International Church of Christ

[fakepigtails73]

Does anyone here know about the International Church Of Christ* ? Do you know anyone that is a member?

 

In the late 90's while living in another province I worked in a recording studios, and one of my coworkers kept on inviting me to weekly evening bible sessions. I always declined, but not before asking him questions about his church. One night I looked it up on the pre-Wiki internet; it took me a while to find infos since there are many churches with the name "Church Of Christ". Most of what I found about it creeped me out; very right wing on social issues, members have many, many hours of proseletizing to do weekly (my coworker was trying to get me to go to these bible revivals, at the end it got so persistant that after a couple of months I ended up telling our manager), members call each other "Brother" and "Sister" and when one is a member he or she ends up tithing lots of $$ (if you were broke you had to volunteer yr time). On the other hand my coworker listened to rock music of the secular kind and drank beer once in a while, so either he wasn't following the rules 100% or that church didn't mind rock and beer...

 

The weirdest thing that he told me was that he only could date other members, and the girl he was dating at the time had been chosen by a church elder.

 

The average age of the parishionners of that congregation was 27, which seems pretty young for a fundie sect.

 

Coworker was "slick" at first: he asked me if after work I wanted to go with him and meet some cool people to talk about what's going on in the world (we were talking during a smoke break about Kosovo). No mention of any church. I'm glad I didn't go, as I was new in town, didn't have much friends yet and was vulnerable. I dodged a bullet!

 

 

* not to confuse with the mainline Protestant denom. of similar name. The one I'm talking about is "International Church of Christ."

[Guest Anonymous]

Not heard of ICOC but I am familiar with the dynamic of being invited to go for a coffee/meet a group of people to talk about 'relevant' issues. *shudders* Usually some awful sort of emergent church tactic. :twisted:

[Katiedarling]

I have two friends that were involved in this cult back in the early 2000s while in college. One of my friends went through all of their "steps" leading up to baptism before realizing that they were a cult. She went to school at USC (University of Southern California- they were ultimately banned from the school if I recall correctly) and had to fly home for a week to escape their hounding once she decided not to get baptized. My other friend was baptized into the group on the campus at the University of Washington. Both friends came from mainstream Evangelical backgrounds and were convinced that they weren't true Christians until they were baptized into the ICOC. They really had a huge run back in the 1990s and early 2000s until after many websites exposed them and they were banned from many college campuses they finally had a major split in the group and their leader Kip McKean had to step down. His stepping down was temporary and once a power addict, always a power addict he was last I heard running an ICOC church in Portland. The movement has mellowed significantly. They are still a fundie sect, but probably less likely to be classified as a fundie cult at this point due to the leadership overhaul they've experienced. Not that I'd recommend hanging out with them to find out if they aren't a cult anymore. ;)

You can learn a ton from a former member site- at www.reveal.org as well as from the many many articles posted by Rick Ross.

I can share a lot more of how they worked on campuses in the early 2000s as I witnessed it first hand, but I think the Reveal site does a better first hand job. Let me know if you have any questions.

[fakepigtails73]

Thanks for the link!

I heard that they're a pest on college campuses...

[crassy]

I am VERY familiar with them. I was married to the son of ICOC royalty.

I can try to answer any questions you may have.

(FWIW I am and always have been an anti-theist/atheist. My ex-husband left the church 3 years before we got married. I have never been a member of that church but I am quite familiar with the inner-workings, the bullshit rules and regulations, and the weird practices).

I will address the points you made in your original post though...

Yes, they can only date within the church. When they get to be about 16 or so they go out on group dates. These are encouraged by the church. If you want to get to know someone better, you have to ask your discipler (like a mentor, everyone in the church has one) who then asks the discipler of the other person. They talk about it, talk to the pastor and/or elders, and they decide if it would be a good match. If they say it is ok, the disciplers will get the two together. Only then are you allowed to go out on one-on-one dates but with a chaperone. Marriage works the same way. You have to pretty much ask permission to do anything involving relationships. It always seemed to me that they didn't want people to marry down, especially the 'royalty' children (my ex was one of these, at least within the Canadian churches but I know his dad was close with Kip McKean the founder the church).

Before you can get married, though, you have to sit down and have all these crazy 'talks' where you confess everything bad you have done throughout your entire life. Same goes for before you are baptised (not only that but you have to watch this crazy video about the medical aspects of being crucified. It is horrifying).

I watched my ex-brother-in-law go through all of this. His (now) wife actually called off the wedding when he admitted to watching porn.

They have very defined gender roles, and come with all of the bullshit that other fundamentalists do. No sex, no this, no that. In their prime, they would make married couples keep records of their sexual activities. Once a month they would sit down with their disciplers and go through it. There was also a lot of judging on how a home was kept, and if you weren't up to scratch, you would be publicly called out in church.

In the late 80s/early 90s their goal was to have a church in every city in the world with a population over 100K. They were fairly close to doing it as well. A lot of love-bombing, campus missions, brainwashing, and other cult-like tactics were used. They were banned from many university campuses around the world.

Around 2004 a guy named Henry Kriete wrote a letter to the church outlining all that he saw was wrong (letter can be read here: http://www.tolc.org/kriete.htm). It pretty much blew the church to bits and everyone scrambled to figure out where they fit in, what they were going to do, and how they would keep the church going. I believe Kip stepped down (which he should have done long before that). Since then the church has been fairly low-key. They run a charity mission called Hope Worldwide but basically keep to themselves.

I have a heap of stories and weird anecdotes about my time spent around (and trying to get away from) these people.

And just curious...was your experience with this musical guy in Toronto, Vancouver or Calgary? If so, I may know the person. My ex was a drummer (a really good one too) and played and hung out with all the other musicians in the church. One of them is a country singer now and doing fairly well for himself. He used to work at a recording studio as well...

As for the beer/rock music, yes, it is ok within the church. Having a drink is ok, getting sloshed is not. My ex-FIL and I used to go out for beers fairly often as he was a big fan of micro brews and scotch. He was also a massive fan of Rush. What is really fucked up is that he was a math/science major at Queen's University and dropped out after he found Jesus. On his blog (yes, I stalk every so often) he has a picture of Darwin with a caption saying 'This used to be my hero until I found the truth'. It makes me so angry because he is a really smart guy but just got sucked in to this ridiculous cult where he was given power and authority and totally drank the kool-aid.

[fakepigtails73]

Wow, interesting!

I'll mention the city: Toronto. Wouldn't that be funny if you knew him!

I read that they were banned from Ryerson's campus.

I was able to read through the BS and detect a form of "friendship bombing" on that guy's part. Weird thing was that if he wouldn't have mentionned the religious part of his life I never would have known...Nothing "fundie" about him when you say him.

[crassy]

Wow, interesting!

I'll mention the city: Toronto. Wouldn't that be funny if you knew him!

I read that they were banned from Ryerson's campus.

I was able to read through the BS and detect a form of "friendship bombing" on that guy's part. Weird thing was that if he wouldn't have mentionned the religious part of his life I never would have known...Nothing "fundie" about him when you say him.

The possibility is very good that I do. My ex-inlaws ran the Toronto COC (which I always pronounced cock).

I believe there was an unofficial rule that everyone had to bring in so many bodies to the church every month or every year (or maybe it was that the church had to grow by a certain number every year. Those who brought more people in got some sort of brownie points, those who didn't were seen as not pulling their weight and were probably on the receiving end of some sort of punishment.

[BloodyIbiza]

I was involved in ICOC (São Paulo) for a few months in 2000. I never got baptized, though. I can say that love bombing, quotas, and emotional manipulation all happened. I left without many scars, but a few friends were quite traumatized by the experience.