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International Churches of Christ (ICC) Boston Movement Crossroads Movement

A Glossary of ICC Terms

This glossary is in alphabetical order. Please select the first letter of the term you want to look up, or scroll down if you are just browsing.

Numbers | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z

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The Crossroads Church of Christ: The movement which later developed into the ICC started at the 14th Street Church of Christ in Gainesville, Florida in 1967, when its evangelist, Chuck Lucas, began a campus ministry at the University of Florida. The 14th Street church later moved to a new building at a major intersection in Gainesville and adopted the name "Crossroads Church of Christ". Until the mid-1980s the ICC was affiliated with the larger Crossroads movement.

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discipleship: A central practice of the ICC, in which an older/more mature member (the discipler) mentors/"advises" a younger, less mature member (the disciple). The "advice" given by a discipler to a disciple is tantamount to an order in most cases -- a disciple which refuses to follow his discipler's advice will usually get into considerable trouble, frequently will loose whatever position he has gained in the group, and may jeopardize his membership in the ICC.

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elder: The second level of authority within a local congregation, under the evangelist. If a congregation has elders, it always has at least two. Elders function as advisers to the evangelist and take on those tasks which the evangelist assigns to them.; History: This term stems from the mainline Church of Christ. In mainline congregations with elders, there are always at least two because in the Bible the Apostle Paul always refers to elders in the plural, and the ICC has kept this tradition. In mainline congregations the elders (not the evangelist) have final authority over the congregation, though, and the duties which in the ICC devolve upon the evangelist are often performed by the elders.; During the early years of the discipling/Crossroads movement, movement campus ministries and campus evangelists often came into conflict with the elders at their local churches. This pattern of conflict led to the early Boston Church of Christ leaders rejecting the earlier practice of founding ministries at existing mainline Churches of Christ in favor of starting, or planting, new churches committed to discipling movement beliefs and practices from the outset. Many observers of the ICC believe that the office of elder is likely to become obsolete in the future.
evangelist: The evangelist is the leader of the local congregation in the ICC. Only the evangelist at his pillar church or the leaders of the movement as a whole have authority over him. Evangelists preach on Sundays and manage the church's other activities.

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mainline Church of Christ: This term came into use in the late 1980s, when the ICC finally officially split off from the Churches of Christ, to distinguish those Churches of Christ who were not part of the ICC from those who were. The Churches of Christ are a conservative Protestant denomination, usually viewed as fundamentalist evangelicals by non-evangelicals, the bulk of whose members live in the U.S. "Bible Belt", which covers much of the southern and midwestern states. There are non-ICC-affiliated Churches of Christ in many parts of the world, though, and active Church of Christ missions on all inhabited continents.; History: The Churches of Christ arose in the United States during a widespread frontier Christian revival in the early 1800s, and are the more conservative wing of the Restoration movement, as it came to be called. The distinguishing characteristics of this movement were its belief in ending religious division by rejecting all sources of religious authority outside of the Bible, and rejecting all denominational affiliations and ties. Churches of Christ have no formal central religious authority, and individual congregations are totally autonomous.; For more information on the Churches of Christ, you can access a WWW Site put up by members.
mission team: A group of people chosen by ICC leaders to move to a new area and start a new local church. A mission team will consist of an evangelist, who heads the team, and assorted others.
The Movement: In the mid-1970s those ministries planted by the Crossroads Church of Christ and other churches following a similar church growth/discipling/shepherding methodology adopted the term "the movement" for themselves. This is largely due to the admiration many early movement people had for Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights movement. Through the end of the 1980s this was the most common term used to refer to all discipling Churches of Christ, whether they were planted by the Boston Church of Christ or from another part of the discipling movement. Since the end of the 1980s the term "kingdom" has come to be used more frequently within the ICC itself, but Churches of Christ from the discipling movement era which did not affiliate with the Boston Church of Christ in 1987 and 1988 continue to use this term.

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planting: Movementspeak for starting a new local church in a new area. Usually a mission team is assembled by an existing church to do this, and trains together at the existing church for several months or a year before moving to the new area and starting the new congregation.

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reconstruction: The reorganization of a local congregation by the lead congregation in the ICC, much as a large corporation is reorganized after a period of slow growth to improve efficiency. In the ICC this involves replacing the entire leadership of the local congregation with a leadership team chosen by the ICC leaders -- reconstructed congregations get a new evangelist, new elders, and new staff, including women's counselors. The old leaders are often sent to a congregation in a different city or brought to the lead congregation for retraining if they want to remain in leadership.; During a reconstruction, usually the new evangelist will announce that the local congregation's membership "is now zero", and that members will be required to count the cost again with a leader and recommit before being allowed to rejoin the local church or any ICC-affiliated church. Since the ICC effectively believes it is the only church fully following Christ and that its members are the only people who are saved, those who are trying to regain membership are effectively trying to regain their salvation.; History: This term was first used in 1987, when the ICC (then called the Boston Church of Christ/Boston Movement) started reconstructing discipling movement/Crossroads movement Churches of Christ. Over the years churches which failed to meet growth projections or suffered an inordinate number of fall aways were often reconstructed to try to fix the problem. The term is used widely to this day, and most pillar churches in the movement have been reconstructed at least once.

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special contribution/"spec con": A period during which church members are requested/expected to donate money in addition to their regular contribution to the church, ostensibly for missions, charitable use, and other special needs. Special contributions are taken up once or twice a year, and amounts which members are expected to donate range from ten to twenty times their usual weekly contribution. Since weekly contributions are at minimum a tenth of their gross income, special contribution donations usually amount to at least several hundred dollars for students and unemployed people, and several thousand for employed and older people.

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