International Churches of Christ

The Churches emphasize the use of only the New Testament to find doctrine, ecclesiastical structure, and moral beliefs, while maintaining that the Old Testament, the only Testament recognized in Judaism, is also the Word of God, is historically accurate, and that its principles remain true and beneficial, but that its laws are not binding under the new covenant in Christ unless otherwise taught in the New Testament.

The a cappella Churches of Christ membership numbers approximately 2,000,000 in over 40,000 individual congregations worldwide.

In 1972 (the fifth year of the Campus Advance program), the Crossroads Church recruited a young freshman at the University of Florida named Thomas 'Kip' McKean. The son of an admiral, McKean was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, and is purportedly named after his ancestor Thomas McKean (a signer of the Declaration of Independence). McKean completed his degree program while training at Crossroads and afterward served as campus minister at several other mainline Churches of Christ locations. In 1979 he was offered the position of pulpit and campus minister at a struggling Boston-area congregation called the Lexington Church of Christ. Under McKean's hegemony the church — renamed to 'Boston Church of Christ' — witnessed rapid growth from 30 members at the time of his arrival to 3,000 in just two years.

Once among the fastest-growing religious movements in the country, expansion of the mainline Churches of Christ had stagnated by 1970. McKean sought to reverse this.

The Boston church sent mission teams to Chicago and London in 1981, and New York shortly thereafter. The term "International Churches of Christ" was applied to the movement by the Mainline Churches of Christ during the 1980s, as it was characterized both by ICOC church plantings and 'reconstructions' of the mainline in the United States and elsewhere. The movement took on a more centralized structure[specify] after Kip McKean assumed leadership of the Los Angeles church in the late 1980s.[citation needed] In 2000, the ICOC announced the completion of its six-year initiative to establish a church in every country with a population over 100,000. Two years later, membership peaked at 135,046 in more than 540 congregations across the globe. The Los Angeles church rapidly evolved into a "superchurch" that attracted thousands of members. This centralized structure lasted until 2002, when McKean resigned from his leadership role, and was furthered by a letter written by then-London church leader Henry Kriete pointing out shortcomings of the ICOC. Since 2003, the International Churches of Christ have no formally recognized headquarters, councils, centralized structure, or hierarchical church government, but many of them still maintain close ties with each other. Some have sought reunification with mainline churches. And, in recent years, McKean has formed another offshoot[vague] movement in Portland, Oregon, which is referred to as "International Christian Churches" to distinguish it from the ICOC.

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