There is nothing to join.
No general assembly, no roll, no charter, no officers over the congregations. A church is one of these churches because it says it is and because other such churches recognise it — which means the boundary is maintained by a magazine, a convention and a set of colleges rather than by any authority.
The independent Christian Churches are the clearest existing test of whether a body can be a movement without being an organisation. There is no general convention with authority, no ordination held nationally, no membership list, and no doctrinal statement anyone is required to sign. What performs the functions of a denomination is a set of parallel institutions: the North American Christian Convention, held annually from 1927 and reorganised as Spire in 2018; some three dozen Bible colleges; direct-support mission networks; and Christian Standard, published continuously since 1866, which functions as the movement's newspaper of record and its informal boundary-keeper. When a congregation drifts, nothing happens to it institutionally; it simply stops being invited and listed.
The same ground, other faiths
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