The International Churches of Christ

Movement·Founded 1979 CE·About 112,000 members in roughly 700 congregations across 147 or 148 nations, on the movement's own March 2024 reporting; its own site gives 107,000 in 767 congregations for a slightly different date. Membership peaked at about 135,000 in 2002 and fell after the 2003 crisis. All figures are self-reported and there is no independent audit.

Judaism → Christianity → Catholicism → Protestantism → The Restoration Movement (Churches of Christ) → The International Churches of Christ

Branch
Community of The International Churches of Christ

A movement that removed its own hierarchy.

After 2003 the ICOC had no world leader and no central authority for over a decade, and congregations reorganised into voluntary regional families; a Catalyst Team and regional family chairs were established in 2017. The reconstruction is real and the litigation now pending concerns the years before it.

How you joinA series of studies called First Principles, then baptism as a disciple, usually within weeks and often the same day as the decision
Who leadsEvangelists and elders in each congregation; since 2017 a Catalyst Team and regional family chairs rather than a single world leader
The unitThe city church, divided into regions, sectors and small groups
Understanding it — context, not catechism: how this passage is held

What exists now is a substantially different organisation from the one that peaked in 2002: congregations hold their own property and appoint their own elders and evangelists, and coordination runs through voluntary regional families with a Catalyst Team established in 2017 to serve them. The movement reports about 700 congregations in 147 or 148 nations. The record before the reorganisation includes the campus bans of the 1990s, when a long list of universities in the United States, Britain and elsewhere withdrew recognition from ICOC campus chapters over recruitment practices, and the sustained criticism from countercult organisations and from the parent Churches of Christ. The civil litigation filed since December 2022 concerns conduct alleged to have occurred largely in the 1990s and 2000s; it is at the pleading stage, no liability has been found, and the movement denies the allegations. Anyone reading the movement's own account should read the Kriete letter and the litigation reporting alongside it.

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