Part 1: Kip McKean & the International Church of Christ | Cultish @ExposingtheCults

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Enjoy the podcast. All right. Welcome back to Cultish, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Jeremiah Roberts, one of the co-hosts here flying solo today with Steve Matthews, who's come out from California, been on a couple of times.

And we've always covered a broad variety of topics today. We're going to be talking about the International Church of Christ. We've had a couple episodes where we've talked about the mainline Church of Christ with our good friends, Trey and with Jeremiah.

But we're talking specifically about the International Church of Christ.

And the International Christian Church.

Yes. So yeah, let's just jump into it. Where's the best place to start in this conversation?

Well, we're going to start off by explaining the history and beliefs of the movement. And we're going to, you know, discussing today. And then we're going to get really deep into the biblical verses they use to show baptism necessary for salvation.

We're going to go through every verse that they use and show how they're really twisting it to say we've got to be baptized in order to be saved. And this group is real. I'm really glad we're doing this because this group has heard a lot of people.

You know, there's a lot of people looking for information on them, but they're just like just want nothing out on the International Christian Church. So we're really hoping these estimates, you know, these episodes going to help a lot of people.

There's a lot of parents who are going to be finding this through a Google search. And they're hurting right now because they have a son or daughter who went away to a university and they're going to be just nodding when they're hearing these words and saying, that's my child.

They went away to university. They were invited to a Bible study. Now they're going to this church and they think now that they're disciple and that nobody else in the family saved, that I was wrong in my life and that you need to start coming to this church and experience salvation in this one true church.

And we're going to walk through the history. We're going to explain, you know, a lot of things about this group and some of the problems in it and hopefully provide a really solid Christian response to this group across the board.

So tune in. It's going to be an interesting episode.

Awesome, man. I'm pumped about it.

The Restoration Movement and the Roots of Church of Christ Teaching

So these movements that we're talking about today, there's a bunch of them. They're all founded by one guy called Kip McKean and the Boston Church of Christ or the Boston Movement was huge in the 80s and a bit in the 90s.

Other names associated with these groups are the Crossroads Church of Christ, the ICOC, which is the International Church of Christ, the ICC, which is the modern incarnation we're going to cover, the International Christian Church.

And there's other names also like Multiplying Ministries, the Discipling Movement, the City of Angels International Christian Church, God's Modern Day Movement or the Movement. I've actually got some notes on my iPad here because there's just so much stuff I don't want to miss.

And I want to make sure I mention it all. It's going to just guide me to try to get as much as well as a lot of the quotes we'll be doing today. So this has been an extremely controversial group in the media and among countercult ministries.

They've been a campus ministry mainly, and they target students between the age of 25, 20 to 35. And when people go into colleges, they're away from home, they're in a new city, they don't have any friends, they don't have the family.

They're in a real state of transition. And you know how cults do that. They like to go after people in this kind of thing, become a new family and you're on the campus and you can do it. But it's interesting is not only is this group the number one of all cults that are on campuses in the country, probably around the world, they target students or campus ministry.

They're the number one group to be in campus, but they're also the number one group to be banned from campuses. They've been banned from a lot of the major university and colleges around the country. And there's a saying where there's smoke, there's fire.

So it's a very controversial group. I've heard actually that in the 90s, there was more people seeing counselors and psychologists and therapists after coming to this group than all the cult groups put together.

Because they do such an amazing number on your head as they try to remake you in the image of leadership.

Yeah. And when you just recruit, I don't want to be jumping ahead, but when you say banned from campus, was that because of the behavior on campus or the recruitment methods? Recruiting tactics.

Yeah, a lot of that stuff there. I mean, I'll tell you, you know, I have studied a lot of different groups. This and the World Mission Society, Church of God, the group I'm most worried about, are the two most hardcore groups out there of all cults put together.

I mean, you think you met a lot of Mormon Jehovah's Witnesses or Christian Science. You want to talk about a hardcore group? This group is very, very, very committed. In fact, they're called the sold out discipling movement.

Originally the International Church of Christ, they told themselves the total commitment movement. This is the sold out discipling movement. If you have family or friends in there, you know about that.

Because you know, where a lot of Christians are lukewarm or carnal, not 100 committed. We hang on to our sins. This group, they give everything, everything to God. The whole point of this group is they hold back no sin, no area.

If their leadership said, go to the Philippines tomorrow to plant a church, they're going to go. I mean, we're talking fully committed. They talk about counting the cost. This group is hardcore. So just to drive it home, it's not like talking to these people.

So when they go to campus, what they do is they'll, in different places where they send out members to establish a new community. First thing they do is they'll probably get their Excel spreadsheet out.

Okay, here's all the local campus, all the universities around. We're going to send people that have, you know, campus devos here and outreach over here. They'll go onto the campuses. They're not even like students at the school, but they want to fit in.

So they're going to put backpacks on and they're going to try to walk, put some fake books in there. They're going to try to look like they're belonging on campus. And they don't like, you know, the cults on campus, like, like we're much like church of God or Shinchonji.

You know, those are the other two groups. They won't use their real name. And they'll say, oh, we're part of a group. And we'll tell you later. But these guys will sometimes do it. They don't have church buildings.

They always rent and they meet in space like, you know, hotels. They meet home churches or, you know, sometimes rent and rent a room, you know, group a room on a campus to meet like, you know, a certain place.

Well, it's deceptive recruiting tax. I mean, it's no different than what happened to see.

We're talking more about the way they want to save money from buying a church building to use it for missions. This group is all about expansion missions. And what's interesting about this group. See when we talk about other groups like Mormons or world, which side church of God, or any of these different groups, Baha 'i this group, these are mainly Christians in this group.

The problem is they don't think we're Christians and they're very divisive, but they can say the apostles creed, you know, they believe in the Trinity, the bodily resurrection of Jesus and the incarnation and the second bodily second coming and everything where the cults don't, these guys are, you know, they can say the creeds they're mainly Christian.

They don't have additional scriptures. They use the NIV Bible and they make Christianity really fun. I mean, you know, their service. I mean, a lot of ways they really beat us at our own game. They they're very loving and inclusive.

When you go there, they'll, they'll greet you with love. They have great music. They integrate relationship, really creative ideas. And their founder Kip, he came out of the mainline church of Christ like you've done on the previous episodes.

But this is like the new young hip campus ministry version of the old churches of Christ. A lot of churches Christ, it's a dying movement in a lot of ways that they'll admit that themselves and their stats, they're just fading out.

There's less and less churches of Christ. A lot of them are closing the doors, but this movement is expanding worldwide and they want to evangelize the world in one generation. So Kip is just, Kip McKean who founded these movements is an amazing dynamic and talented preacher.

His sermons, I mean, he just, he knows how to speak and just to lay it down and he calls for a total commitment from his followers. I mean, a complete, you're not holding any since you're giving it all to God and the idea of real evangelism and reaching the world one generation.

Again, like a lot of these newer high demand groups, they are a high demand group. They're not like Mormons. You know, when you leave Mormonism, you don't get PTSD. You don't have like a sense of loss of those years that you're in the group.

But this group, they're, they're much more high demand, high control. The bite model, the Stephen Hassen stuff, that's this group. So you know, they're very aggressive. The older ICOC movement, they're in about 150 countries.

The ICC are over 40 countries and they're growing and they want to be in every country in the world. They're very exclusive and divisive. They look at Christians needing to be saved. Like I said, we're lukewarm.

They're the ones who are fired up disciples. And they've really affected a lot of people. They've done a lot of damage out there. So that's why we're giving a good Christian response to them today.

Awesome. Awesome. And so you want to jump into the history for starters?

Well, history is going to go through a couple of steps. So I call them an offshoot and offshoot and offshoot because like, you know, with, you know, they came out of regular Christianity. The church of Christ came out of regular Christianity.

And then the Boston ICOC came out of the mainline churches of Christ. And now the ICC has come out of the ICOC. So there's a lot of offshoot stuff coming out. We're going to go through the history, but we're going to talk about it in two levels.

So we'll talk first about the restoration movement, the history since that is the background. They're big in the South, but they're declining a lot. They're not big in like California where I'm from. And within the restoration movement, you have the churches of Christ, the disciples of Christ and the Christian church.

And the church of Christ will have the instrumentals, non-instrumentalists. There's a lot of interfering there. They have a number of colleges and universities like Harding University, Abilene Christian University, Pepperdine.

So those are examples of universities and publishing houses they have. This group claims to be the restoration of true Christianity, but isn't there like a lot of restorations, right? Like Joseph Smith is set to restore the gospel.

Jehovah's Witnesses, Seventh-day Adventists, Herbert Armstrong, the World Mission Society Church of God. You know, they all say the same thing, right? That the early church was created. Then a few years after, whether Council and IC or in the first couple, pick of the belt, the true church disappeared.

And then someone had to come along in the 1800s and restore the group.

They emulate the Gnostic movements of the first century. Hey, the truth has been lost. We're the ones who've uncovered the secret gnosis of Christianity.

Yeah, we got to bring it back to earth. So this is the same thing that kind of happened in a different way with the restoration movement. We're not talking about a reformation. So if we have people who get irritated hearing this in the mainline churches of Christ, hey, your movement started by your founding fathers, wasn't a reformation of Christianity.

One thing like Walter Martin, we've got to mention Uncle Wally. So Walter Martin would say in reference to Mormonism, it's one thing to talk about reforming Christianity. It's another thing to talk about restoration.

When you're talking about restoration, it's like, it's got to be brought back. Now the ICC, they'll definitely talk about a restoration of Christianity. We'll never go into that history, but the very terms within the mainline churches of Christ of the restoration.

So you have like the four leading figures, the founding fathers will call them of restorationism. We have Thomas and Alexander Campbell. You have Barton W. Stone and Walter Scott. And they, you know, it claimed originally to be a non-denominational movement.

They'll sometimes say that too, but you know, it really is a denomination. People will say, well, hey, you have so many divisions in Christianity, you know, and like we don't want to be part of it. So what they can do, they can start a new denomination.

You know, it's actually, where does the word denomination come from? It comes with Latin, like a denominator, like a division. Well, guess what? Church of Christ, you won't, they won't admit it, but in a sense you're very much a denomination.

They'll try to say they're not. So it kind of started when Thomas and Alexander Campbell, they were Presbyterians who came to America from Ireland. And you know, Thomas came over in 1807. Alexander came with the rest of the family in 1809.

And they saw the churches in America and they saw like all these different things. They say, oh, look at all those denominations. And he goes, we don't want to have all these creeds. So we're going to start our own church.

And we say, no creed, but Christ. And, you know, they have all these sayings within restorationism where the Bible speaks, we speak, where the Bible is silent, we are silent. They wanted to kind of originally go back to the Bible as kind of a unity movement.

And they ended up actually being divisive because they introduced the doctrine that you got to be baptized to be saved. So not only are divisive among the Christian groups, but they're very divisive among themselves because they believe in like, you know, the instrumentalists, the non-instrumentalists, the standards and the sitters, the one cup or the many cups.

You're smiling. Tell me why you're smiling.

The reason why I'm smiling is because I think I've told you the high school I went to was this high school is 90 Mormon.

But Andre.

Yeah, my friend Andre. I think I've told you the story.

You've said it on the air.

Yeah, this is my friend Andre. Like I was next to him and he was alongside me arguing with my Mormon friends. And all of a sudden baptism came up like John 3 verse 5. And I started arguing with them. And all of a sudden Andre started arguing with me like, wait, you're on their team?

Like what's going on here? But it was just very interesting. And I found out he was Church of Christ. And then he talked about how we are the Church of Christ because of the name of our title. And he approved text Romans 16 verse 16, which says greet one another with the holiest kiss.

Yeah.

All the Churches of Christ send greeting.

It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. It's like, hey, the true church is called the Church of Christ. So let's call ourselves the Church of Christ. Ah, see, there we are in the Bible.

So as you're saying, as my mind's eye, I'm seeing an influx of memory of my old friend Andre during high school.

He had that smile. I knew something was going on there.

Back in the late 90s.

Absolutely.

We're getting old here, man.

So they're very divisive among themselves. They're very divisive among the Christians. And they have this divisive elitist spirit that's often really hardcore in the Church of the Christ. And this is part of the problem.

So this is continued now with the International Churches of Christ, the Boston Movement, you know, and then the International Christian Church. So Thomas and Alexander Campbell at a point, even though their Presbyterian background, they became convinced that baptism should be by immersion.

So in 1812, they went to a Baptist minister, Matthias Luce, and they did a baptism by immersion. And it wasn't for a baptism of sins. It was more in line with believers' baptism. So they took the first step.

That was to come later, the baptism for remission of sins. But they took the first step, say, hey, we're going to start baptized by immersion instead of doing the Presbyterian way. So it wasn't until 1823 in his preparation for, like one thing is this group was really into public debates.

They would do, they'd call for debate with two ministers. Let's debate baptism for salvation. And we're going to have it at a church. Well, he had a debate with W .L. McCullough. Thomas was the debater, or sorry, Alexander the son was the debater of the two.

And W .L. McCullough at 1823 is preparing, and that's when he finally figured out that baptism is for the remission of sins, you know? So at this point, you know, they were never Baptist. They were associating with the Baptist.

They had the Redstone Baptist Association and stuff, but they were, the Campbells never became Baptist. But at this point when he, he had the Baptist Association 1823, when there was no church of Christ yet, they started realizing, you know, oh, now baptism is for the remission of sins.

So the big time moment comes here. This is the real point when the, in the history restoration movement, Walter Scott, 1827, he finally claims that he restored the ancient gospel November 18th, when he baptized William Ammon in New Lisbon, Ohio.

And Scott was himself was never baptized for remission of sins, but this is the first time he kind of ushers in this restoration age when he finally baptizes this one person as for the remission of sins.

So Campbell kind of was figuring it out. He got it, you know, in preparation for that debate. But now Walter Scott, one of the other founding fathers, he said, now I've actually done the restoration of that ancient gospel because now we're going to, you know, baptize for remission of sins.

That's so fascinating. So instead of a story of, for example, like Joseph Smith, who goes out to the woods and has a private revelation by way of praying to see what church is true.

I study the scripture.

Yeah.

This guy has it by way of discovery of baptizing this one other individual. And by that way, he comes to discover that he's rediscovered the true church.

Well, the ancient order of the gospel, right. That baptism is necessary for the mission of sin. So that's why, again, mainline church of Christ. When you talk about a restoration, you know, that says a lot to us.

It makes it think that like we think Mormonism and those other groups, it had to be restored. I mean, a lot of restorationists, some of them will say that we're true believers, but you know, why pick a name like the restoration movement?

If you're not trying to restore something that was missing, like get addiction.

Right.

So he rediscovered the right of baptism as how, from his perspective, it should be.

The four founding fathers. So Alexander Campbell figured out 1823, but it wasn't practiced until 1827 by Walter Scott. When that's when now the gospel has been restored and now we can start the churches of Christ.

So, and it's funny because with Kip McKean, he kind of takes a different perspective. He kind of goes with not figuring it out because he kind of took a lot of this from the church of Christ we're talking about now, but he's actually saying, God showed me, we're going to get to that.

So one more important player in the history of restorationism definitely needs to be mentioned because this really affected the ICOC and the ICC, the International Christian Church. And that was Austin McGarry.

Austin McGarry in 1884 founded a periodical, which is really big called the Firm Foundation. The two biggest publications in the mainline church of Christ are the Gospel Advocate and the Firm Foundation.

The big, for a hundred years, I mean, they were like the top two and now in 2008 Firm Foundation is gone, but the Gospel Advocate is still around. McGarry did teach something really different than the Campbells or the founding fathers.

And Austin McGarry taught that unless you know that you're being saved for the remission of sins while you're being baptized, it doesn't count. It's not a valid baptism. So what's really, so a lot of people in the churches of Christ now, you kind of have two kinds of ways of thinking in the mainline church of Christ.

Some people think, well, you're my fellow Baptist. As long as you followed God and you were sincere and you got baptized, God will honor that baptism. But others who are McGarryites influenced by the Austin McGarry thinking, you're going to say, oh, that baptism doesn't even count because you didn't know why you're taking, you just took a bath or you just got wet.

You didn't know that you were being baptized for remission of sins. So therefore it's not a valid baptism. Well, when we get to Kip McKean, he's a hardcore, not only is a Campbellite, but Kip is a McGarryite.

Yeah. Well,.

I remember when I was in Iraq with my friend Andre and even when I visited his church on several occasions and went to the Bible studies, they specifically said that any other baptism outside of their church does not count because you have to be specifically baptized into their church.

And this was just them. So I don't know that.

He probably, he might've been in a McGarryite tradition instead of just the regular Campbellite tradition. Like, I mean, there's, there's a lot of significant people in the church of Christ, like Dave Lipscomb, Jimmy Allen.

These are main, like I have the 1992 book by Jimmy Allen, who's a very prominent Harding writer and theologian for the church of Christ. And he argues against the McGarryite position. So there's, it is a split in thinking.

It was probably someone who said in that Andre's church that unless you know why you're being baptized for mission sins, it doesn't count. So that's my guess. But bottom line is the mainline church of Christ is a bad choice for anyone because they have the false teaching.

Well, first off, they had to restore the gospel because everyone else was wrong about the purpose of baptism. They denied doctrine of original sin and it's just a bad choice for denomination to find yourself a healthy, regular church with better doctrine.

But Kip McKean came from this background. So now we're going to transition to where did the international churches of Christ come from? Where's the, what about the international Christian church that we're looking at today?

Kip McKean, the Boston Movement, and the Birth of the ICC

So Kip McKean was raised a Methodist, but then he ran into the church of Christ and that kind of did a number on.

Him.

So we're talking about the rise and fall and the rise and big fall of Kip McKean because he's had two rise and falls in these movements. So Kip likes to tell a story about the 30 would be disciples and they met in the living room of Bob and Pat Gempel over in Boston.

And this is how he, the story begins. So the campus minister at the 14th street church of Christ in Gainesville, Florida was a guy called Chuck Lucas and he started a controversial program called Campus Advance and he did outreach to university students.

And the controversial practice was the idea of having a discipler and a discipleship relationship with that student when you brought them out. So Kip McKean at this time was in the early seventies. He was a student, a freshman at the university of Florida Gainesville and he was evangelized and baptized into this crossroads church of Chuck Lucas and Chuck discipled Kip for three years.

And he got a lot of his controversial thinking of discipling into Kip's head at that point. And then Kip, he graduates and then he becomes a campus minister at Northeastern college in Philadelphia. And when he was over there, he just saw how lukewarm like regular mainstream denominational Christians are.

And that really had a profound effect on Kip. He wanted to be more committed to the Lord. And the following year in 1976, Kip took another campus ministry job with the heritage chapel church of Christ in Charleston, Illinois.

So he went out there to do campus ministry in Eastern Illinois university. And he, Kip was somehow amazing at being very successful at growing the number of students in his campus outreach. But some of the practice that Kip employed on the campus hit the local newspapers.

And then it was like bad publicity for what was going on there. So this caused a, the one of the churches that funded them and it was the letter that they wrote they supported the memorial church of Christ in Houston.

There was another church Christ.

They folks,.

They supported the heritage chapel and they terminated support for Kip. They wrote a letter saying, we believe that brother McKean has brought unbiblical practice, peculiar language, subtle deceitful doctrines to Charleston from the crossroads church at.

Gainesville,.

Florida.

And then they listed 14 points of concern among this unbiblical method of confession of sins, peer pressure to conform to human judgmental standards, intimidation, the judgment of humans, that mature knowledge must be gained before one is allowed to be baptized on.

Elitism.

Hmm.

So they kind of freaked out and he said, something's going on over here with the way Kip's doing his evangelism. So Kip was successful there. So Kip was there for two more years until he was invited in 1979.

This is the big moment, 1979 when he's invited to become the campus and pulpit minister at the Lexington church of Christ in, in Massachusetts. And this is where the Boston church of Christ gets born.

Yeah.

So it's a prior to that, there were in there were like internal conflicts dangerously against him. So it almost sounds like there's signals.

They recognize that what he was doing is unorthodox and he had picked up some really weird teachings and practices from the crossroads church in Gainesville, Florida that he was using in his ministry.

And then that was starting to hit the media. Like this guy's doing some stuff, but he's starting to get into some interesting ways of kind of like then.

Disappearing,.

Confessing his sins and stuff. We're going to get into that.

Disappear and reappear.

Yeah.

So that kind of happened like that. So the big moment that Kip talks about, and this is where the Boston movement really starts on June 1st, 1979 is the day after Kip's 25th birthday. He meets with the 30 would be disciples in the living room of Bob and Pat Gemple in Boston.

And these, this is that Lexington church he was called. It was a small church. I had 30 members. It wasn't going anywhere. And Kip comes in there and he wants to implement the discipleship practices that he learned with Chuck Lucas at crossroads.

So the fall, so he basically, he talks to each member and he makes them promise. They're going to count the costs and give a total commitment. And if we do this, there's a church going to take off.

Well,.

What happened is the next year. He writes first principles.

Now,.

First principles, I got two copies here. This is the booklet they use all the time in evangelism. This is a copy from the international churches of Christ. This is a copy from the group came out of it.

We're doing today, the international Christian church, and there's different versions.

You know,.

Now they're selling this one on Amazon and they tweak them a little over the years. The international churches of Christ still use the first principles. They've modified it a bit, but this is, this all was used and this is a powerful book.

We're going to get into it. So under Kip's leadership at the Lexington church of Christ, it experienced an explosive growth. One thing about this group, remember I said there, one of the names are called multiplying ministries.

They're so incredible that they would go into a dying church of a few dozen people. And a few months later,.

There's a,.

You know,.

Hundreds of people are a couple of years later. They were able,.

I mean,.

Other churches, church growth programs looked at this group and said, how the heck are they able to, what program are they doing where they can come into a small church and have.

Hundreds.

And it was consistent. They're able to replicate it. They had this amazing model to grow church from a few people. So they did in this church. So they took this dying Lexington church of Christ church, which had 30 people that boom is a thousand people.

And they were there. That's why they're called multiplying ministries. So by 1983 with the congregation and outgrown the building, they went to the Boston opera house, which is now the became the Boston gardens.

Let me ask you this.

They're holding church service in the Boston gardens. Wow.

So as they're multiplying these ministries, is there a subtle undue influence with the doctrine with how the.

Doctrine stayed the same? We're going to hit doctrine, but they're implementing this discipleship partnering thing.

Okay.

And a lot of other controversial things that he picked up from Chuck Lucas. So the same way Kip had his bad press, you know, earlier that got him in trouble with his donors. What happened is now as the church is starting to grow in 83, they took a name.

They took on the name, the Boston church of Christ. That's when they took the name. So they were Lexington church. Now they're growing and they're growing like huge,.

The Boston opera house.

And people are watching the, how the heck is a church meeting there? So they took it from 30 people. They're exploding. They have these things. So now that they're starting to grow, what they did is they started saying missionaries out all over the U S and other countries.

And then the media started getting hold of it again. So the controversial practices that they started doing with discipling and their hardcore controlling people that started hitting the media. And then it became fire for like the counter cult ministries, family foundations, you know, everybody just started saying, this is a super controversial.

So then the growth, they're just stuffing that stuck in the fine print, kind of like any sort of legislation that gets passed by our government. There's always that pork within, within the bill.

You mean in the sense that they join the group, but there's some bad news to it too? I don't think it's, it's not even hidden. It's not even fine print. It's large print because when you become a disciple, we're going to talk about their beliefs, but when you become a disciple, you've got to be totally committed.

You got to evangelize,.

Be fishermen,.

But you got to get into making disciples and having discipleship partners. And this is where a lot of it went wrong. So that was day to day in the life of disciples. When you get baptized in this group for the mission of sins, you get assigned a discipleship partner.

And you got to meet with them. We'll go into that. And you got to confess everything and you got to follow them. And sometimes there was bad Apple discipleship partners who got really micromanaging, give you bad advice and controlling and the media got hold of that.

So during this explosive growth period that became known as the multiplying ministries and the media was starting to know, and they would even do a reconstruction program where they would go into mainline churches of Christ and then turn them into this new Boston movement.