I’ve been reading a string of items on two subjects lately that have saddened me.
The first is a series of posts by Kristen at Walking Circumspectly (Three of them: here, here and here.). I only know her from her blog and I only found my way there from one of my readers. Kristen’s been writing about her experiences in the ICOC in college back in the early 90’s. She was a part of the Atlanta ICOC church for around a month. She calls the ICOC a cult, and frankly I don’t blame her (though I don’t agree). In the month she was a part of the campus ministry there, she was exposed to the worst of the ICOC of those days. The performance mindset, judgementalism, high evangelism expectations, warnings about spending any time with, or even contact, her family and more. I can remember the warnings about my family when I was in campus, and they were in fact scary and intimidating. I too had strong a strong family which saved our relationship (in ways I would only learn of in the past couple of years.)
Her story saddens me for a couple of reasons. First, of course, is the sadness that anyone should come to a church looking for God and be told that to find Him means to abandon the most important folks in your life. All too many over the years have found elitism, arrogance and high expectations instead of grace and forgiveness. To be told that the ICOC was the only church and everyone else was not. She says that the month long experience over 10 years ago still impacts her today.
The other thing that saddens me about it is how one sided it is. I don’t fault Kristen for that, it’s what she knows. After she left, as was common, those who she had thought were her friends didn’t want to talk to her anymore. She was a ‘fall away’, a casualty of the war to save souls. She had made her choice and they had more souls to find. That’s the result of the lopsided, evangelism focused ministry the ICOC practiced. (I am not saying that evangelism isn’t important, just that it is not the most important thing.) She still wanted to know what the ICOC was and to learn more. With no one from the ICOC talking to her to keep her informed, she got her news on the ICOC from anti-ICOC organizations like Reveal. (Frankly, I am speculating here a bit, making assumptions from her posts. Kristen, if you’re reading, please correct me if I’m wrong.)
In contrast, my 17 year experience with the ICOC has been overwhelmingly positive. I have seen much of the things she talks about in her posts, even (shamefully) participated in some. But they did not have the negative impact on me they did on her. Over the years I was able to have an amazing and pure dating life in college (how many guys have a date nearly every week with a variety of wonderful women?), to meet the woman of my dreams, court her and marry her, to have relationships that would help me to become the husband I wanted to be, to help my marriage shine, to help me learn to not stop questioning things, to take sin seriously and seriously pursue repentance and more. My point is not to say, “See Kristen, you’ve got it all wrong.” Rather, I’m saying that my perspective without hers or hers without mine is an incomplete picture of the ICOC. We’ve had our faults and we’ve had our successes. We should look at both.
The second thing that has saddened me lately is both unrelated and completely related. Pinakidion has been writing about the teachings coming from the Portland ICOC church. Portland is where Kip McKean, the former leader of the ICOC, is currently leading. Pinakidion has been chronicling some of the things said and comparing them to things said years ago (Have a read: here, here, here, here and here.) The talk out of the NW (and there’s been a lot) sounds familiar. There’s lots of talk about how many great things they’re doing there in Portland, how folks have been coming from miles around to see how they’re doing it, how they’ve heard the other churches aren’t discipling anymore and have forgotten the mission to evangelize and grow and there’s even been talk of how they’re targeting cities where churches have abandoned discipling and evangelism. Pinakidion points out, and I agree, that it sounds a lot like 1979 all over again.
It makes me sad because I thought, hoped, that we had learned something in the past couple of years of re-evaluating and reconsidering our practices. Perhaps not. Now certainly, Portland does not speak for the whole of the ICOC, but not many are speaking against what is being taught there. I may disagree with Mr. McKean’s teachings and priorities in his message, but I will give him credit for knowing what he believes and speaking passionately about it. He’s an amazing man, with amazing passion and charisma. Where are the charismatic, passionate and outspoken men to make a difference teaching the radical grace and love that Jesus taught rather than works, performance and growth?
It’s sad to see so many papers and apologies written, so many relationships strained or broken, so many churches split and so much hurting over the last couple of years to perhaps end up, collectively, right back where we were. If we do, it will not be because that’s where we decided to go, but instead because we didn’t really decide to go anywhere else.

Go check out this post at the Thinklings. It’s a very profound lesson learned from a door to door saleswoman:

We are granted by God the ability to choose. When we make the right choices early (at the door) there is less regret, less going back to correct, and less buyer’s remorse.
Our hearts are so important. What we allow in them is not to be taken for granted. Be wise, and be careful.

Very wise stuff indeed, go read it.

Douglas Jacoby has an interesting article on Church Discipline posted on his web site. Since the Deacons of the church have spent some time on this and I’ve chronicled that and my thoughts here, I thought I’d link to it here.
It was written in 1994 and revised in 2005. It refers a lot to the practices of the CoC in general and the ICoC in particular. It does however, disagree with those practices and present a good summary of what the Bible says about the subject. The primary scriptures are Matthew 18, Luke 17, Titus 3, 1 Corinthians 5, 2 Thessalonians 3 and 3 John 10 although reference is made to several others.
It’s well worth the read and has caused me to rethink some of my ideas on the subject.