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“I took off after Doug and [President Bill Clinton] and by the time I got there Doug had already invited him to church…”
-- Steve Johnson; see full quote
The International Churches of Christ (ICC) organization runs a powerful publicity machine. Its publishing wing, DPI (Discipleship Publications International), has sold over a million books promoting the ICC’s viewpoints.(1) The church’s Kingdom News Network (KNN) distributes enthusiastic videos to all ICC congregations. Attractive members and leaders are chosen to rebut criticism in the media, while the ICC’s Media/Law World Sector oversees publicity efforts from Los Angeles. What are we to make of it all?
In this chapter we will examine ICC publicity that is slanted, self-serving, and misleading.
International Churches of Christ (ICC) publicity would lead us to believe that every ICC member is happy; every ICC leader, “awesome”; every ICC marriage, blissful; every ICC service, inspiring; every ICC congregation, growing; every ICC endeavor, successful; and every ICC former member, miserable. The ICC’s publicity would more accurately be called propaganda, because it provides the main benefit of propagating a positive bias toward the organization, often at the expense of truth or accuracy.
Some ICC publicity goes beyond slanted to actually being deceptive. An ICC press kit misquoted TIME magazine as virtually endorsing the ICC (see Figure 1).
Figure 1: The ICC's Misquote of TIME Magazine
How the ICC quoted TIME:
“One of Protestantism’s hottest churches. One of the world’s fastest-growing and most innovative…unbesmirched by financial and sexual scandals.”
International Churches of Christ, “A Church Big Enough to Hold Us All,” Media & Law press kit, Los Angeles, August 1, 1994.
What TIME actually wrote:
Boston spawns one of Protestantism's hottest churches, but critics call it a cult and accuse its leaders of dictatorship….
Staid New England is not known as a hotbed of evangelism. Yet it has sprouted one of the world's fastest-growing and most innovative bands of Bible thumpers….
Why all this fuss over a church that expounds no exotic new heresies and is unbesmirched by financial and sexual scandals? Hostility focuses especially on the rigid control the church hierarchy exercises over the lives of members. (2)
TIME’s unflattering portrayal of the movement didn’t prevent ICC publicity from twisting TIME’s words to its favor.
The ICC’s books and tapes are certainly not an objective source about the movement – their publisher, DPI, according to a document filed with the IRS, “has only one goal: to distribute, promote, and sell religious and educational materials that espouse the religious teachings of the International Churches of Christ.”(3)
Web sites have sprung up for many of the ICC’s churches, presenting an idealized view of the local church and its leaders. A development site for the Atlanta Church of Christ – not yet ready for public eyes – displayed the temporary caption “_____ is awesome” next to each Atlanta leader’s picture. Clearly, the Atlanta Church of Christ wants its members to think Atlanta leadership is “awesome.” The development Web site also listed ethnic diversity requirements (4) for a group ICC member photo on the page – and the requirement that the members should be “people who we know aren’t likely to fall away.”(5)
Indeed, with members leaving at a rapid rate, the organization sees a need to control perceptions of its retention problem. One article from a Nashville church leader quoted four members who left the ICC and later came back, each saying they were wrong to leave in the first place:
"The day after I left I wanted to come back….”
“What I really want people to understand is that there is no life outside of following Jesus and being wholehearted about it….”
“I was very ungrateful for what God had done for me and especially for the church… The loneliness was overwhelming; there really is no love out there. People only care about themselves….”
"When we left the kingdom, we were only living for ourselves, caring about what we wanted and we were miserable…”
Ana Slobodnik (Women's Ministry Leader), Coming Home, nashvillechurch.org, circa 1999.
Rather than combat its retention problem at its source – the bad experiences so many seem to have in the group – the ICC pours on the propaganda to try and keep more members.
Growth statistics are a mainstay of ICC publicity, as the organization tries to paint a picture of success using numbers. However, the picture painted by the ICC’s numbers is often confusing or misleading.
At times, the ICC’s own publicity has confused the media about its size. In the late 90s, four media reports overstated the ICC’s membership as between 142,000 and 175,000 members(6) – at a time when the ICC had less than 115,000 members. (7) The mistake of these media reports? Listening to the attendance numbers the ICC prefers to its membership numbers – apparently because they’re larger. (8)
While the ICC’s always-larger attendance numbers sound better, they paint a misleading picture. For example, the ICC’s Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro congregations once reported attendances of 13,700 and 8,200 with memberships of only 2,300 and 630, respectively(9) – visitors dwarfing members by over 7-to-1. Similarly, three other South American congregations reported 9,864 visitors vs. 716 members on their “First Century Sunday” – over 13-to-1.(10) These numbers illustrate that “weekly attendance” is an extremely poor measure of congregation size – and therefore, a poor measurement of the movement’s overall size or growth. The ICC could publish growing attendance statistics at a time when membership was flat – or even declining.
Actual ICC statistics show that membership growth shrunk dramatically in the 90s, to about 10% annually, with membership growing more slowly than attendance (See Figure 2).
Figure 2: ICC Attendance vs. Membership
In fact, today the ICC as a whole continues to claim rapid growth to the media, while telling leaders it is in “crisis mode” because of its declining growth. (11)
[To see RightCyberUp's analysis of the ICC's 1999-2001 statistics, click here.]
The ICC claims it has “restored” a biblical pattern (12) of one church per one city. (13) However, some of the ICC’s sprawling metropolitan churches have broken this pattern, even while ICC leadership boasts about their size.
Boston
The Boston Church of Christ, which ICC founder Kip McKean once called “the Jerusalem of God’s modern day movement,” makes a surprising claim:
“The Boston Church of Christ has become the largest church ever to exist in the history of New England.”
“The Fastest Growing Churches in North America,” News, icoc.org, January 7, 1998.
The Boston Church of Christ could only claim to be the largest New England church because no one else shares the ICC’s definition of a “church” – all followers meeting centrally in a given metropolitan area. The Boston church, with about 4,000 members at the time this claim was made, is miniscule compared to the Roman Catholic Church in Boston – which just happens to meet in smaller parishes. According to the Archdiocese of Boston, there are over 2 million Catholics – in a smaller land area than the Boston Church of Christ. (13a)
The ICC has liberally defined the Boston metropolitan area, with “zones” and “sectors” far from the actual city of Boston. One author even noted in 1989 that the Boston church actually had “house churches” in Nashua, New Hampshire; Bridgewater, Connecticut; and Providence, Rhode Island(14) – in three other states. Ten years later, the ICC still listed Providence as a “region” of the Boston Church of Christ.(15) The pattern of “one church, one city” is hardly being followed when one “local” church is established in multiple states.
New York
Like Boston, the New York City Church of Christ claims to be the biggest show in town – as Steve Johnson once boasted to then-President Bill Clinton:
“Well, sir, now I'm the minister for the largest church there's ever been in the history of New York City." …‘Really? Where's your church.’ ‘In Manhattan,’ I said, ‘and all over the metropolitan area.’”
Steve Johnson (World Sector Leader), "Driving with God," acesonline, February 1999.
When Steve Johnson told President Clinton he oversees the largest church in New York City, he was comparing apples to oranges. The New York “metropolitan area” to the ICC includes the five boroughs of New York City plus Westchester County, large parts of New Jersey, and all of Long Island. If the Roman Catholic dioceses of just the five New York City boroughs (Manhattan, Brooklyn, Bronx, Queens, Staten Island) counted their members as a single congregation, they would dwarf the New York City Church of Christ many times over.
Los Angeles
The Los Angeles International Church of Christ, as Kip McKean described it, covers all of the LA metro area and beyond:
“We meet in the middle of L.A. County. Our people literally travel to the far north of the map all the way to Santa Barbara at the far side of the map, and that's about 120 miles in every direction from the center. In other words, the span of our ministry is over 200 miles north to south and east to west.”
Kip McKean (ICC founder), The Dream: Super Churches, Part 1, DPI Archive Cassette Series, Tape # 7762, 1992.
This enormous land area helps LA as the ICC’s latest “model church” to boast its largest size – although some members must, as a result, endure lengthy drives to ICC events. The “one” Los Angeles Church of Christ is actually spread across many different cities, including places like San Luis Obispo, Bakersfield and San Bernardino that are entirely outside the LA metro area.
This is not to say that the ICC shouldn’t set its church boundaries wherever it likes. It can. But it shouldn’t expect people to believe grandiose publicity that compares apples vs. oranges.
ICC leadership is obsessed with celebrity, using celebrities to create positive publicity for itself.
[Ironically, the most famous person ever known to join the movement, movie actress Andie MacDowell, is spoken of very little these days by ICC leaders. According to online biographies of MacDowell, the then-under-worked actress left the New York City Church of Christ after leaders forbid her to appear in the 1989 movie, Sex, Lies and Videotape – which became her breakthrough hit.(16)]
Leadership’s goal of getting celebrities to join the ICC and enhance its image is typified by the 1999 invitation of then-U.S. President Bill Clinton to attend the ICC. World Sector Leaders Steve Johnson and Doug Arthur had gained access to the Clintons at a memorial service for the deceased former Florida governor Lawton Chiles, father of ICC member and HOPE staffer Bud Chiles.(17)
“And then when it [service] was over Doug [Arthur] and I again met the First Lady [future Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton], Doug invited her to church in D.C. and Kitty [Chiles] and I talked to her about the singing group and the New York church. I must have been pretty focused on talking to Mrs. Clinton because when I looked up Doug was gone and as I scanned the mob I saw him making a bee-line for the President… I took off after Doug and the President and by the time I got there Doug had already invited him to church…”
Steve Johnson, "Driving with God," 1999.
A few weeks later, Johnson was able to visit the White House – again as the guest of Bud Chiles – and again invite President Clinton to attend the ICC. This time, Johnson said that the President was “committing himself” to coming, although Clinton apparently never acted on the invitation.(18) Soliciting President Clinton was no fluke: future President George W. Bush was approached by a Chicago ICC member during the 2000 presidential campaign and invited to speak at an ICC event, in what the ICC described on kingdomnewsnet.org as a “divinely-ordained opportunity.”(19)
Celebrities’ souls are not the only prize in the ICC’s quest to align popular figures with the organization; their influence helps the ICC to recruit and retain members. One reporter's story about the Greater Philadelphia Church of Christ (GPCC) noted ICC leadership’s fixation with the famous and influential:
The preacher brags about the church's growth; about HOPE Worldwide; about how the GPCC got involved with the Presidential volunteer summit a couple of years ago. He name-drops, although the ICC doesn't have quite the star power that the Church of Scientology does. (The minister laments that the GPCC's big celebrity, Jerry Spradlin, former Phillies relief pitcher, was traded to Cleveland…) (20)
The ICC’s celebrity fixation comes all the way from the top of the organization, as evidenced by Kip McKean’s efforts to transfer a track athlete into his Bible Talk to help recruiting:
“You know it's amazing to me how God works – we had a young lady move out that's a part of our ministry at UCLA, and she is a world class track athlete. And Todd Spath who leads our ministry there is doing a great job at UCLA and I said, ‘Todd, I was kind of wondering it this fall, if I could lead one of the Bible Talks at UCLA, would that be okay, bro'? He thought it over a while and, praise God, he let me be a Bible Talk leader at UCLA. And I said, ‘Well, bro', you know, just one little request, if I could have Ryan’, who's this track star, this all-American track star – ‘if I could have Ryan to be a part of my Bible Talk that would be really great, bro’’. And he goes, ‘Okay, bro.’’ Because I knew that Ryan would attract a lot of other people – being an all America runner, and being a candidate for the Olympics in the year 2000, I knew she would draw other people. And so she did.”
Kip McKean, Purpose for Life, Pasadena, audio tape, November 7, 1998.
The result of ICC celebrity opportunism is conversions like the following, made possible by former Arrested Development vocalist Speech’s performance at an ICC event:
“Last June 28th, a musician from the Atlanta Church of Christ named Speech took part and performed in our service here in Tokyo. The day before, I was in a record shop with my friend when I saw a woman holding Speech’s CD in her hand. I shared with her that he was coming to perform at our service and she joyfully came the next day. Initially she knew little about God but God led her heart and two weeks later she was baptized and became a Christian. Now, she is joyfully praising God. It was God who led her to that record shop at the precise moment He led me there.“
Yuko Arafune (Intern), The Plan of God, Tokyo Church of Christ Web site, intlcc.com/tokyo, August 1998.
Ultimately, a President, track star or rap star has no more spiritual insight than the rest of us. Their group affiliations should have no influence on our own, but they do: a celebrity's affiliation makes us more sympathetic to a group or cause. The ICC exploits this principle to the hilt.
The Internet has been extremely damaging to the ICC. Dozens of ICC-critical Web sites have sprung up to give readers information about the ICC’s history, doctrine, and practice. Anyone with Internet access anywhere in the world can anonymously go to a search engine and type in keywords like “International Churches of Christ” or “Kip McKean” and gain instant access to critics’ information. No information medium has been as hard for the ICC to control as the Internet. (21) This hasn’t kept the organization from trying, by steering members away from critical Web sites and aggressively promoting its own.
The ICC has tried to strategically acquire Internet domain names. The domain kipmckean.org was purchased and registered by the ICC’s Kingdom New Network (KNN), apparently to fulfill Web searches for “Kip McKean” and re-route surfers to positive information about the ICC. Kipmckean.org functioned briefly as a “re-direct” page, instantly re-directing any visitors to the ICC’s official Web site. The page was taken down after ICC critics objected online. Other Web domains acquired by the ICC, ironically using its members’ money, include exicoc.net and exicoc.com – purchased by KNN after former member critics launched exicoc.org – and other domains like icoccult.com.
In 1997, the ICC began what Media/Law World Sector Leader Al Baird called “a great effort to get web pages up on the Internet,” going from one Web site to fifty the following year.(22) Many of the ICC's Web sites had little content, but succeeded at fulfilling search returns and giving members ICC-approved content about the group.
By late 1998, a new vehicle was created to help the ICC overcome critics Web sites: the Disciples Web Project (DWP). The DWP Web page – soon discovered by ICC critics – bluntly described its mission to tilt the Web in favor of the ICC:
“The Following are some of DWP’s goals:
- "Establish high-traffic, high-visibility sites which are a positive contribution to believers everywhere (disciple or not), and which lend credibility to the church
- "Flood the web with positive material about the church
- "Take over the top spots in all major search engines
- "Flood the non-english web with positive material before our detractors get there
- "Establish an historical archive of information about our churches from every corner of the globe (before the eyewitnesses forget!)
- "Establish an archive of positive personal testimonials about all major church leaders to counter the gossip that circulates”
Disciples Web Project, Strategy, internetdynamics.com, November 13, 1998.
There in black-and-white was a cynical plan to counter ICC critics by “flooding the Web” with content the ICC approved of.
To carry out this plan, DWP created wwwrank, a highly sophisticated tracking and submission tool. It allowed DWP users to type in a word like “Kip McKean” and view sorted and color-coded search engine rankings for “positive” and “negative” pages about the ICC. The tool then allowed users to submit the “positive” (pro-ICC) pages to search engines for higher rankings.(23)
The Disciple’s Web Project went beyond the typical role of publicity, seeking not just to make the ICC’s voice heard, but to silence the voice of its critics.
The media, like the Internet, creates huge publicity problems for the ICC, as the organization’s methods have been questioned in hundreds of stories around the world. Rather than acknowledge the validity of the most common media criticisms against it, the organization instead chooses to combat them with anti-media propaganda (and sometimes, even lawsuits).
Although there may be bias or inaccuracy in the media in general and its stories about the ICC, the media have not been particularly unfair to the church.
ICC leadership’s anti-media propaganda tends to mischaracterize all criticism as inaccurate:
"You must be willing to die for Jesus. If you are willing to die, a little newspaper article with misinformation or twisted information will not stop you from following him!"
Randy McKean (World Sector Leader), “Lordship,” The Disciple’s Handbook, Thomas Jones, Ed., DPI, Woburn, MA, 1997, p. 46.
One ICC article called “Cult Shock Horror!! – The ICOC and the Media” attacked the integrity and accuracy of the media, but published a major error itself. The article reported that The New York Times “has never written a major news feature on the church,” and even attributed this to the Times’ high standards of fairness. In truth, the Times once put a highly critical story about the ICC on the front page of its Metro section, called “Ex-members compare campus ministry to a cult.”(24) The ICC’s “Cult Shock Horror” article claims that “the higher one travels up the media ladder, the less likely one is to encounter material about the church,” yet the ICC has been covered in many of America’s most prominent newspapers, including The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Boston Globe.
In 1999, the ICC reeled from a damaging investigative report on TV’s FOX Files, which showed hidden camera footage of ICC recruitment Bible studies and disclosed Kip McKean’s nearly half-million dollar condo provided by the church. Following the report, Media/Law World Sector Leader Al Baird released a statement framing the story as “persecution” and calling FOX Files “a sensationalist, ‘National Enquirer’ type show."(25) [The ICC has more recently called FOX TV News Network a “journalistic bottom-feeder.”(26)] Even if Baird and the ICC did not like the “messenger,” one would hope they would listen to the “message.”
[One ICC leader taped on hidden camera by FOX, Women’s Ministry Leader Esmeralda Lucas, later sued FOX News Network for invasion of privacy, but the case was thrown out by a U.S. District Court Judge who said that there had been no violation of her privacy. (27)]
The ICC, not the media, bears responsibility for the problems extant in the movement. Until the ICC begins acknowledging and correcting the problems exposed, it will continue to face friction from campuses, parents, the media, and society at large.
The ICC organization has become increasingly litigious, turning to lawsuits to accomplish its aims. In a series of lawsuits filed in Singapore, the ICC’s Singapore Central Christian Church (CCC) sued the editors of three newspapers – The New Paper, Lianhe Wanbao and Impact – for allegedly defaming the church in 1991 articles calling it a “cult.” The CCC’s testimony in court – and the ICC’s propaganda about the case – strain all credibility.
Singapore evangelist John Louis, a co-plaintiff in two of the suits, made several dubious claims about the church in his testimony as reported in an article by Singapore’s The Straits Times:
Among other things, he [Louis] denied that members of his church were taught to confess their personal thoughts, weaknesses and sins to their leader.
It was also untrue that his church encouraged members to leave their homes to live with other members, he said. Members were also free to date whoever they wished, he added.
And he said that despite what the defendants had stated, his church did not believe that those who left were going over to Satan. (28)
But we have already seen Louis’ fellow ICC leaders contradict him on these points. ICC leadership does teach that members should confess their thoughts, their weaknesses and sins. Members are only allowed to date other members. ICC founder Kip McKean has said that members who leave are lost. Yet Louis denied each of these things in court.
To decide whether the newspapers had defamed the church, Judge Warren Khoo contemplated whether or not the Central Christian Church could fairly be called a “cult,” noting that each side in the case had offered different definitions for what a “cult” is. He decided that the majority of Singapore citizens would not regard CCC as a cult. (29) There was no “ruling” on whether or not the church was a cult. Deceptively, ICC publicity would later claim that “After hearing all the testimony of both the disciples and our critics, the trial judge [Khoo] was persuaded the church was not a cult.” (30) In fact, Judge Khoo wrote in his ruling that if the case was tried in a mostly Christian country, "I am sure there would be every chance that the jury would find that the CCC was indeed a cult." (31)
Judge Khoo initially struck down four of the five defamation suits brought by the CCC, but ruled in favor of the church in its suit against The New Paper because he felt the headline “2 Cults Exposed” was sensationalistic. (32)
[To see Judge Khoo's Singapore High Court ruling in its entirely from the TOLC site, click here.]
A Singapore appeals court later overturned two of the decisions in favor of the Central Christian Church, and asked Lianhe Wanbao and The New Paper to pay the CCC and John Louis a combined 70,000 Singapore Dollars ($40,460 US). (33) This amount was only a fraction of the 3.25 million Singapore Dollars CCC and Louis had originally sought in the case. (34) CCC in turn was ordered to pay the legal costs of Impact, the third newspaper. (35) In all, it was hardly the victory the ICC made it out to be.
Although the Singapore cases were legally about defamation and not whether the Central Christian Church is a cult, the ICC wrongly proclaimed that the whole movement had been vindicated in court of being a cult.(36) ICC General Counsel John Bringardner in one article misquoted Judge Khoo as comparing the CCC to cults in general when Khoo wrote, "As we know the facts, the CCC, of course, cannot by any stretch of the imagination be equated with such groups.”(37) Taken in context, Judge Khoo had really been speaking only about violent, apocalyptic cults like the (Waco) Branch Dividians or (Jonestown) People’s Temple:
…these characteristics listed by Mr Cheong [CCC attorney in his definition of a cult] are those associated with the more notorious dangerous, violent and destructive cults that surface in the media from time to time in a dramatic way, such as those that led to the Jonestown and Waco tragedies. As we know the facts, the CCC, of course, cannot by any stretch of the imagination be equated with such groups. (38)
Distorting the judge’s verdict entirely, one ICC Web page deceptively proclaimed: “Singapore Supreme Court Rules ICOC Not a Cult ’By Any Stretch of the Imagination.’” (39) The ICC’s publicity about this case was unconscionable. Also questionable was its choice of the key witness for the Singapore case.
In the Singapore newspaper lawsuit, each side was allowed to hire one expert witness for its primary testimony. Testifying for the Singapore Central Christian Church was J. Gordon Melton, a religious scholar called a “cult apologist” by critics for his history of defending controversial religious groups from charges of cultic behavior.
As the newspapers’ legal team pointed out, Melton’s track record on identifying cults was lacking – Melton did not consider any groups he had studied to be “cults”, including the Unification Church (Moon organization), Children of God, and the Jehovah’s Witnesses. [Melton in a 1988 newspaper article had called the Jehovah’s Witnesses “harmless,” and said of Jim Jones’ People’s Temple, “this wasn't a cult. This was a respectable, mainline Christian group." (40) ] Melton acknowledged in court that he opposed the use of the word “cult” on any group because it conveyed a negative and derogatory meaning. (41)
It was hardly surprising, then, when Melton testified that the Singapore Central Christian Church was not in his opinion a cult. According to The Straights Times (Singapore), Melton testified that the church’s practices were “neither strange, unnatural or harmful.” He said it was untrue that the church practiced manipulative and mind-control methods. He said he had not seen any inordinate amount of guilt used on church members during his time as an observer, and said according to the Times, “No inducement or undue pressure is placed on any person to join or remain in the church.”(42) Strangely, Melton also testified that ICC churches “do not have a history of condemning other churches."(43) But Melton seems wrong on these points: The ICC does use inducement and pressure to gain and retain members, it has a history of condemning other churches, and it certainly seems to be causing harm by using mind-control methods.
Melton’s Singapore testimony for was not the first time he had defended a highly controversial religious group in Asia. The Los Angeles Times reported that Melton contacted the Japanese terrorist religious group Aum Shinrikyo after the March 1995 subway nerve gas attack that killed 12 people and injured over 5,000. Aum, which was already suspected in the attack, then paid the expenses of Melton and three others to travel to Japan and observe the sect.(44) Melton’s delegation defended Aum from accusations of being a dangerous group – even disputing that Aum had the capacity to create deadly sarin gas.(45) In the June 1995 issue of Hinduism Today, Melton cautioned against premature judgements of Aum, saying, “We must refrain from name calling and the use of pejorative labels, especially the term ‘cult.’”(46) Since that time, at least 121 Aum members have received criminal convictions related to poison gas attacks.(47)
(1) Kingdom News Network, “DPI Releases 100th Book,” kingdomnewsnet.org, September 20, 2000.
(2) Richard N Ostling, “Keepers of the flock,” TIME, May 18, 1992.
(3) Discipleship Publications International, Inc., Application for Recognition of Exemption - IRS Form I023 – Part II.1, November 15, 1998, p. 6.
(4) Although the ICC is admirably diverse and multi-racial in membership, like so many things in the ICC, diversity is something to be orchestrated and manipulated by the organization. Far from being oblivious to ethnicity and race, ICC leadership in fact is extremely conscious of it, and is effective at using it to serve its public image.
(5) Atlanta Church of Christ, development Web site, internetdynamics.com, circa 1998.
(6) “True Believers,” The Boston Phoenix, June 18-25, 1998; “Questioning the International Churches of Christ,” Tommy Magazine, November 19, 1998, pp. 16, 19; Fox online, January 21,1999; “The Love Bombers,” Philadelphia City Paper Interactive, citypaper.net, February 25, 1999.
(7) International Churches of Christ, “20 Years: 1979-1999,” LA Story, August 1999, p. 7.
(8) Large ICC attendance figures also show that members are bringing visitors to services.
(9) Almost 22,000 People Hear the Message at Brazil’s “Dia da Amizade”, acesonline.org, March 25, 1999.
(10)Hot News from South America, News, icoc.org, April 23, 1999.
(11) Kip McKean (ICC founder), Known but to God, American Commonwealth Region Conference, Washington, D.C., audio tape, July 7, 2000.
(12) The ICC derives its one church, one city doctrine from Titus 1:5, in which Titus was instructed to “appoint elders in every town.” ICC leadership infers from this verse – and also Revelation 2 & 3 – that there was only one church in each New Testament city, and that the same is commanded today. However, the Bible never specifically teaches one church, one city as McKean has claimed.
(13) Kip McKean, The Dream: Super Churches, Part 1, DPI Archive Cassette Series, Tape # 7762, 1992.
(13a) Archdiocese of Boston, "Demographics (2000)," rcab.org, 2000.
(14) Maruice Barnett, The Discipling Movement, self-published, Phoenix, 1989 (2nd Ed.), p. 90.
(15) International Churches of Christ, ICC Churches by World Sector, File 08.03, October 4, 1999.
(16) The Internet Movie Database, Biography for Andie MacDowell, imdb.com, 2001.
(17) Kingdom News Network, “President and First Lady Invited to Church,” kingdomnewsnet.org, April 23, 1999.
(18) Steve Johnson (World Sector Leader), “Tokyo, Los Angeles and Forest Gump,” acesonline.org, March 1999.
(19) Declan Joyce, “’Before Governors and Kings’: Jim Ronan, George W. Bush, and the Prophet Jeremiah,” kingdomnewsnet.org, November 3, 2000.
(20) Blair J. Davis, “The Love Bombers,” Philadelphia City Paper Interactive, citypaper.net, February 25, 1999.
(21) Similarly, totalitarian governments are confounded by the Internet according to one New York Times story because it is “simultaneously intensely private and endlessly public.” [Barbara Crossette, “Out of Control; The Internet Changes Dictatorship’s Rules,” The New York Times, Section 4, Page 1, August 1, 1999.]
(22) Al Baird (World Sector Leader), Whatever it Takes, Omnibus cassette tape #MK-04, Boston, July 5, 1998.
(23) Disciples Web Project, Query, internetdynamics.com, November 13, 1998.
(24) Jon Nordheimer, “Ex-members compare campus ministry to a cult,” The New York Times, November 30, 1994, B1.
(25) Al Baird, “Television Show Slanders the Church,” kingdomnewsnet.org, January 29, 1999.
(26) Declan Joyce, “Cult Shock Horror!!--The ICOC and the Media,” kingdomnewsnet.org, February 1, 2001.
(27) R. Robin McDonald, “U.S. Court Rejects Church Employee Suit in TV ‘Cult’ Story,” [Atlanta] Fulton County Daily Report, July 31, 2000.
(28) Tan Ooi Boon, “Head founder: Members not told to obey leaders,” The Straits Times, July 3, 1997, p. 37.
(29) Judge Warren Khoo, Judgement, Suits Nos. 846 to 850 of 1992, High Court of the Republic of Singapore, November 7, 1997.
(30) John Bringardner (General Counsel), “Singapore High Court Rules in Favor of the International Churches of Christ,” icoc.org, January 29, 1999.
(31) Judge Warren Khoo, Judgement, 1997.
(32) Tan Ooi Boon, “Church not a cult but loses all but one suit”, The Straits Times, November 11, 1997, p. 1.
(33) Associated Press, “Religious group wins libel case against Singapore newspapers,” September 1, 1998.
(34) Tan Ooi Boon, “Church, founder seek $3.25 million”, The Straits Times, July 29, 1997, p. 31.
(35) Associated Press, “Religious group wins libel case…,” 1998.
(36) International Churches of Christ, “Defining Christianity for the Nations,” LA Story, August 1999, p. 10.
(37) John Bringardner, “Singapore High Court Rules in Favor…,” 1999.
(38) Judge Warren Khoo, Judgement, 1997.
(39) ACES World Sector homepage, acesonline.org, January 28, 1999.
(40) Susan Hogan-Albach, “New Religious Movements Nothing to Fear,” The Milwaukee Journal, December 3, 1988, p. 4A.
(41) Tan Ooi Boon, “Church not a cult, says expert witness”, The Straits Times, July 17, 1997, p. 35.
(42) Ibid.
(43) Judge Warren Khoo, Judgement, 1997.
(44) Teresa Watanabe, “Alleged Persecution of Cult Investigated”, Los Angeles Times (Washington Edition), May 6, 1995, A5.
(45) Kyodo News Service, “U.S. research team concerned about Aum investigation”, May 7, 1995.
(46) Hinduism Today, “Buddhist Sect Furor Fallout for Hindus,” hinduismtoday.com, June 1995.
(47) Kevin Sullivan, “Japanese cult blamed in deadly gas attacks rebuilds”, The Washington Post, seattletimes.com Web archive, September 29, 1997.
Copyright © 2001 Dave Anderson. All rights reserved.
