Until recently, the fastest growing wing of the Movement was the International Church of Christ, headquartered in Los Angeles.

Previously known as the Boston Church of Christ, it was begun in the late 1970s by Kip McKean. McKean was trained by the Crossroads Church of Christ movement centered in Gainesville, Florida, then headed by Chuck Lucas (who is no longer associated with the movement). Chuck Lucas was trained by Campus Evangelism, a short-lived movement within the mainstream Churches of Christ that took its cues from Bill Bright's Campus Crusade for Christ.

The movement centered around college campuses, and emphasized total commitment to the degree that it was viewed by watchdog groups as a cult. They routinely asked members to live communally together, attend church functions every evening, and invite a quota every week to introductory Bible Talks. The Crossroads Movement and the ICC were intensely hierarchical, with each member assigned to a prayer partner or discipler for accountability and obedience. There were clearly defined steps up the ladder to each leadership position. Other than their hierarchy, methods of evangelism and discipling, their theology differed little from mainstream hard-line Churches of Christ.

College students, alone and away from home for the first time, poured into the movement by the thousands. They could declare independence from their parents, find love and friendship from their fellow Christians, and love from God like they had never experienced before. The confession of sins made their hearts feel pure and the acapella singing made their hearts soar with worship.

Critics described the ICC as operating in double-bind catch-22s. "Let's all kneel to pray...now all of you who didn't want to kneel while we prayed, repent!" Critics also pointed out the custom, common in many groups, of one speaker pausing to whisper a private joke into the ear of the next speaker as he approached the microphone, a subtle way of letting everyone in the audience know they are not in the private leadership clique. The reason those in the audience put up with it is because they are projecting themselves onto the leaders, hoping they will one day climb the ladder and be able to share private jokes on the podium themselves.

Critics also described that each interaction with the ICC was always a challenge to the ICC person's honor. People often came away feeling confused, depressed and shamed after interacting with the ICC.

Many accused the ICC of having a revolving door, with members burning out after two or three years. Members who left the ICC often refused to go anywhere to church, and some, even after going to another church, insisted they weren't producing fruit and therefore were not saved.

The first question an ICC leader would ask a Church of Christ preacher in the 1980s would be "how many members do you have in your congregation?" Numbers was always the most important issue for ICC leaders, but this was always verbally denied. Goals and quotas were set up, cloaked in spiritual terms and the carnality denied repeatedly. The Boston Church of Christ even had a policy on how to rehabilitate leaders who had suffered nervous breakdowns in the high pressure competitive environment.

The ICC alienated other Churches of Christ by demanding in the 1980s rebaptism of members who came out of traditional Churches of Christ, because their previous baptisms were not in the context of a discipling baptism, therefore not valid. There were occasional statements from ICC speakers that members in the mainstream Churches of Christ were not saved.

Kip McKean, after being trained at Crossroads, was hired by a Church of Christ in Champagne, Illinois, as a campus minister. He was fired soon afterwards for disobeying elders while pursuing his vision for the church. This fact is hidden from members of the ICC, and astounds them when they find out, because the biggest sin in the ICC, as taught by McKean, was disobeying the elders.

From Illinois he went to Lexington, Massachusetts to a 50 member congregation who hired him after he received a promise from each member that they would give "total commitment" to Christ. Within a few short years the Boston Church of Christ had over a thousand members, and was sending out teams to start churches all over the USA, and shortly all over the world. In the 1990s the base of operations moved to Los Angeles and the group was renamed the International Church of Christ headed by Kip McKean and seven leaders. It was at this time that the ICC incorporated instrumental music into the worship, further distancing themselves from the mainstream a capella Churches of Christ, who reject both instruments of music and denominational oversight.

The ICC went through a split in 2001 when Kip McKean's daughter, a student at Harvard, left the ICC. Many saw this as an understandable response to the "total commitment" pressure cooker environment of the ICC. Her leaving would not have been a problem except for the fact that Kip McKean had made a rule that no-one could be an elder in the ICC unless their house was in order, including all their adult children faithfully serving in the ICC. This is a common interpretation of the qualifications of elders as set forth by the apostle Paul (see sidebar) in many hard-line Churches of Christ.

This is further complicated by the fact that obedience to church leaders was one of the most important commandments in the ICC up until 2001, and one which they still struggle to define today. Kip McKean was asked to step down.

The Portland International Church of Christ is now headed by Kip McKean who is seeking a comeback among the "sold-out disciples". The ICC has repudiated McKean and is beginning to seek acceptance by mainstream evangelical denominations (while searching for its identity).

The Response from the hard-line Churches of Christ

There are many shaving mirrors that have one side magnified. There were very few in the Churches of Christ that saw the ICC as an accurate magnified mirror reflection of themselves: the challenge to one's honor, the emphasis on evangelism and numbers, the exclusive claim to be the one true church based on their own ability to reproduce the early church. All of these ingredients have been the core of the hard-line Churches of Christ for decades.

The Churches of Christ's response however was more like the Jews hating the Samaritans in the time of Christ. Reams of photocopies of vituperative articles in heavy manila envelopes were mailed to every Church of Christ for years, to try to stem the tide of the new arrogant teenager on the block.