The International Churches of Christ: beliefs, history and sources

History & overview

The Restoration Movement with a discipler assigned to you.

A movement that grew out of the a cappella Churches of Christ through the campus ministry of the 1970s and the Boston Church of Christ founded by Kip McKean in 1979. It kept the Restoration doctrine of baptism and added two things the parent body had never had: a central hierarchy, and discipling partners — every member paired with a more mature member to whom they confessed and from whom they took direction. It grew to 135,000 by 2002 and then broke apart in public.

On the record

Since December 2022, more than twenty women have brought civil actions in the United States alleging that the International Churches of Christ and affiliated churches and leaders facilitated and concealed sexual abuse of children and young members. An initial set of federal lawsuits, filed in the Central District of California and including federal racketeering claims, was voluntarily dismissed by the plaintiffs in July 2023; the abuse claims were refiled and expanded in the Los Angeles Superior Court in filings from July 2023 through October 2024. The claims include assault, negligent supervision and failure to report. These are allegations. No court has entered a finding of liability against the ICOC on them as of this writing, and the movement denies the allegations.

Why it is filed this way

The ICOC is classed as a movement rather than a denomination because of its origin as a discipling network inside another body, its central hierarchy, and the intensity of its membership demands. It has been called a cult by campus ministries, by former members, and in the pleadings of litigation against it; it rejects the term, and Panfaith uses it only to report who applied it.

The movement reorganised after 2003, when the central hierarchy collapsed. Kip McKean left and in 2006 founded a separate body, now called the International Christian Church, which is a different organisation from the ICOC.

DeitiesThe Trinity, held conventionally. The distinctive doctrine is not about God but about what it takes to be saved: baptism as a disciple, after counting the cost, into a church that will hold you to it.

Founded1979 CE · Lexington, Massachusetts

FounderKip McKean

AfterlifeResurrection and judgment, preached with a strong emphasis on the small number who will be saved

TextsThe Bible · First Principles — the standardised Bible study series used with every convert · Discipleship literature of the movement

The map

The International Churches of Christ’s corner of it — solid lines are descent; dotted lines are resemblance only, ideas held in common across unrelated faiths. Click a node to recenter; ✕ returns here. All 171 faiths →

c. 1000 BCE Judaism 30 CE Christianity 1517 CE Protestantism 1809 CE The Restoration Movement (Churches of Christ) 1979 CE The International Churches of Christ

Core Tenets

2 — a sample of the center, never the sum Enter →

You are not baptised into Christ unless you were baptised as a disciple. The doctrine that defined the movement and separated it from its parent: a valid baptism requires that the person already be a disciple who has counted the cost, which meant almost every previous baptism was void. Converts from other churches, including from the Churches of Christ, were routinely rebaptised. Go deeper — context →

Nobody grows alone — so everyone is discipled by someone. Every member was paired with a discipler to whom they confessed and from whom they took direction on evangelism, money, relationships and time. The movement taught this as the New Testament pattern; former members describe it as the mechanism through which control ran, and the movement's own leaders apologised for how it was used. ⚖ contested within Go deeper — context →

Figures

who it looks to — gods, spirits, ancestors; some rooms are empty on principle Enter →

K Kip McKean — thirty members in 1979, and a hundred thousand by 2002. He took a small Massachusetts congregation and built a worldwide movement in twenty years by planting churches from a mission team and requiring every member to be discipled. He stepped down as world missions evangelist in November 2002, left the ICOC, and in 2006 founded a separate body. Domain Discipling, church planting, the Boston movementStanding Founder, then removed; the ICOC and McKean now describe each other at a distance Meet them — context →

Rites & Ritual

what its people do — and when Enter →

The weekly discipling meeting. Sit down with your partner and account for the week: prayer, Bible reading, who you invited, what you gave, what you did and did not do. Confession is expected. The partner is assigned, not chosen, and is themselves accounting upward. When Weekly, and in practice daily — the discipling relationship, with a set meeting each weekWho Every member, paired with a more mature member Go deeper — context →

Where next

the museum exit — every door leads deeper in

Christianity — 9 shared ideas, a different faith Sikhism — 9 shared ideas, a different faith Islam — 8 shared ideas, a different faith Judaism — 7 shared ideas, a different faith Branch The International Churches of Christ — inherit everything, change what you must The library of ideas — what The International Churches of Christ shares with every other faith A faith at random — somewhere you have never been