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The International Churches of Christ are a family of Christian churches whose members are ommitted to living their lives in accordance with the teachings of Jesus Christ as found in the Bible. We read and strive to abide by the entire Bible and hold it to be inspired and inerrant. We expect every member to be a disciple of Christ as defined in his teachings. The International Churches of Christ were built on the revolutionary and biblical conviction that every person must first make a decision to become a disciple and then be baptized.

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1999

As of September, we have 372 churches in 158 nations, with a Sunday attendance of 185,954. Growth Charts.

Manila Church has 35,000 attendance at 10th Anniversary Service and Concert.

20,481 attend LA Church services in one weekend.

2,300 attend 10th Anniversary Service in Tokyo, Japan - "the Mount Everest of mission work."

1st International Youth Ministries Conference "Revolution X" held in LA.

1988

World Sector Leaders chosen. Churches planted in Mexico City, Hong Kong and Cairo.

Release of Songs of the Kingdom 1st edition.

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1979

On June 1, in Bob & Pat Gempels' living room, Kip McKean calls 30 "would-be disciples" to be totally committed to Christ. (The church later becomes known as the Boston Church of Christ.)

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There is one true God who reveals himself to the world as The Father, Son and Holy Spirit. (Matthew 28:19)

Jesus, the Son of God, is our one and only Lord and Savior, crucified for our sins and physically resurrected from the dead on the third day. (John 14:6; Acts 4:12; 1 Corinthians 15)

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The Bible is the only written message of God inspired by the Holy Spirit and without error. (2 Timothy 3:16,17; 2 Peter 1:19-21)

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As with the first Christians, when a person repents and is baptized their sins are forgiven and the Holy Spirit works in their life. (Acts 2:36-41; Romans 8:5-11)

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Only baptized disciples are members of Christ's church. (1 Corinthians 12:23, 24)

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After baptism every new Christian needs to be taught or "discipled" by another Christian to obey all of Jesus' teachings (Matthew 28:20).

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Every disciple must be committed to the vision of making disciples of all nations. (Mathew 28:18-20)

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Core beliefs of the ICC and the mainline Churches of Christ are:

Both claim to believe in the Bible only as the sole authority for Christian doctrine and practice. The ICC, however, is considerably more willing to institute a doctrine or practice which does not appear in the Bible, on the grounds that the Bible does not specifically forbid it. In this they are more like the so-called "Independent Christian Churches", a somewhat less conservative offshoot of the same religious movement which also gave birth to the Churches of Christ.

"Probably some critics will no doubt say that we begin some practice and then go to Scripture in order to justify it. But the issue is whether or not the Bible does, in fact, justify it....

-- Gordon Ferguson¡¡ Progressive Revelation¡¡ Boston Bulletin, May 1988

Both accept the doctrines in the Nicene Creed on the nature of God, Christ, and the Trinity, although they reject the actual creed because it believes that all creeds are human teachings, not the Word of God. Unlike the mainline Churches of Christ, though, the ICC does not emphasize theological issues in its preaching or teaching; it has a utilitarian, results-oriented approach. The ICC tends to view serious theological study as a waste of time for most of its members.

"Any religious group who strongly emphasizes doctrinal accuracy runs a risk of losing perspective and losing God... An insistence that we have 'book, chapter, and verse' for anything new has virtually guaranteed that we will have nothing new, even if the old is a failure...."

-- Gordon Ferguson¡¡Progressive Revelation¡¡Boston Bulletin, May 1988

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Both believe in one Church, and hold that denominations and sects are sinful and not of God. Unlike the mainline Churches of Christ, the ICC also believes that there should be only one church per city or town in order not to destroy the unity of the Church. Because of this, there are never two ICC-affiliated churches in a single city or town. Finally, the ICC sees itself as the "remnant" of God's people -- it believes that the ICC IS Christ's Church in "this generation." It no longer views the mainline Churches of Christ as true churches.

"If you are not in a discipling ministry, you need to move to one. Why do you resist the spirit and not move?... God is trying to forge a remnant.... There are divisions between us and the mainline church becase, as it says in 1 Corinthians 11, there has got to be divisions so they can show which ones of us has God's approval."

-- Kip McKean¡¡Why Do You Resist the Spirit?¡¡1987 World Missions Seminar, Boston

"This church [the Boston Church of Christ] is truly the Jerusalem of God's modern day movement."

-- Kip McKean¡¡McKean Becomes Mission Evangelist¡¡Boston Bulletin, June 26, 1988

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Both believe that a person must be baptized by immersion for forgiveness of sins in order to be saved, and both practice baptism of adults only -- they do not baptize infants or children who have not reached "the age of understanding". The ICC has a unique teaching, though, that a person must be "baptized as a disciple" in order to be saved. This means that a person must have what the ICC views as the correct understanding of baptism at the time of baptism, must have fully repented of their sins, and must have committed to living as a disciple of Christ, prior to baptism, or the baptism is invalid and the person unsaved.

"For a long time in the Church of Christ... [people] were taught... the five point plan of salvation -- hear, believe, repent, confess, and be baptized.... I believe an essential element has not been emphasized in the area of repentance.... We need to get it straight, who is a candidate for baptism. It is the individual who is a disciple... There has become an innate doctrinal difference, but they [the mainline Churches of Christ] don't recognize it because it looks like a methodology."

-- Kip McKean¡¡Perfectly United¡¡ 1987 Boston Women's Retreat

"I taught what was clear in Acts 11:26: SAVED = CHRISTIAN = DISCIPLE, simply meaning that you cannot be saved and you cannot be a true Christian without being a disciple also. I taught that, to be baptized, you must first make the decision to be a disciple, and then be baptized.... I taught that their baptism was invalid because a retroactive understanding of repentance and baptism was not consistent with Scripture."

-- Kip McKean¡¡Revolution through Restoration¡¡Discipleship Magazine, April 1992

It believes that the Great Commission of Christ, as stated in Matthew 28:18-20, applies equally to all believers and mandates that each member engage in aggressive, active proselytizing ("evangelism") as their primary personal responsibility before God. They also believe that proselytizing non-members is the primary responsibility of the church as a whole.

Based also on Matthew 28:18-20, the ICC believes in a system of discipling, which means that every member is assigned another member as a mentor, to whom he/she reports, confesses sin, and which he/she is expected to obey and emulate.

-- Kip McKean¡¡Discipleship Partners¡¡ 1988 Boston Leadership Conference

-- Teresa Ferguson¡¡ Boston Bulletin, October 22, 1989

Both believe the Bible sets out the proper structure for the Church. In no other area, though, has the ICC moved farther from its roots in the mainline Churches of Christ. The mainline Churches of Christ are all independent bodies ruled either by a group of older men in the congregation (called "elders") or by the men of the congregation as a whole. The evangelist or minister is subordinate to the elders or the men of the congregation. The mainline Churches of Christ object vociferously to any earthly authority outside of or above the local congregation.

The ICC has a hierarchy frequently compared to that of the Roman Catholic Church. In fact, the ICC's hierarchy has far more control over its members in far more ways than the Catholic Church's heirarchy has had in history or at present, and ICC congregations have little autonomy or control over their own affairs. In ICC congregations, the evangelist leads. Elders are subordinate to him in fact, if not theory. Many large, old ICC congregations do not even have elders.

"The evangelist without elders in the congregation is the authority of God in the congregation. The only time he is not to be obeyed is when he calls you to disobey Scripture or disobey your conscience, and even if he calls on you to do something that disobeys your conscience, you still have an obligation to study it out and prayerfully change your opinion so that you can be totally unified."