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"…we called the church back to discipling relationships. We called the church back to sacrificial giving, and that that is a part of our worship. We called the church back with strong preaching on evangelism..."
-- Mike Taliaferro, September 8, 2005; see full quote
This article examines four cultural themes in today’s ICC leadership that endanger the movement’s chances for healthy reform.
For two years, this website has been relatively silent about current events in the International Churches of Christ (ICC, ICOC). One reason was that psychological and spiritual abuse seemed to be lessening in many (but not all) ICC congregations and RightCyberUp waited for this process to unfold and spread as far and wide as possible. Another reason was that the dissolving of the ICC’s central leadership eliminated any central voice and made the ICC a lot less uniform, and thus more difficult to analyze.
Now, recent ICC articles and September’s International Leadership Conference in Seattle make it easier to report what’s being taught and practiced – at least by the leaders/congregations that are publishing articles and speaking at conferences.
What can be observed is extremely discouraging for anyone who wishes for the ICC to fully reform itself and to avoid repeating past abuses. Today, the ICC seems overcome by the weight of its own culture, as evidenced by several themes observed from the Seattle conference.
This article describes four troubling cultural themes still part of the ICC, based on recordings and observation of the leadership conference and recent events.
[Note: This article is primarily about the leadership culture of the ICC, and its conclusions do not extend to each member of the ICC -- or to each leader for that matter. There are certainly more cultural themes in the ICC; these are four that jump out as concerning at this point in the movement’s history. ]
The ICC today is either in danger of -- or already in the process of -- regression to old teachings and practices.
The potential for regression in this movement can’t be underestimated. Previous examples: the Boston Movement (1980s) didn’t want to repeat the spiritual abuses of the Crossroads movement (1970s) but ultimately did so and more; ICC leadership supposedly “repented” of abusing authority thirteen years ago (1), but continued to abuse authority as a matter of course.
After a brief period of re-evaluation and moderation during the last two years, the ICC appears ready to regress, if the leaders who spoke in Seattle are any indication. Al Baird, the ICC’s spokesman for many years, said “I think we’ve gone to the extreme for the most part with no discipling going on, on a consistent basis in a lot of places. And it’s an overreaction.” Baird now advocates a return to discipling. Of past abuses of authority in ICC discipling, Baird says, “All of us have our horror stories. That’s no reason you don’t have discipling. I mean, I do a lot of marriage counseling and I get a lot of horror stories – I don’t know any of us are ready to dump marriage. So, we just need to learn how to do it right.”(2)
Yet regarding "how to do it right" or how to avoid discipling abuses, Baird and co-speaker John Louis had little to say -- even though they were scheduled to cover “unhealthy Christian relationship dynamics” and “healthy and unhealthy Discipleship Group dynamics”(3). It appears they have learned little from the past, yet they called for a return to discipling methods.
In another session, San Antonio Church of Christ Jesus leader Mike Taliaferro described bringing back the requirements of the past in his church (note that this reads like a laundry list of the same controlling and unbiblical requirements the ICC used in the past):
“…we began to call people back to decisions, and we did it one by one. We called the church back to discipling relationships. We called the church back to sacrificial giving, and that that is a part of our worship. We called the church back with strong preaching on evangelism… We made the decision, and we’re happy with it, that we’re not a church with small groups, we’re a church of small groups, and that everybody in our church is in a small group, and that’s just us, and that’s who we are, okay? We made that decision. We resurrected church discipline… We confronted people that were divisive; some of them left the church. We resurrected confession of sin in the church... We reminded people of their commitment to all the services….”
“Who’s lost, who’s saved – we had a talk about it.”
Mike Taliaferro, Pulling Your Church Together, CD# 200, HMS Books, International Leadership Conference, Seattle, September 8, 2005.
If the demands of these regressive leaders sound like the ICC of the past, so does their justification. They view their authority (once again) as coming from God himself. Chris Ogbonnaya of the Lagos, Nigeria church talks about reinstituting ICC standards in his church:
“’You’re going to be involved in a family group. You’re going to be willing to share your faith [evangelize]. You’re willing to confess your sins, you’re going to be in a discipling relationship. We cannot marry a non-Christian. We’re not going to have marriages between us and a Catholic. You want to do that, hey, you’re welcome as a visitor.’ We had to do it... ‘Is this authority?’ I say, ‘Yes, it’s authority, and it’s authority that we have from God as leaders, to pull ourselves together, so that the church can march forward.”
Chris Ogbonnaya, Pulling Your Church Together, CD# 200, HMS Books, International Leadership Conference, Seattle, September 8, 2005.
Ogbonnaya called the other ICC leaders to take a similar approach, saying, “people will follow faithful leadership, and it begins in this room.” Taliaferro echoed the call for a return to discipling, saying, ”Guys, discipling is right and biblical and we should not back away from it. It is so important that we are discipling and pouring ourselves into individuals. You know, Jesus did it... Do you?” These rationalizations for discipling have been heard before, yet there is simply no precedent for ICC-style discipling partners in the Bible.
By spiritualizing every issue surrounding itself, the ICC “misses the forest for the trees” on many issues, none more so than its regressions into cultic practices and behaviors.
The culture of the ICC still emphasizes feeling over thinking.
Shouting from the pulpit is still equated with preaching, and hollers from the pew are still considered "encouragement" for the leaders (4) (there are sure to be exceptions, but this is the prevailing culture). Leaders like the Greater Baltimore Church of Christ’s Doug Arthur still value passion over insight in their leadership:
“…sometimes we try to get too profound and too tricky and too clever. And we try to go for all the nuances and the insight and the little deet-de-deet-de-dee, and ‘in the Greek if you stand on your head and say Hebrew then it means this.’ And we think that those clever little insights are really gonna move the hearts, without the passion.”
Doug Arthur, Forceful, Respectful Preaching, CD# 202, HMS Books, International Leadership Conference, Seattle, September 8, 2005.
Note that a lack of theological understanding led to many of the movement's problems in the first place (ICC evangelists were not and generally still are not required to have any formal theological training).
If the movement’s global leadership conference is any indication, then members are still being given a regular diet of prooftexting over real scriptural insight (prooftexting is starting with conclusions and looking for texts to back them up, rather than starting with textual study of the Bible and drawing appropriate conclusions). Even those leaders who attempt to do a more thoughtful analysis of scriptures may find that they don’t have the training, or have trouble making thoughtful analysis fit in a culture of fiery emotionalism.
Driving the “Feeling over Thinking”, “Action over Insight” culture in the ICC, is a culture of macho leadership (5). Leadership is viewed as the answer to most everything (at least by the leaders). John Louis of the Singapore Church of Christ tells other leaders how they can make their churches want discipling relationships again:
“You know how we could turn this around in our church. You know what’s needed? Courage from the leaders. You get up there and preach. Don’t talk about the need for committees, in their lives. We’ve got committees at the top, and we’ve got committees throughout the church. And so everybody is just talking about, you know, this, that – it is so boring. What is this?”
John Louis, Discipling: Mature One-to-One & Group Dynamics, CD# 301, HMS Books, International Leadership Conference, Seattle, September 8, 2005.
Doug Arthur agrees that the movement needs dynamic leaders:
“If we’re going to have dynamic congregations, we need electrifying evangelists who preach the word and are not fakers… if you’re going to be an evangelist, you better ‘bring it’. Because if you’re cowardly, if you’re timid, if you’re not faithful you’re robbing the church.”
Doug Arthur, Forceful, Respectful Preaching.
One would wish that the movement had become more thoughtful after two decades of reckless disregard for the psychological well being of members and the general public.
ICC leadership today still seems stuck in a culture of ethical cluelessness. (This is not accusing these men of having no personal ethics, but of being incredibly obtuse to ethical issues involving the church and their leadership.)
There has been little re-examination of the “ends” (goals) the church should seek, or "means" (methods) it should use. Not surprisingly, the central ethnic of ICC recruiting apparently is still “the ends justify the means.” This should not be confused with merely “taking the good with the bad,” which we all do in daily life. “Ends-justify-means” rationalization permits unethical behavior by saying, “evil must happen so that good may result.” Take this rationalization from Savannah Church of Christ evangelist Steve Johnson:
“We made a lot of mistakes. And a lot of those ‘mistakes’ led to a lot of us sitting here now as saved disciples.”
Steve Johnson, Forceful, Respectful Preaching, CD# 202, HMS Books, International Leadership Conference, Seattle, September 8, 2005.
In Seattle, Indonesia leader Harliem Saliem spoke about how they’ve been able to use HOPE to start the church after Southeast Asia was decimated by tsunami, saying “it’s amazing to see how God is opening the door.” (6) It’s disturbing to hear ICC leaders continue to be blind to the ethics of using a supposedly benevolent organization (HOPE) funded in part by the general public, as a front group to help grow the ICC.
Tom Brown, an ICC leader who has been around long enough to know better, regurgitated all the old lines about using campus recruiting to advance the church, including “go after students in the dorms”, “go after freshman”, and “you want to convert anything that moves, obviously.”(7) The question I wanted to ask (hand was up but wasn’t called on), was, “If a school forbids proselytizing in dorms, should you still do it?” The ethically clueless answer in the movement for decades has been, yes. Recruiting college students has been a means to an end in the ICC, creating a pipeline of future leaders and growth, with little concern for students’ education or freedom of choice in joining the group.
There remains a scary disregard for the techniques that the group uses, and their side-effects on members and recruits. Troy Criss talked about the need in campus ministry to “raise up” leaders to convert people more effectively, saying “it’s not just about leading a study, it’s about moving a heart.”(8) Moving a heart? Apparently the same old manipulative techniques are being used to teach the ICC’s recruitment studies in many places.
Singapore evangelist John Louis talked about the rapid and dramatic conversions the ICC manufactures, not as something to be concerned about (for the spiritual or psychological health of the recruit), but as one of the movement’s strengths:
“I really believe that we have done a lot of things well in the ICOC. I think one of the best things we have done – and I haven’t seen this in any group before – is you turn a non-Christian around in a matter of a few weeks. I’m telling you, we’re not just good, we’re awesome [at this]… You know what I’m talking about; some of you were a product of that. You studied the Bible in three weeks; your life turns around. Right? You’re an entirely different individual. This is what we’re – I wouldn’t say we’re good at it, we’re excellent – we’re stellar at it.”
John Louis, Discipling: Mature One-to-One & Group Dynamics, CD# 301, HMS Books, International Leadership Conference, Seattle, September 8, 2005.
Considering the evidence, ICC leaders should stop taking pride in producing personality changes in converts. It’s not speculation to say that the ICC’s traditional recruiting techniques are dangerous – it has been shown to be the case in published psychological studies.
Even after two years of re-evaluation and a supposedly freer flow of criticism, many ICC leaders still don’t seem to “get it.” Los Angeles International Church of Christ elder Bruce Williams now says that most of the leaders who stepped down because their role in ICC abuses, should have just “repented” and stayed in leadership:
“…I think it’s so sad that there have been many dozens and dozens and dozens of brothers in the ministry over the last several years who felt so bad about what they did, that they felt like this disqualified them to serve in the ministry full-time. And I’m not saying that maybe there were some that did need to step out, but I’m saying that the vast majority, they just – they needed to repent, and learn from whatever mistakes they made.”
Bruce Williams, By Faith, the Walls of Jericho Fell, CD# 105, HMS Books, International Leadership Conference, Seattle, September 10, 2005.
Williams and many of his colleagues seem to miss the fact that the ICC’s ministers were involved in systematic spiritual abuse of their followers, and that many leaders stepped down because members – and sometimes they themselves – could not heal without their removal from leadership. (What would ICC leaders say about a pedophile Catholic priest who refused to step down? They would mock and condemn such a man, perhaps rightfully so.) Furthermore, most ICC leaders are arguably not qualified to serve as ministers in the first place – they were part of the ICC’s internal ministry training program, not an accredited seminary program with appropriate training in theology, pastoral care, counseling, etc.
It would seem that more, not fewer, of the ICC’s past leaders should resign. Too many of the ICC’s leaders remain ethically clueless
The ICC today still has a culture of historylessness: the organization seems unable to learn from its past in ways that would help it create a substantially better future.
This culture of historylessness, inherited by the ICC from mainline Churches of Christ (9), remains strong as evidenced by these examples:
Some ICC churches are now reinstituting discipling partners without “assigning” the relationships, or without one “over” one discipling hierarchy, thinking this modification will avoid the abuses of the past. But that’s what Crossroads did in the 70s (Crossroads allowed members to choose disciplers), and it resulted in abuses similar to the ICCs.
The Boston, Seattle & Phoenix letters warning Kip McKean are remarkably similar to the 1987 Christian Chronicle article that sparked Kip McKean to separate his Boston Movement churches from mainline Churches of Christ. Note the eerie similarities vs. Howard Norton’s Christian Chronicle editorial. These letters illustrate that McKean is working from the same blueprint today as he was in the 1980s; yet somehow the ICC seems surprised by his comeback. If they didn’t want him to come back, they should have fired him and denounced his teachings and practices long ago and not just his “leadership sins.”
The ICC took in around $180 million per year in member contributions at its zenith, yet leaders apparently view how they spent the money as irrelevant past history. Nearly three years after the ICC’s central leadership and World Sectors were disbanded there still has not been an accounting of special contribution spending. As Henry Kriete wrote in a follow-up to his Honest to God letter: “…to this day, the fact still remains, that the books in virtually every ICOC church have not been truly opened to show how past contributions were spent… Why do you need a centralized group for that? Good grief! Do it now! Prove your innocence to the world and to the Christians who sacrificed so much! Do we know the severance package of even one former WSL [World Sector Leader] yet?” (10) They still haven't proved whether there was isolated financial fraud, centralized financial fraud, or no financial fraud.
Chuck Lucas, who led the ICC’s precursor, the Crossroads movement, before being fired in 1986, is now preaching again in the Southeast US. (11) The parallels between Lucas’ & McKean’s fall from power are noted in a REVEAL article by Brian Ritt. Both Lucas & McKean have since risen to the pulpit again, in another repeating of history.
New book ministries such as Illumination Publishers International (IPI) and HMS Books continue to market ICC books of the past. Some titles (e.g. The Disciples’ Handbook) have been revised, but many continue to be sold in their original “Kingdom” form: inventory from another era.
ICC leaders have little sense for how they inherited their spiritual elitism from mailine Chuches of Christ. If the ICC is going to fully examine its exclusive assumptions about Christian salvation (and the consequent urgency of world evangelism), it will need to do so without the help of its most senior leaders. Almost without exception, the ICC’s World Sector leaders, and many other high level leaders grew up in mainline churches of Christ. These men are much less likely to revisit, understand and overturn the exclusive doctrines that they used to start the ICC, vs. newer converts who aren’t caught in the Historyless Trap.
Attitude toward recent history: instead of being required reading, the Henry Kriete letter from 2003 Honest to God remains unread by many in today’s ICC. 2003 is already viewed as ancient history by many leaders and as irrelevant to their current challenges.
Attitude toward current history: Tom Brown, in a Seattle session on campus evangelism, said that one of his two principles for campus ministry was “NAD: No Adult Drama,”(12) meaning that college students don’t really care what happens in the ICC at large, so don’t involve them with the church’s politics and current events. It’s this kind of leadership that creates an insular culture that can’t learn from the past.
Ben Franklin once said “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” Today the ICC continues to use too many of the same leaders, too many of the same methods, almost all of the same theology, yet somehow sees itself in a new phase and ready to move “forward” again toward better results.
It appears all too likely that with its next steps forward, the ICC will regress further into the problems and abuses of the past.
Or to put it in Ben Franklin’s terms, the leadership culture of the ICC is insane (if it expects different results).
There may be reforming ICC churches and leaders today that would disagree with the leaders quoted here, but assuming they exist they are in the minority and have little voice in the ICC. At this point, reforming former-ICC churches may more tied to the mainline church than to the ICC.
One speaker in Seattle (out of fourteen heard) who did seem to break free somewhat from the status quo was former Boston Church of Christ elder Gordon Ferguson, now of the Phoenix Valley Church of Christ. Ferguson decried the movement’s push mentality of evangelism and what he called its “Gospel of growth”. Ferguson made a not-too-subtle reference to Kip McKean as the source of the ICC's cultural obsession with growth:
“Does it not strike you as strange since the defining command or evidence of our movement and God being with us has been numerical growth, does it not strike you as strange that nowhere in the New Testament – all these churches with all these problems that necessitated the writing of the New Testament – does it not strike you as strange that there was no admonishment for not growing or not having baptisms? Does that not strike you as strange? We’re going to have to decide what we think about this one, because some voices will not let it go.”
Gordon Ferguson, Commitment – Heresies of the Legalistic and Lukewarm, CD# 306, HMS Books, International Leadership Conference, Seattle, September 8, 2005.
In the same talk, Ferguson gave some historical perspective on the movement, saying that the ICC's problems with legalism were an overreaction to perceived "lukewarmness" in mainline Churches of Christ. However, Ferguson still supports discipling methodologies (he literally wrote the ICC's book on Discipling) and disagrees with Henry Kriete's letter -- less for its content than the way it was written.
The ICC was already in the process of splitting during the Seattle leadership conference, and now many core ICC congregations have begun separating from a Portland faction led by ICC founder Kip McKean.
Unfortunately, the four cultural themes examined in this article are shared by the leadership of both the core ICC churches (as a whole), and the McKean faction. Of the leaders quoted in this article, most are with core ICC churches and five of them actually signed the letter in opposition to Kip McKean: Baird, Taliaferro, Williams, Brown & Louis. Only Steve Johnson and Doug Arthur are considered to be aligned with McKean. All of these leaders were put forward as experts and models to follow at the ICC’s global, annual leadership conference (13).
This should dash any illusions that the ICC is on a path to healthy reform.
Related Topics on RightCyberUp:
(1) Al Baird, “A New Look at Authority,” Upside Down, Issue Two, 1992.
(2) Al Baird, Discipling: Mature One-to-One & Group Dynamics, CD# 301, HMS Books, International Leadership Conference, Seattle, September 8, 2005.
(3) Seattle International Leadership Conference brochure.
(4) The tendency to reinforce the speaker with interjections from the audience is an ICC cultural idiosyncrasy that many of us noticed on our first visit to the ICC, but perhaps got used to over time. At the risk of poking some good natured fun at it, it’s difficult to imagine a leader saying anything that wouldn’t draw positive feedback – if an ICC leader started a speech by saying “I am a turnip,” would he not be greeted with exhortations like “tell us about it, bro”, “preach it” and “that’s right, bro”? Therefore it seems to serve little purpose other than to a.) make the speaker feel comfortable regardless of what he’s saying and b.) create an impression of unquestioning leadership support for others in attendance. In other words: feeling over thinking.
(5) I can't speak to the leadership style in women's leadership meetings (since the ICC believes men are not to be taught by women at a leadership conference) but the men’s leaders speak with so much swagger and bravado it makes one nearly embarrassed to be male.
(6) Harliem Salim, Finishing: Evangelizing Your Region, from author's written notes, International Leadership Conference, Seattle, September 9, 2005.
(7) Tom Brown & Troy Criss, Campus: Even Greater Things, from author's written notes, International Leadership Conference, Seattle, September 9, 2005.
(8) Ibid.
(9) This culture of historylessness is described very well in Russell Paden’s Master’s Thesis, From the Churches of Christ to the Boston Movement: A Comparative Study on the REVEAL website.
(10) Henry Kriete, "Still Honest To God" a.k.a.Response to a Friend (PDF), September, 2005.
(11) Douglas Jacoby, "AIM Session VII Report," douglasjacoby.com, 2005.
(12) Tom Brown & Troy Criss, Campus: Even Greater Things.
(13) Next year's leadership conference is to be hosted by the Hampton Roads Church of Christ (Virginia), led by Mike Fontenot, an apparent hard-liner who was praised recently by Kip McKean, at least before signing the letters disfellowshiping McKean.
Copyright © 2005 Dave Anderson. All rights reserved.
