment conducive to building bridges. A few leaders of the Churches of Christ apologized for use of the word "cult" in reference to the International Churches of Christ. The International Churches of Christ leaders apologized for alienating the Churches of Christ and implying they were not Christians. Despite improvements in relations, there are still fundamental differences within the fellowship. Early 2005 saw a second set of dialogues with greater promise for both sides helping one another.

Beliefs
The ICOC considers the Bible the inspired word of God. Through holding that their doctrine is based on the Bible alone, and not on creeds and traditions, they claim the distinction of being "non-denominational". Members of the International Churches of Christ generally emphasize their intent to simply be part of the original church established by Jesus Christ in his death, burial, and resurrection, which became evident on the Day of Pentecost as described in Acts 2. They believe that anyone who follows the plan of salvation as laid out in the scriptures is saved by the grace of God, through their faith in Jesus, at baptism. The ICOC has over 700 churches spread across 155 nations, with each church being a racially integrated congregation made up of a diversity of people from various age groups, economic, and social backgrounds. They believe Jesus came to break down the dividing wall of hostility between the races and people groups of this world and unite mankind under the Lordship of Christ (Ephesians 2:11–22).

Like the Churches of Christ, the ICOC recognizes the Bible as the sole source of authority for the church and it also believes that the current denominational divisions are inconsistent with Christ's intent, believing instead that Christians ought to be united. The ICOC, like the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), in contrast to the CoC, consider permissible practices that the New Testament does not expressly forbid.

The ICOC teaches that "anyone, anywhere who follows God's plan of salvation in the Bible and lives under the Lordship of Jesus, will be saved. Christians are saved by the grace of God, through their faith in Jesus Christ, at baptism." Scriptures used to support this view include Ephesians 2:10, Romans 3:22, Acts 2:38 and Matthew 28:18–20. They claim that "faith alone" (e.g., saying the Sinner's Prayer) is not sufficient unless an individual by faith obeys God and gets baptized, believing that baptism is necessary for the forgiveness of sins. This is based on James 2:14–26. The belief in the necessity of baptism is in agreement with the prevailing view in the Churches of Christ and Restoration Movement. It is in contrast with the beliefs of Baptist churches that teach that faith alone is adequate for salvation. For Baptists, baptism is an outward sign of a salvation that has already occurred by virtue of a person's faith.

One True Church (OTC) doctrine
Originally, the ICOC taught that only baptisms within ICOC member churches were legitimate and hence only members of ICOC churches had had their sins forgiven and were saved. This is known as the One True Church (OTC) doctrine.

In 2003, however, after the departure of McKean, the leadership of ICOC issued letters of apology stating that they had been "too judgmental" in applying this doctrine. As a consequence, many within ICOC began to accept that baptisms outside of ICOC churches, particularly those of family members who belonged to other Christian denominations, could be legitimate.

This is consistent with their historical roots in the Churches of Christ, which believe that Christ established only one church, and that the use of denominational creeds serves to foster division among Christians. This belief dates to the beginning of the Restoration Movement; Thomas Campbell expressed an ideal of unity in his Declaration and address: "The church of Jesus Christ on earth is essentially, intentionally, and constitutionally one."

Lifestyle beliefs
The ICOC is opposed to abortion, recreational drugs, and non-marital sexual relations. Homosexuals are welcome, but they must lead a life of chastity.

Sunday worship
A typical Sunday morning service involves singing, praying, preaching, and the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. An unusual element of ICOC tradition is the lack of established church buildings. Congregations meet in rented spaces: hotel conference rooms, schools, public auditoriums, conference centers, small stadiums, or rented halls, depending on the number of parishioners. Though the church is not static, neither is it ad hoc – the leased locale is converted into a worship facility. "From an organizational standpoint, it's a great idea", observes Boston University Chaplain Bob Thornburg. "They put very little money into buildings...You put your money into people who reach out to more people in order to help them become Christians."

This practice of not owning buildings changed when the Tokyo Church of Christ became the first ICOC church to build its own church building. This building was designed by the Japanese architect Fumihiko Maki. This became an example for other ICOC churches to follow.

One Year Challenge
To provide an international service opportunity for college-age students, the ICOC has a program called the "One Year Challenge" (OYC), where graduating students take a year off and go and serve another church in the Third World or a recently planted church in the First World looking to reach younger people with the gospel. The One Year Challenge program currently operates in ten countries, including: China, Taiwan, The Czech Republic, Hungary, Haiti, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, The U.K. and The U.S.

McKean era (1979–2002)
A distinguishing feature of the ICOC under McKean was an intense form of discipleship. McKean's mentor, evangelist Chuck Lucas, developed this practice based in part on the book "The Master Plan of Evangelism" by Robert Coleman. Coleman's book taught that "Jesus controlled the lives of the apostles, that Jesus taught the apostles to 'disciple' by controlling the lives of others, and that Christians should imitate this process when bringing people to Christ." Under McKean, "discipling" entailed members being "assigned a more senior adviser who is always available and frequently present in their lives, even at intimate moments, which mentors them through relationship difficulties. In this practice, individuals interact with other group members in hierarchical relationships". According to Kathleen E. Jenkins's ethnography of the church, McKean viewed discipling as "the most efficient way to achieve the movement's stated goal: 'to evangelize the world in one generation'".

The church's emphasis on discipling during this period was the subject of criticism. A number of ex-members expressed problems with discipling in the ICOC. Critics and former members allege that discipling "involved public scorn as a way to humiliate vulnerable members, to keep them humble". Jenkins notes that "[t]his ICOC structure has been greatly criticized by anti-cult organizations, university officials (the ICOC has been banned from several campuses), and ex-members".

Discipling under McKean was mandatory. All disciples (i.e., baptized members) had to have a discipler. They had to check in with their discipler frequently, such as daily or weekly, and all aspects of a disciple's life were subject to the guidance and approval of their discipler. This included the necessity for dating people within the ICOC on a regular basis (if the disciple were single) and determining how much money had to give to the church (typically 15–30% of income plus additional funds for special projects). Disciples were also held accountable for how many new people they met on a daily basis and recruited into the church. Anyone criticizing the authority of a discipler was publicly rebuked in group meetings.

Those who left the ICOC were to be shunned, and disciples were told that only those baptized within the ICOC were saved; all other people were damned. Furthermore, anyone that left the church would also lose their salvation.

Nonetheless, many disciples, including some who left, got a great deal out of the structure of the discipling system. The found "meaning and community" and formed close friendships across racial and class lines within the ICOC. Sociologist Dr. Joseph E. Lee posits that the strict discipling program helped lead to a lowering of barriers between races and classes. He found this to be a general characteristic of organizations (e.g., martial arts schools) with strong formal beliefs and discipline.

Post McKean era (2002–present)
With the departure of McKean in 2002, the ICOC transitioned from a top-down organization to a "loose federation of autonomous local churches". This led to a change in discipling practices. One of the local ICOC churches, the Chicago Church of Christ, made discipling voluntary and not mandatory. Instead of a top-down hierarchy, they adopted a "servant leadership" model.

US college campuses
Since his college days in the 1970s, Kip McKean, and the churches he has lead (e.g., ICOC and its predecessors), have made recruiting on college campuses a priority. U.S. News & World Report ran an article in 2000 discussing proselytizing on college campuses. The article's author, Carolyn Kleiner, describes the ICOC as "[a] fast-growing Christian organization known for aggressive proselytizing to college students" and as "one of the most controversial religious groups on campus". Kleiner states that "some ex-members and experts on mind-control assert [it] is a cult". Furthermore, "[a]t least 39 institutions, including Harvard and Georgia State, have outlawed the organization at one time or another for violating rules against door-to-door recruiting, say, or harassment." In response to the question "A zealous group to be sure, but is it a cult?", U.S. News & World Report also quotes ICOC spokesperson Al Baird, who says "We're no more a cult than Jesus was a cult" and Professor Jeffrey K. Hadden, who agrees with Baird, saying "every new religion experiences a high level of tension with society because its beliefs and ways are unfamiliar. But most, if they survive, we come to accept as part of the religious landscape".

Academics have complained that their students who get involved with the group tend to lose interest in their studies.

Racial integration in ICOC churches
ICOC churches have an overall higher degree of racial integration than many other religious congregations. This is a priority for the denomination. Racial prejudice is viewed as a state of personal sinfulness which is done away with once a person is baptized and becomes a member. Jenkins also notes that "mandatory close and frequent social interaction forced members to develop such strong cross-racial and ethnic networks". Writing in 2004, Kevin S. Wells reported that "The fact that ICOC congregations are typically multicultural has [...] gained the positive attention of national media in recent years". In 2017, the ICOC formed an organization called SCUAD (Social, Cultural, Unity. and Diversity) that would "seek to champion racial conversation, education, and action among ICOC churches" By 2021, many local ICOC churches had instituted their own SCUAD groups. There was, however, a certain amount of backlash from members who saw the SCUADs' explicit discussion of racism as a form of critical race theory. Nonetheless, by 2022 most congregations had begun conversations about "racial inclusion, diversity and justice" although few had engaged in the self examination necessary to lead to structural change.

Lawsuit by an ICOC member church alleging defamation
On November 23, 1991, two Singapore Newspapers, The New Paper (English) and Lianhe Wanbao (Chinese), published articles stating that the Singapore Central Christian Church (a member of ICOC) was a "cult". The church sued the papers, alleging defamation. An initial court ruling held that what the papers had written was fair and in the public interest. An appeals court, however, overruled the lower court, stating that the papers had stated that the church was a cult as if that was a fact, when it was not a fact, but a comment. The papers were each ordered to pay the church sgd20,000. The New Paper had to pay the founder of the church, John Philip Louis, sgd30,000. The papers also had to pay the legal fees of the church and its founder. In the same ruling, the appeals court held that an article that had also characterized the church as a cult, in the bi-monthly, Singapore-based, Christian magazine Impact, was written fairly from the standpoint of a Christian publication written for the Christian community. The church and Louis were ordered to pay Impact's legal fees.

Lawsuits related to alleged coverup of sexual abuse
Since December 2022, the ICOC along with Kip McKean and the International Christian Churches have been named in multiple US federal lawsuits, alleging that between 1987 and 2012, leaders of the two churches covered up the sexual abuse of children, some of whom were as young as three, and financially exploited members. The lawsuits describe instances of child molestation and accuse the ICOC together with founder Kip McKean and associated bodies of creating "a widespread culture of acceptance of the abuse of children". The Los Angeles ICOC responded to the lawsuits by stating: "As the Church's long-standing policies make clear, we do not tolerate any form of sexual abuse, sexual misconduct, or sexual coercion, and we will fully cooperate with the authorities in any investigations of this type of behavior".