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"...my leadership in recent years has damaged both the Kingdom and my family."
-- from Kip McKean resignation letter
November, 2002
Kip McKean resigned this month as World Missions Evangelist and leader of the World Sector Leaders of the International Churches of Christ (ICC). McKean announced his resignation publicly in the form of an apology letter written to members of the ICC movement and read to many ICC congregations at mid-week services. McKean, who founded the ICC movement in 1979, also indicated that a "new governance" would be devised by remaining ICC remaining World Sector Leaders and top evangelists with his full support, raising the likelihood that McKean would not be replaced in his unique leadership position. According to a statement by senior ICC leaders Al Baird and Bob Gempel, McKean will be given a full-time ministry position with the South Region of the Los Angeles International Church of Christ.
McKean's announcement came in a year that has included the resignation or termination of several prominent ICC leaders, including World Sector Leaders Doug and Joyce Arthur of the Washington D.C. Church of Christ, Geographic Sector Leader and Lead Evangelist Nick Young of the Dallas/Ft. Worth Church of Christ Jesus and Evangelist Mike Leatherwood of the New York City Church of Christ, among many others. Public announcements were not available from the ICC to indicate whether these changes were part of a designed leadership shake-up, or whether more departures would follow.
McKean in his letter apologized to ICC members worldwide for sins including arrogance, anger and insensitivity, saying that "my leadership in recent years has damaged both the Kingdom [ICC] and my family." Wrote McKean, “I take full responsibility for how my sins have spiritually weakened and embittered many in our churches.” He did not, however renounce the ICC's involved system of teachings and practices which he is in large part responsible for designing.
A convert of the Gainesville, Florida-based Crossroads Movement, McKean was baptized April 11, 1972 as a 17-year-old college freshman and was discipled by Crossroads leader Chuck Lucas. After graduating from the University of Florida, McKean was hired as a campus minister at the Heritage Chapel Church of Christ in Charleston, Illinois in 1976, where his sponsor church once accused him of bringing "unBiblical practices, peculiar language, and subtle, deceitful doctrines to Charleston" before severing McKean's financial support.
In June, 1979, Kip McKean was invited to lead the Lexington, Massachusetts Church of Christ and he brought Crossroads methodology with him. Rapid growth -- and controversy -- followed him, and the group soon called itself the Boston Church of Christ. McKean appointed several of his most loyal and talented leaders to be “World Sector Leaders” and assist him in leading the "Boston Movement." In June 1989, McKean stepped down as Boston Lead Evangelist to assume a new position as World Missions Evangelist. The next year, he moved to Los Angeles, where he continued to lead the movement for over a decade while also serving as Lead Evangelist of the Los Angeles International Church of Christ.
McKean's leadership status had been a source of speculation since a sabbatical from ICC leadership had been announced for McKean and his wife Elena on November 11, 2001.
[To read Kip McKean's resignation and apology letter, click here.]
[To read the Baird/Gempel response, click here.]
One year ago, the ICC announced the McKean sabbatical in two written statements: one by Kip & Elena McKean and another by World Sector Leaders Al Baird and Bob Gempel on November 11, 2001. The same day, the McKeans, Baird, Gempel and other ICC leaders announced the sabbatical publicly to the Los Angeles International Church of Christ.
The ICC presented the McKeans' downfall not as an indictment of the system created by McKean, but as a failure by the movement's top leader's to use the system. At the LA sabbatical announcement, Al Baird apologized for his discipling of Kip McKean, reassuring members, "there's been poor discipleship. And so I want you to take great courage and hope, that when you do it God's way, it works." McKean himself apologized for not seeking more discipling in his life.
Kip McKean's sabbatical announcement had notable differences from his resignation announcement one year later:
Although he was given a staff position in the Los Angeles International Church of Christ ministry upon resigning, Kip McKean's long term future with the ICC was not clear. During the LA sabbatical announcement, McKean had said, "There's a chance that in the future we might be invited back to be a part of the leadership of the LA church [which now appears to have happened], however, Elena and I had always dreamed that when the kids were away at college, that we'd go back to the Third World and spend our remaining years there."
Although we may never know the interaction of events that led to Kip McKean's sabbatical and resignation, it seems clear that the status of his children in the ICC played a role. It is telling that several leaders mentioned the McKean children during the LA sabbatical announcement, and that the UpCyberDown.org resignation announcement mentioned "the toll of his [McKean's] service on family members."
Kip McKean needed to keep his children in the ICC for at least two reasons. First, he had taught that when members kids "fall away" from the ICC, it was a sign of sin in the parents. Secondly, McKean had elevated his children to a level of visibility far higher than any other "Kingdom Kids."
McKean and ICC leadership had often boasted about his three kids and their secular and spiritual achievements, holding them up as examples in his public speeches. A Kingdom New Network (KNN) video just two years before the sabbatical had praised the McKeans for their parenting -- and praised the Bairds and Gempels for their discipling:
“One of the greatest tests for any movement is its impact on the children. Kip and Elena trusted in God’s word and received discipling from more mature families like the Bairds and the Gempels in raising their children. God blessed their example. Their [the McKeans'] three children, ___, ___ and ___ have all been baptized in the last four years. They are each excellent students and athletes, but God is the focus and top priority in their lives. They represent the renewed emphasis of the Kingdom in the campus and teen ministries, as they lead us into the next generation of disciples.”
From Here to Eternity, Kingdom News Network, Los Angeles, videotape, August 1999.
This video, which included a recap of achievements by each McKean child, was distributed and played at ICC services around the world.
It had become obvious that Kip McKean expected his children to grow up to be not just members, but leaders in the ICC. Many years earlier, he described their bed-time prayers:
"Every day with each of the kids, and you can ask them, and they pray it - yes, by rote. 'Lord, let ___, ___, ____ become disciples and leaders in the kingdom.' That's a daily prayer. See, that's godly offspring."
Kip McKean, Malachi: God's Radical Demand for Remaining Radical, Manila, DPI Archive Cassette Series, Tape # 9104, 1994.
It seems McKean's kids weren't always so happy in the ICC. In 1998, McKean's daughter had publicly mentioned earlier desires of leaving the ICC, saying, "I thought that the only place I could find true freedom would be outside the church, and that's the only place that I could be happy." Later, when rumors spread of her actual departure from the ICC, the ICC may have had a consistency issue on its hands: other ICC leaders had been forced to step down after similar occurrences, but what of McKean?
To reduce pressure on ICC leaders' children -- including the McKeans' -- the ICC should loosen its legalistic requirements for leaders' children joining and staying in the ICC. Although biblical guidelines for "elders" do exist (e.g. Titus 1: 6-9), the ICC applies them to a legalistic extreme, sometimes asking leaders at all levels to step down because a son or daughter has left the ICC ("left God").
Ideally, Kip's departure could set the stage for substantial and specific changes to be announced and carried through by leadership. In particular, some changes have already been promised or implied in official announcements:
And of course, many more changes could happen and need to happen. The ICC's entire history cries out for profound, fundamental change.
Yes, Kip McKean's resignation is historic, and this could be the ICC's best chance to date for fundamental reform. However, as of yet, senior ICC leadership has not announced a single initiative for change across the movement. ICC prior history is also not encouraging.
The organization has claimed to be not only reforming -- but already reformed -- for decades, without ever specifying what fundamental positive changes had occurred (see We've Changed). Back in 1992, an article called "A New Look at Authority" by Al Baird gave hope to many members who saw it as a sign of reform -- reform which arguably never occurred, or didn't last. In fact, this article in recent years was released again by the ICC.
Here are some major things that have not as yet been publicly renounced by senior leadership and therefore might not change:
Without denying McKean's sincerity, we should also be wary of limits to his apology. He apologized "to all the Christians in all the churches" -- but he did not apologize specifically to the ICC's hundreds of thousands of former members, or to ICC members' families. He apologized for his leadership "in recent years" -- but evidently not for his behavior in earlier years when his leadership was also highly controversial. Perhaps most importantly, he did not apologize for any of his teachings or practices: the abusive system he left behind. And even though he said he had "so severely failed God and His movement," he was willing to accept a lesser leadership position in the Los Angeles church -- with the full blessing of Al Baird and Bob Gempel. A demotion and a full-time job would hardly seem appropriate punishment.
Regarding things that might not change, we should consider the first line of Kip McKean's apology, and all of the things he packed into it:
"Truly the Lord has blessed His modern day movement as His gospel has produced true churches of disciples in 170 nations over the past 23 years."
In this one sentence, McKean:
For the ICC to reform after Kip's departure, its leaders will need to go further than McKean and throw out the legacy McKean clung to.
Some might argue that, because Kip McKean has stepped down, past indictments of the ICC by its critics were not correct, and the ICC's history should now be reinterpreted. Not so: the ICC's future might change as a result of McKean's resignation, but its past will not.
For instance, one might argue that, because McKean was encouraged to take a sabbatical by other leaders like the Bairds and Gempels, there was never an accountability problem at the top of the ICC. But senior leaders' own words indicate this is not true: Al Baird claimed much fault at the LA sabbatical announcement for not properly discipling the McKeans, saying, "…on the one hand, if Kip feels like he's always right, on the other hand, I'm assuming he is right, you don't have discipling taking place. You have very poor discipling taking place, and that's what's happened in this case..." In effect, Baird said that when it came to the kind of scrutiny put on the behavior of typical ICC members, he gave Kip a pass. Also, McKean was only said to be discipled by Baird in his "marriage and family" -- no one had claimed to disciple McKean on his leadership of the church. It seems that McKean's removal from leadership confirms what ICC critics have said for years -- that McKean, considered by himself and top leaders to be "God's Man", was leading the ICC without sufficient checks and balances on his considerable power.
Others may contend that Kip's fall from power shows that the ICC is a Godly system and everything works just fine; nothing needs to be fixed. But what is Godly about a system in which -- by McKean's own description, people were scared to challenge an arrogant leader -- and this leader was allowed to stay in power for 23 years?
Someone might say that the ICC's change of its hierarchy proves it can't be considered a cult (since cults typtically have a pyramid-shaped authority structure with absolute authority at the top). While the resignation of McKean will change the ICC's senior leadership structure, the structure remains a pyramid -- albeit a pyramid that is less "pointy" at the top than before. Consider that the Jehovah's Witnesses survived its founder Charles Taze Russell, eventually placing more power in a larger group called the Governing Body. The fact that the organization was led by a Governing Body instead of one man did not reform the Jehovah's Witnesses.
Finally, someone might try to make a case that, if McKean gave up power, then he never fit the profile of a cult leader in the first place. Not necessarily so. Leaders of some cults have willingly stepped down when they could no longer get their way by manipulating others -- or when it served their own interest. According to the book A Piece of Blue Sky, Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard "maintained the charade of handing over responsibility by resigning as President and Executive Director of the Church. His resignation was announced to Scientologists, but was not actually filed with the Registrar of companies in England for three years. It was yet another public relations gesture." The ICC should make clear that McKean has not only resigned from his top leadership positions, but also that he is not legal head of any of the ICC's various corporations.
Let us hope that the International Churches of Christ will make positive changes as a result of Kip McKean's resignation. In the meantime, this website will remain committed to providing recovery information for ICC former members, current ICC "disciples", their loved ones and friends.
Dozens of updates have been made to the site to reflect McKean's resignation, including the following:
Many, many references to Kip McKean remain on the site – and should remain until the ICC renounces not just “sins” on the part of McKean, but also renounces the system he created and still participates in. There can be no thorough understanding of the past or current ICC without considering Kip McKean, its architect and founder.
Sources:
Kip McKean Resignation Letter, UpCyberDown.org, November 06, 2002 (posted November 27, 2002).
Al Baird & Bob Gempel, Elders response to McKean Resignation, UpCyberDown.org, November 7, 2002 (posted November 27, 2002).
Homepage, UpCyberDown.org, November 27, 2002.
Kip & Elena McKean, "Kip & Elena McKean to Take Sabbatical," kingdomnewsnet.org, November 11, 2001.
Al Baird & Bob Gempel, "Response to McKeans' Sabbatical Announcment," kingdomnewsnet.org, November 11, 2001.
Miscellaneous ICC leaders, sabbatical announcement, audiotape, Los Angeles, November 11, 2001.
Kip McKean, Whatever it Takes, Omnibus cassette tape #MK-04, Boston, July 5, 1998.
Jon Atack, A Piece of Blue Sky: Scientology, Dianetics and L. Ron Hubbard Exposed, Carol Publishing Group, New York, 1990, p. 167.
Copyright © 2002 Dave Anderson. All rights reserved.
