ICoC Doctrine and Practice...What It Boils Down To

It doesn't matter what you believe or what you do. In the eyes of an ICoC member, it is membership in their sect which determines whether you are "saved" or "lost." Not a new idea, by any means. If you question this idea, I suggest you pick up a copy of Churches that Abuse by Ron Enroth, which details a number of "Bible-based" groups whose teachings are somewhat similar -- and questionable, to say the least.

If you tell an ICoC member you are living a "Christian lifestyle," he/she will attack your doctrine to try to draw you into the sect. They believe that if you "haven't got it on straight," you are not a part of God's kingdom/saved/Christian/a "disciple." Sorry if I sound a bit sarcastic here, but of course, *they* are the only ones who've "got it on straight."

If you say you have correct doctrine, (for example, mainline Church of Christ and other "Restorationist" doctrine would generally qualify), the ICoC member will attack your lifestyle and use guilt and fear about your shortcomings to try to draw you into the sect. This is ugly and manipulative, and to me, one of the most disturbingly cult-like characteristics of the group.

Denomination, or Not???

ICoC members continue to recruit by telling people the ICoC is "just a non-denominational church" -- AN OUTRIGHT LIE. A look in ANY dictionary will show the fallacy of that kind of thinking. The ICoC's structure is very similar to every other denomination out there - some folks I know even jokingly refer to Kip McKean, the sect's leader, as "The Pope of Pacific Palisades."

Here's the rub: some have accused the ICoC of the cult-like tactic of "loading the language," and ICoC members' particular usage of the word "denomination" is indeed a good example of language-loading. To wit: ICoC members believe that the ICoC cannot POSSIBLY be a "denomination," because the ICoC "has the Truth." ICoC members use the word "denomination" in a disparaging manner to refer to all those OTHER churches -- to them, "denomination" connotes that all other churches and the people in them are "lukewarm," "not dealing with their sin," "prideful," "hypocritical," or whatever else the ICoC's pet sin to pick on in others (but ignore in themselves) is for that week or month. :-(

The longer you stay at an ICoC church, the clearer it will become that you are indeed part of a formal hierarchy (ok, a �pyramid scheme,� if you will �- leaders at the top and �peons� at the bottom). I compare the ICoC in this way because the people who profit the most in terms of basking in the admiration of others, the financial standard at which you live, the �spiritual maturity� of the people you interact with most often, etc., from involvement with the group are the people near the top. It was a part of life in the ICoC that everyone took for granted.

ICoC members are also very fond of the phrase, "we just go by the Bible." But if you "study the Bible" (which is discussed a bit more, below) with them, you will quickly discover that it is only *their interpretation* of the Bible which is considered valid. Any attempt by you to present another interpretation of the Bible passage you are discussing will be discounted by those ICoC members. If you persist in disagreeing with the information they present to you in their "Bible" studies with you, you will eventually be dismissed by them as "not open" or "hard-hearted."

Baptism

I was baptized four times in the ICoC, but according to their thinking, none of those baptisms "took"! So, how many times does one have to get baptized to finally be a Christian/a "disciple"/saved? This is a question for which I still have no sensible answer from the ICoC standpoint.

To begin with, the ICoC is one of those groups that believes you aren't a Christian/a "disciple"/saved unless you are baptized. I think it's pointless to argue about this, as there are Scriptures which could conceivably prove either viewpoint.

However, those in the ICoC don't see it that way. To them, no other baptism but theirs is valid.

To elaborate:

If you were baptized as a baby, they say that doesn't count because you didn't make that decision yourself, and based on my own understanding of Scripture, I would agree with that. BUT -- since I don't think that baptism has any power to save, I think it's kind of a moot point. If you were baptized as a baby and found Jesus Christ for yourself later in life, just get baptized as an adult and don't let anyone try make a federal case of it!

Adults who have been baptized in other Christian churches aren't allowed to "place membership" with the ICoC without being baptized by the ICoC - well, I should say only very, very rarely does anyone "get to" do this. For the five years I was in, I only heard of TWO PEOPLE, ICoC-wide, who were allowed in without having to be baptized by the ICoC. (I'm thinking that Steve Johnson's father, Les, is one of that number - no nepotism or "sentimentality" there, eh?) I wasn't even a witness to any of those "placing of memberships" without benefit of ICoC baptism - I heard of them by word-of-mouth.

Here's the thing: ICoC members are indoctrinated to believe that no one outside the ICoC is really a Christian, and since they require a baptism for your salvation, you MUST have theirs.

A favorite phrase is that "there are 'disciples' out there who just haven't found us [the ICoC] yet." But almost without exception, all these people who "find" the ICoC will be found to have some "sin" in their lives that will be judged to have prevented them from "really" becoming a "disciple" at any time before encountering the ICoC. Therefore, they must be baptized with the ICoC's baptism.

No matter how many times one is baptized in the ICoC, the thinking is that if a person "falls away," he/she was never really a "disciple" to begin with. Many who leave the ICoC and go back end up submitting to another baptism (that is, after all the gut-wrenching hoop-jumping you must do to prove to the leaders that you are "worthy" to be a "disciple" again). It is interesting to note that while ICoC leaders don't typically allow the "retroactive understanding" argument for anyone else, Kip McKean, the sect's leader, has never submitted himself to the ICoC's baptism.

Who can actually look into a person's heart and see what's there? According to the ICoC, people just as fallible as us. And in the ICoC, there's no room for exploration or mistakes on your spiritual journey before someone decides you're "not a disciple" and leaders begin wanting to "get with you" to talk about it.

It is a vicious cycle.

What a terrible abuse of God's grace this is, all this re-baptizing - it's like saying Christ's finished work on the Cross isn't enough for you and you have to keep submitting yourself to "go under" because you lack the faith to believe that God has already granted you his wonderful grace. I never really believed that one has to be baptized to be saved, anyway, so it all just seemed like ant-hill-busy-work to me.

You Gotta Be...Sharp???

Know this about the ICoC first and foremost: if you�re not �sharp,� you are "nobody" in the ICoC. The number one priority of ICoC leadership is to find prominent people who can spread the ICoC's message effectively and contribute lots of money to "the Kingdom."

In the ICoC, aspiring to leadership is extremely important. Everyone is "encouraged" to aspire to leadership, and if you don't, you are looked upon as "weak." Sure signs of ICoC-style "leadership potential" are a person's "sharpness," "submissiveness" to leaders' input, advice, and opinions, and the ability to "sell" the ICoC to others.

"Studying the Bible"

If you are invited to "study the Bible" with ICoC members, you should know up-front that this is not an "open" study. They will not tell you that, though. Frankly, they do not care what YOU think about the Bible. They are there to tell you what THEY think about the Bible. They believe that if you don't agree with their interpretation, you are going to Hell. The ICoC studies make heavy use of a method which I discovered is called "proof-texting," which involves using assorted verses to back up a certain point. The problem with proof-texting lies in the fact that the verses used are taken out of context.

Psalm 14:1 says that there is no God. Oh, really? Wait a minute - I have lifted out part of the verse and used it out of context - you would need to read the whole psalm, (or even the whole verse!) in order to understand the context in which this phrase was used. Does this help you to see why "proof-texting" is so dangerous?

A critical analysis of the ICoC's "First Principles" Bible studies exists which theorizes that a potential recruit is coerced to agree with the ICoC's doctrines and practices as presented during the course of the studies, and narrows down the recruit's choices until the only choice remaining to the recruit is that he/she join the ICoC. This is fascinating reading and I highly recommend you visit here: The ICC Bible Studies: A Critical Analysis.

Getting to Know You...

�Shepherding� or as we called them, �discipling� relationships, are at the heart of what�s going on in the ICoC. In my opinion, "discipling" relationships are the vehicle by which a great deal of abuse is committed against ICoC members who think they are doing the right thing by handing over control of even the simplest decisions to a person who will "disciple" them all the way to "heaven."

In my mind, a big problem with ICoC-style discipling is that discipleship partners are *assigned* to you based on what someone else thinks you need at a given point in time. Now, discipling on a completely voluntary basis could be a very powerful thing, and I've since learned of other churches that "disciple" voluntarily. But no, the ICoC can't leave it at that -- and why? Very simple, in my opinion - the ICoC's leaders do not like what cannot be controlled.

Contrary to popular belief in the ICoC, there is no Biblical standard set forth for assigning a person to watch over another person's every move. In the ICoC, if you don't like your discipler, you usually just tough it out until things get shaken up again, as you are looked at as wanting to "get away with sin" if you don't like the discipler you have. Some of my close friends were married sisters who I felt had the maturity and life-experience to put their money where their mouths were. However, for some reason, inter-group (married/single) discipling seemed to be unacceptable.

My first discipler at ICoC-Triangle was a girl who was very much like me; I didn't feel I could learn very much from her, while my last discipler was the opposite of me in the extreme: me, a shy little Southern flower, and she a brash, stereotypical New Yorker (accent and all). It wasn't that I didn't like my disciplers on a superficial level, but I guess I resented the choice being taken out of my hands, as with so many other situations in the ICoC. I never felt like there was room to "just be me." I always felt like I had to be like someone else in order to be loved and accepted. I could never understand why God gave me the gifts he did if he wanted me to bury those gifts for the sake of "imitating" someone else. It's not just the good stuff you're expected to imitate in others where the ICOC is concerned -- you are even "encouraged" to imitate others' personal clothing styles, hair, makeup, etc. -- anything that is perceived to make the ICOC more attractive to outsiders is what you "imitate."

I "discipled" only once during my time in the ICoC, and "my disciple" (as we called those whom we discipled) was a single mom who had a young daughter. This mom had been physically abused by her non-ICoC husband. This mom left the ICoC not long after she was assigned to me to disciple, and I suffered amazing guilt over this for quite a few months. I was told in not so many words that I was responsible. Unfortunately, one factor that it seemed convenient for the leaders to ignore was that there were other problems in the picture, not the least of which was that this single mom had been placed in the singles ministry (even though she felt very "tied in" with the marrieds) and was told she had to stay in the singles, in spite of the fact that she had absolutely no desire to be there.

In the ICoC, you are responsible for everyone else. Every action is potentially spiritually life-threatening. I personally think the scripture, "Am I my brother's keeper"? has been taken horribly out of context by many, both in and outside of the ICoC. I've so often heard it used to justify nosiness and other miscellaneous butting in where it's neither wanted nor required.

In "the Kingdom," You're Never Alone...

Only in rare cases do college-age or single church members live alone, and even then, it's strongly discouraged. If you can afford to live alone (and by the way, not many in the ICoC CAN afford it), try letting your discipler know that you don't want a roommate and see what happens.... I predict a range of responses from "it will be more encouraging for you..." (i.e., if you're here, we can keep an eye on you) to "you could save a lot of money if you had roommates..." (i.e., you could save a lot of money you'd eventually give to the ICoC). At one point in my "stay" in the ICoC, there were four women in my three-bedroom apartment - yes, it was kinda crowded, and it was far from the only single or college household where that was the case. I've heard of much worse in the case of ICoC members in large cities). I even shared a bedroom for a number of months, a situation about which I wasn't altogether happy: not because I disliked the person I shared with, but because I didn't have a space I could call my own. Did any leaders in the ICoC ever have to share a bedroom with someone who wasn't their spouse? I dunno, but in my "household," the household leader (also my Bible Talk leader for a time) was never placed in the position of having to share a bedroom, nor was she expected to.

When and if you become an ICoC member, be prepared to kiss your privacy GOODBYE.

"Fellowshipping"

Fellowshipping (after services, activies, etc.) especially with ICoC members you don't know well, means that you present your best face to everyone in order to be "encouraging." When you fellowship, you must always portray yourself to be on a spiritual mountaintop, having "awesome quiet times" and meeting tons of people who will become members of the sect. I always felt like a big fake (and I was, let's be honest about that) when I felt I had to act like I was "doing well" when I wasn't, and I was often corrected for not being more positive about the church or what went on therein.

Honesty and "being real" are given a LOT of lip-service in the ICoC -- but the reality is that if anything bad or negative is going on in your life or at your particular ICoC locale, church, you just put on a fake happy-face and above all else, you make sure the "Visitors" think everything's peachy.

"Reaching Out"

As an ICoC member, your number one goal is to recruit as many people as possible -- ideally (in their eyes), you are to "reach out" to, or "invite" every person with whom you come in contact.

I need to make an important distinction here. If you feel that God is doing good things for you, of course you want to share that with others -- but as you "share," are there strings attached? As an ICoC member, the goal of all your "sharing" with non-members is to get them into "church" (all the services and activities, which are treated as mandatory), into a "study," and ultimately, "in the water" (i.e., baptized by the ICoC).

I tell ya, when a discipler wants to know what you said and how you said it, and why you didn't meet more people that day, wonders why you don't often have "Visitors" to church and Bible Talks, and starts telling you how you could have done it better if you'd done it his/her way, you can start to feel a little tense. Such an attitude makes sense if you're "recruiting" someone, but not if you're trying to be a true friend to someone. And as I experienced, "friendship" is so often used as a recruiting tactic in the ICoC. Friendship, fine -"situational" or "conditional" friendship as is so often offered by ICoC members is very different.

A discipler came to my office one day (I think my car must have been in the shop or something) and decided to demonstrate her "boldness" by trying to recruit one of my coworkers (who turned out to be the company president's son) in an elevator as we rode down. She was really "bold," and "challenged" him - but, perhaps predictably, the guy never showed up.

As an ICoC member, the goal of my daily activities boiled down to "inviting everything that moved" to attend a Sunday service, a Bible Talk, a special event such as a "Women's Day," whatever. We canvassed apartment complexes, shopping malls, and other public places until their management personnel asked us to leave (which they generally would). Leaders consider such acts by outsiders "persecution" -- never mind the fact that technically, we were trespassing! -- and they would then milk those circumstances for all they were worth.

"Persecution," (or what they erroneously call "persecution") is an ICoC member's "best friend." It feeds their self-deception and encourages their mistaken belief that they are right and everyone else is wrong about Jesus Christ and anything else having to do with "Christianity" in general. ICoC members will criticize others for having a "victim mentality," but if being the victim (i.e., poor us, we're being "persecuted"!) lets the ICoC be painted in a more favorable light to the public, ICoC members will will take full advantage of that same victim mentality they criticize in others. Just another example of the double standard that exists in the ICoC.

One of my disciplers was fond of asking brightly, "who did you meet today?" as if it was the greatest thing in the world. For me, these activities amounted to torture. I never got skillful at developing "best friends" in the prescribed way. I'm more the type to have only a few close friends (I am a friendly person, but in my mind, not everyone can or should be one's "best friend"). I felt I could only talk to the same clerks at the neighborhood gas stations, the same cashiers at my favorite grocery stores, and my co-workers so many times. When some of them started to avoid me, I backed off. I felt I was doing more harm than good.

We kept lists of contacts written down in journals -- names, addresses, phone numbers, facts about the person that we could use to influence them to join the ICOC -- you just couldn't remember it all. I was often burned out by all the evangelistic activity going on at any one time; the pressure to get people in the doors was intense. I began to feel like nothing I did could exist outside the realm of the church. All one's daily activities are planned with the idea of "reaching out." Even little things like having lunch with my co-workers or catching a movie by myself were branded as "selfish" if I did not "share my 'faith'" with at least one person.

One thing I haven't forgotten is the Fall day in 1993 when our singles Bible Talk which was based in Durham went to downtown Chapel Hill to walk the streets and invite people to ICoC-Triangle. When we arrived, I found that I could not/would not make myself get out of the car. After much discipling, I finally went with them, but I hung back. I was angry and frustrated, but in my mind, I would not "give them the satisfaction" of seeing me cry.

We were encouraged to reach out to "dynamic" professional people, such as physicians, attorneys, and engineers. We were given Biblical justifications for focusing our evangelism efforts toward influential people (Lydia, seller of purple, was a favorite). We were told, both in sermons and in conversation, that these types of people were needed -- both for the financial support they could give the church and for the leadership potential they "brought to the table." Unfortunately, those who weren't considered "desirable" by leadership so often fell by the wayside.

"Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things -- and the things that are not -- to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before Him." (I Corinthians 1: 26-29)

My Car Belongs to the Lord??!!?? - Mishap #1

Anyway, it was the timing belt -� broken after only 52,000 miles. Since my family was not overly happy with me regarding my involvement with the ICoC, I didn�t want to ask them to loan me the money to repair the car. (Also, I am an independent person -- I guess my "independence," or rather, trying to be "dependent" on others like a good little "disciple," is the "sin" that eventually led me out of the ICoC.) I asked my discipler for help, and she had no ideas for me. I finally decided to give (that�s right, GIVE) the car to my discipler's boyfriend -- and what a surprise! She found that she had some money after all, and she promptly loaned him the money that it was going to cost to to fix the timing belt and subsequent engine damage. Not long thereafter, he traded the car for a bright and shiny new pickup truck.