Origins in the Stone-Campbell Movement The ICOC has its roots in a movement that dates back to the
Second Great Awakening (1790–1870) in early nineteenth-century America.
Barton W. Stone and
Alexander Campbell are credited with founding what is now known as the Stone-Campbell or
Restoration Movement. The Restoration Movement itself has several branches, and the ICOC was formed from within one of them, the
Churches of Christ. This discipling movement began within the campus ministry of Chuck Lucas. The ministry grew as its younger members appreciated the new emphasis on commitment and the models for communal activity. This activity was associated by many with the broader forces of radical change characterizing American society in the late 1960s and 1970s. The campus ministry in Gainesville thrived and maintained strong support from the elders of the local congregation, the Crossroads Church of Christ. By 1971, the church was adding as many as a hundred new members per year. A particularly significant development was the creation of a training program for potential campus ministers. McKean then moved to Massachusetts, where he assumed leadership of the Lexington Church of Christ, which would later be renamed the Boston Church of Christ. Building on Lucas’ initial strategies, McKean agreed to lead the Lexington church only under the condition that every member would be 'totally committed'. Under his leadership, the church grew from 30 members to 3,000 in just over a decade, a period known as the 'Boston Movement'. According to journalist Madeleine Bower, “The group became known for its extreme views and rigid teaching of the Bible, but mainstream churches quickly disavowed the group”. Sociologist
David G. Bromley and religious historian
J. Gordon Melton note that while the International Churches of Christ (ICOC) experienced rapid growth in the 1980s, its relationships with several established religious institutions deteriorated. The church’s doctrine emphasized its perceived superiority over other Christian groups, teaching that it alone had rediscovered essential biblical doctrines for individual salvation. It also insisted on rebaptizing new members to ensure their salvation. Bromley and Melton also point out that tensions increased due to the ICOC’s “aggressive evangelizing tactics” and its practice of 'discipling' or 'shepherding', in which new members received spiritual guidance and their personal lives were closely monitored by more established members. “Members were taught that commitment to the church superseded all other relationships”, they write. 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, Dr. Flavil Yeakley, a Church of Christ minister and professor, administered the
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) test to members of the Boston Church of Christ (BCC), the founding church of the ICOC. Yeakley distributed three MBTI tests, which asked members to evaluate their past, present, and future personality types. Of the over 900 members tested, 835 completed all three forms. The results revealed that a majority of respondents adjusted their perceived or imagined personality scores to align with a single type. By the end of 1988, the churches associated with the Boston Movement had effectively become a distinct fellowship, marking the beginning of a fifteen-year period with little interaction between the Churches of Christ and the Boston Movement. By that time, McKean had become the recognized leader of the movement. In 1988, McKean selected a group of couples whom he and his wife, Elena, had personally trained, naming them World Sector Leaders. In 1989, mission teams were sent to cities including Tokyo, Honolulu, Washington, DC, Manila, Miami, Seattle, Bangkok, and Los Angeles. That year, McKean and his family relocated to Los Angeles to lead a new church that had been “planted” (a term the church uses to mean “established”) there months earlier. Within a few years, Los Angeles, not Boston, became the central hub of the movement. 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." 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". One Church is formed per city, and as it expands it is broken down into "sectors" that oversee "zones" which have their own neighborhood Bible study groups. Claims that this structure too authoritarian were responded to by McKean saying, "I was wrong on some of my initial thoughts about biblical authority". Al Baird, former ICOC spokesperson adds, "It's not a dictatorship,"; "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. Barrett also noted in 2001 that as with other
new religious movements, membership turnover in the ICOC was high, with "many leaving after a few months because they find the discipline of life in the movement too demanding or oppressive". He concluded that "There are probably far more ex-members of ICOC than current members", though noted ICOC attempts to discourage members from leaving and that communal living arrangements and the fact that the ICOC encouraged the breaking-off of friendships with non-members made it difficult for some to leave.
The ICOC: 2000s Membership growth stopped as the 90's finished. 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. The period following McKean's departure included a number of changes in the ICOC, including decentralization and a dismantling of its headquarters and central leadership. Some changes were initiated from the leaders themselves and others brought through members. 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 September 2005, nine members were elected to serve as a Unity Proposal Group. They subsequently developed a 'Plan for United Cooperation', published in March 2006. In September 2012, it was reported that around 93% of ICOC churches supported the plan. 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. 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. The lawsuits alleged that the ICOC, together with its affiliates the International Christian Church, the City of Angels International Christian Church, HOPE Worldwide and Mercy Worldwide, "indoctrinated" the plaintiffs, keeping them isolated while they were sexually exploited and manipulated through the ICOC's "rigid" belief system. The lawsuit also named ICOC leaders, founder Kip McKean and the estate of Chuck Lucas, as defendants. The plaintiffs alleged that the ICOC and its leaders created a "system of exploitation that extracts any and all value it can from members". The lawsuits alleged that members were forced to give 10% of their income as a
tithe to the church and additionally to fund twice-yearly special mission trips, which drove some to depression and suicide. 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". Similar lawsuits were then filed in the Superior Court in Los Angeles, California (i.e., State Court). ==Church governance==