The Rising Threat of One Man

Over the past few years, the outlook of the ICOC becoming a power once again seemed doubtful. However, recent events in my home town of Cincinnati, Ohio have shown that the local ICOC, the Cincinnati Church of Christ, may have reached a threshold where they should be considered a serious and very dangerous threat, especially to students at the local college campuses. This threat may help accelerate the drive of the entire ICOC back to the intensity of its controlling practices when it was lead by Kip McKean.

In the beginning of 2013, the Cincinnati ICOC hired Doug Lambert of the Baltimore ICOC as its Lead Evangelist. A little over a year and a half later, in late August of 2014, Lambert spoke the the ICOC's annual International Leadership Conference (ILC) in Singapore. He spoke the first half of a lesson entitled "Building with Costly Stones". That cost for the members of his congregation is heavy. In his lesson, we learn the following:

1. Men make the church grow, not God.

"You see, the Bible says here 'God makes it grow'. So if it's not growing, it's not God's fault. [affirmations by the audience] OK, we understand it, if it's not growing, it's not because God's not doing His part - because He makes it grow. It's not because of the workers, it's not because of the field, it's not because of the situation, it's not because of the challenges, we've got to look at ourselves and say 'am I the man to make it grow?' Because God makes it grow."

Doug Lambert - Lead Evangelist - Cincinnati Church of Christ, ICOC International Leadership Conference (Singapore) "Building with Costly Stones", August 28, 2014 [6:21-6:55]

2. Growth is the increase of the number of members and the amount of money taken in through the weekly offerings.

"And I believe that as a leader, it's important that I bring faith to my church and to the situations. [affirmations from the audience]. The church in Cincinnati was very, very stuck. Except for a few campus and teen baptisms, it wasn't growing. And we came in; we said, 'we believe all ministries can grow'. We believe the members can get engaged and that the marrieds and the singles can grow. We believe our contribution can grow. [loud 'Yeah!' from the audience]"

Doug Lambert - Lead Evangelist - Cincinnati Church of Christ, ICOC International Leadership Conference (Singapore) "Building with Costly Stones", August 28, 2014 [7:56-8:22]

3. ICOC congregations are not autonomous.

"But coming to Cincinnati, the challenges were so daunting, with the eldership and the staff and the other churches in the area, I thought: I've got to write things down. I mean, I've got to have detailed plans, four typed pages of what I need to focus on."

Doug Lambert - Lead Evangelist - Cincinnati Church of Christ, ICOC International Leadership Conference (Singapore) "Building with Costly Stones", August 28, 2014 [10:55-11:12]

In the entire context of his lesson, it appears that Mike Fontenot, leader of the Hampton Roads ICOC in Virginia may have sent or allowed Doug Lambert to go to Cincinnati. Doug Lambert apparently has influence and authority of other ICOC congregations in the Ohio Valley area (covering Ohio, Kentucky, and West Virginia). In other words, Doug Lambert's role and authority is no different than the role and authority of the Geographic Sector Leader (GSL) in the ICOC before 2003. Consequently, Mike Fontenot's authority appears to be that of a World Sector Leader (WSL) in the ICOC before 2003.

4. Re-establishing an eldership is not a priority whatsoever.

"We focus a lot on building infrastructure: great Sunday services, great midweeks... staff meetings, getting the HOPE work really going, women's ministry, missions, children's ministry, great events, working with our board... building a leadership group, really getting the youth and family ministry really great... We've built our campus ministry. We have ministry training programs and internships. The big focus now is on our singles and our young marrieds..."

Doug Lambert - Lead Evangelist - Cincinnati Church of Christ, ICOC International Leadership Conference (Singapore) "Building with Costly Stones", August 28, 2014 [11:50-13:00]

Note that in context, "building a leadership group" means continuing to build himself and staff roles below him in the discipling hierarchy, not establishing a plurality of spirital men to lead the congregation as elders where Lambert would work at best alongside them.

5. Needs of the rank-and-file members are subordinated to the plans to build the church (numerically).

"But having a plan requires focus, doing it well and thoroughly, and completing it and then moving on to the next task. There's still a lot to do in the church. We've got a lot of holes and a lot of needs. Part of the problem: we've raised expectations now so that everybody's saying, 'Hey, what about this and what about me, how about over here?' And I'm like, 'We'll get to it!' [affirmations by the audience] It's going to take five years. So I told the church when we came in: it's going to be five years to build what we need to build."

Doug Lambert - Lead Evangelist - Cincinnati Church of Christ, ICOC International Leadership Conference (Singapore) "Building with Costly Stones", August 28, 2014 [13:20-13:50]

6.  An ICOC Evangelist still has unilateral authority to discipline ICOC Elders, even implicitly call for their resignation.

"When we came to Cincinnati, the eldership that was in place was very divided. And we had many conversations and I finally said, 'You know, this has been going on for a long time. We're setting a five month time limit on this. And within five months, this situation will be resolved because it has gone on too long.' I believe that I have the authority as an Evangelist to discipline elders if I need to. And so after five months, we got the elders together and they met and they decided that they needed to step down."

Doug Lambert - Lead Evangelist - Cincinnati Church of Christ, ICOC International Leadership Conference (Singapore) "Building with Costly Stones", August 28, 2014 [15:07-15:43]

1 Timothy 5:19-20 clearly states that two or three witnesses are needed to bring a charge against an elder. However, Lambert did not mention any other witnesses besides himself. (Making the other elders be the other witnesses makes no sense, of course!) In addition, Lambert has the authority to correct the unrepentant elders in front of the entire congregation, but no authority to make them step down from their role.

A previous post discusses the resignation of the elders in the Cincinnati Church of Christ and its conclusions and ramifications.

7. Additional restrictions (specifically membership in a shepherding group) are required to be a member of the church and thus keep one's salvation.

"And we decided we were going to have high expectations. ['Yup' from the audience] And we were not going to compromise. We're going to expect everybody to come to midweeks, we've heard that, right? [affirmations from the audience] But that is the expectation. And then we said everyone in the church, to be a member of the church, has to be in a small group. [affirmations from the audience] You don't want to be in a small group, you're welcome to attend as a visitor. [affirmations from the audience] But you will not be a member of our church - that was not without controversy."

Doug Lambert - Lead Evangelist - Cincinnati Church of Christ, ICOC International Leadership Conference (Singapore) "Building with Costly Stones", August 28, 2014 [17:05-17:33]

8. The destructive practice of pruning has returned to the ICOC.

"And as discipling began to spread through the church, I prepared the leadership. I said... we will have more fallaways in 2014 than we had in 2013. Because as discipling spreads through the church, there will be a slow bleed. [affirmations from the audience] Because some of our members actually like the fact that there was no discipling. [more affirmations from the audience] some of our members actually like the fact that Jesus was not Lord of the church or of their lives and kind of liked the way the church was and so as we're getting where we need to be, we knew that we would lose people. Now what's been encouraging is way more people have got on board because in their hearts, deep down, they really do want Jesus to be Lord. [a chorus of 'Right!' from the audience] But we couldn't be afraid of what was going to happen if we did what was right."

Doug Lambert - Lead Evangelist - Cincinnati Church of Christ, ICOC International Leadership Conference (Singapore) "Building with Costly Stones", August 28, 2014 [18:02-18:48]

Clearly if the ICOC's upper echelon of leadership chose Lambert as an example of how to build and grow an ICOC congregation a decade after the resignation of Kip McKean and the events of the Henry Kriete Letter, then their long-term intentions are as clear as crystal. Now that the organization has stabilized, the leadership intends to return to implementing controls (albeit some slowly) across the entire organization as McKean singlehandedly did throughout his twenty-three year head of the Boston Movement and ICOC.

It's a dangerous time to be a disciple.

The Eldership is Toast!

From out of nowhere came news that the three men who comprised the eldership of the Cincinnati Church of Christ: ("Lead Elder") Jim Fulcher, Joe Dilts, and Tom Meade, resigned from their positions and thus dissolved the eldership of the Cincinnati Church of Christ. Their pictures have been removed from their website (according to this post). The reason for their collective resignation is the inability for them to work together. Even with outside assistance and direction - from other International Churches of Christ congregations - they could not reconcile their differences and operate effectively as an eldership. In fact, it appears that they may have been directed by the other ICOC leaders outside of the Cincinnati Church of Christ to resign.

"[The elders] each spoke to us and said that they have tried for a while to work through the issues they had. Leaders from other [ICOC] churches were brought in to try and help them out, and give advice, but in the end they (ed: the elders or the leaders from the other ICOC congregations?) felt that what was best for the church (ed: the Cincinnati CoC or the ICOC or both?) would be them stepping down."

At this time, Lead Evangelist Doug Lambert will be leading the congregation. A process to choose new elders appears to be underway.

In my opinion, it's too early to draw conclusions and predict outcomes, but we do know the following facts and what they imply:

• The Cincinnati Church of Christ leadership structure failed to transform from one man leading the entire church (the traditional ICOC model where an Evangelist possessed the ultimate and final power and authority for an entire congregation) to a plurality of qualified spiritual leaders shepherding the entire flock. This was one of the promises made after the events of the Henry Kriete Letter ten years ago.
• Consequently, the elders were merely figureheads. The functional "eldership" was, and remains, the hired evangelists (Doug Lambert and John Cleghorn) and other paid staff (Michael DeAquino and Chase Mackintosh).
• The Cincinnati Church of Christ could not resolve this situation internally as an autonomous church. They had to call in others in the ICOC for assistance to receive discipling. And that external discipling influence obviously failed to keep the eldership together.
• Jim Fulcher failed to establish an eldership in the Cincinnati Church of Christ, even ending up as one of its elders. This is one of the reasons he was hired as the Lead Evangelist in early 2007.
• If the most qualified men in the entire congregation couldn't work out their differences, even after decades upon decades of ICOC discipling - before, during, and after Kip McKean was over them in leadership - what does that say about their discipling system?
• If this is the result of discipling for the most spiritually mature in the congregation, what kind of discipling is everyone else receiving and how are they maturing?
• I'm not surprised that a dysfunctional eldership like this would have appointed a man as unqualified as John Cleghorn as an Evangelist. (See a previous post I wrote for details.)
• How can this problem be avoided in the future? Can more ICOC-style discipling even fix this problem?
• The Cincinnati Church of Christ, even after thirty years of existence as a discipling church, has failed to produce leaders from its own membership to effectively shepherd itself. How can it successfully replicate itself in the long-term by planting ministries and other churches?

In one sense, this event was surprising, but not unexpected. This is simply just another natural outcome of their theology. Jesus said "by their fruit, you will recognize them" (Matthew 7:15-20).

If you're a current member reading this, please think seriously about these facts and questions. There is no quick fix. Look hard at the past and look long towards the future. Do you want the discipling you receive and give to end up in a situation like Fulcher, Dilts, and Meade? Finally, don't be afraid to comment or send me an e-mail or tweet!