The International Church of Christ has changed toward a more autonomous relationship between congregations. Within some congregations the leadership permits greater flexibility. Now some are moving toward accepting non-ICOC churches of Christ.

These changes are admirable but do not strike the core of what defines the ICOC.

ICOC teaching, practice and attitude is rife with human authority, legalism, and division. ICOC leaders are self-appointed and unaccountable. They claim that to trust God is to trust them, that to disobey them is to disobey God. They claim the right to dictate requirements of their own design. They claim that their decisions and their actions speak the sovereign will of God. They claim that to leave their authority is to reject committed Christianity.

They justify their powers by biblical references and human rationalizations about kings, fathers, husbands, apostles, and, ironically, Pharisees and Moses the lawgiver. The church has a Father, and a King, and a Husband, but it is not these men.

The Mosaic Law was nailed to the cross. Yet these self-proclaimed evangelists and elders claim authority forbidden to apostles and bind their own rules as membership requirements in Jesus’ church.

They have stood for the preservation of their organization and the maintenance of their own positions, from which they derive their prestige, power and pay. Now they peddle their failing movement and call it re-unification, and they market flexibility under their authority as freedom in Christ.

I was a member of the ICOC and its preceding campus ministries from 1981 to 2003. In that time many have stood up for the King and the ICOC rulers ushered them to the door. ICOC rulers rejected those who stood for truths that most of you take for granted

These who now claim to speak for the ICOC said nothing when all these things happened. That reveals their heart more than a dozen Lectureships.

Dale Jacques
San Jose, California