Who founded International Churches of Christ? Christian group sued over child sex abuse and abetment to suicide
Warning: This article contains a recollection of crime and can be triggering to some, readers' discretion advised
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA: A lawsuit filed in California accuses a nondenominational Christian group of covering up cases of child sexual abuse and abetting the suicide of some members. The International Churches of Christ (ICOC) and affiliated groups are accused by five women of indoctrinating, isolating and sexually exploitingthem through a rigid belief system, Fox News reports. The groups include Hope Worldwide, Mercy Worldwide, the International Christian Church, and the City of Angels International Christian Church.
Sisters Darleen Diaz, 33, and Bernice Perez, 31, are listed among the five plaintiffs in the case filed late last month. Elena Peltola, 23, Ashley Ruiz, 31, Salud Gonzelez, 30, and others are also named.
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The lawsuit filed accused the ICOC and its affiliate organizations of pressurizing church members to fund special mission trips twice per year and tithe 10% of their income to the church. This, as per the allegations pushed some members to severe depression and suicide.
As per the Fox News report, Sisters Diaz and Perez said they were abused by David Saracino, a convicted pedophile, and that the church did not do enough to safeguard them from him. He is accused of telling the girls "that they needed to take a bath," which the girls claim he did in order to "heavily fondle their naked bodies while they were bathing." Ruiz has also alleged Saracino engaged in sexual acts with her. As controversy erupts over the allegation, here's everything you need to know about Thomas 'Kip' McKean, the church's founder, who is also named in the lawsuit.
Who is Kip McKean, founder of the International Churches of Christ?
Born in Indianapolis, Indiana, on May 31, 1954, McKean was mentored by the late Charles 'Chuck' Lucas who started the Campus Advance program calling for a strong evangelical outreach and an intimate religious atmosphere in the form of soul talks and prayer partners. Soul talks, which included prayer and sharing and were facilitated by a leader who delegated authority over group members, were held in student houses. The term "prayer partners" referred to the custom of matching a new Christian with an experienced mentor for support and guidance. Each participant became deeply involved in the lives of the others as a result of both processes.
Kip McKean was among the early converts at Gainesville. He earned a degree while receiving his training at Crossroads, and after graduating, he worked as a campus minister for many Churches of Christ. By 1979, his ministry had expanded from a small group of people to over 300, making it the Church of Christ campus ministry in America with the highest rate of expansion.
McKean later relocated to Massachusetts and became the pastor of the Lexington Church of Christ (now the Boston Church of Christ). Building on Lucas' initial plans, McKean only consented to oversee the church in Lexington if each member pledged to be "fully dedicated." In what became known as the Boston Movement, the church went from having 30 members to having 3,000 in a little over 10 years. In 1993, McKean formed the International Churches of Christ as a movement, formally separating from the mainline Churches of Christ. Currently, the ICOC and its affiliates are functional in several parts of the world, including Africa, North America, Central America, Cambodia, Bolivia, and Singapore and has over 120,000 members.
The churches under McKean's direction have been presumably referred to as the International Christian Church since 2006. Currently the minister of the City of Angels International Christian Church and World Missions Evangelist of the International Christian Churches, McKean has had his fair share of controversies as a founding member of the contentious ICOC, including being fired from the Memorial Drive Church of Christ in Houston for “teaching false doctrine” along with fellow minister Roger Lamb in 1977.
