[Article 4] The ICC's Psychological Control System

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[The Articles of Indignation: Article 4]

The ICC’s Psychological Control System (Part 1)

By Daniel Berg           June 25, 2015

For when they speak great swelling words of emptiness, they allure through the lusts of the flesh, through lewdness, the ones who have actually escaped from those who live in error. While they promise them liberty, they themselves are slaves of corruption; for by whom a person is overcome, by him also he is brought into bondage. –Deceptions of False Teachers, 2 Peter 2:18-19

Introduction: A System of Abuse Twice Used

Many people refer to Kip McKean’s psychological system of control as “mind control”, but seem unable to explain how this is actually done. The term “mind control” sounds so sci-fi that it seems ridiculous to some people that something like this could be realistically implemented by a church, and yet we see examples of this throughout history such as Steward Traill’s Church of Bible Understanding (don’t all such organizations claim that they are just “following the Bible”?) which was founded in 1971.

My articles have outlined the different ways that the ICC would psychologically manipulate people and I often use the group psychological theories of recognized nineteenth-century thinkers such as Gustave Le Bon and Sigmund Freud to show how this is being done. The key behind manipulating a person or a group of people is to keep them from realizing that they are actually being manipulated, therefore the manipulation needs to be disguised as something else. It is interesting to note that when people bring up the subject of psychological theory to discuss how the members are being manipulated they are criticized for bringing up “worldly concepts” against their “holy organization”; as if they are somehow exempt from such psychological phenomena. Once again this plays right into the theories of group psychology, that the people who get pulled into this mentality think that their organization is above the rules. Many of these manipulative policies appear seemingly innocent at first, but they serve as components in a larger system and come together to form a system that serves a specific purpose; very much like an engineer will put together various components to create a specific device. The system that the ICC has built serves to maximize the money that they take from their congregation as well as establishing significant control over them and this was the same type of system that Kip built during the ICOC as can be seen in the letters from the ICOC leaders in 2003 where they apologize for this abuse and coercion done during Kip’s leadership.

Many have concluded the reason for all of this sin, disorder and bitterness was “the system” –

World Sector Leaders, discipleship partners, Bible Talks, megachurches, the “Study Series,” etc.

(Some have even gone so far as to call it the “evil” system.) A system is simply applying Biblical

principles to create methods. Some churches in the name of “freedom in Christ” have abandoned

all methodologies such as Bible Talks, discipleship partners, etc. We must have a system that

uses Biblical principles in order to evangelize the world. –Kip McKean, “From Babylon onto Zion”, July 13, 2003.

It is interesting to note here that Kip criticizes the ICOC on the basis that some of their Churches had done away with discipleship partners and bible talks, and yet once again he avoids the issue of abusive money policies as being part of the system and instead obscurely alludes to “sin, disorder, and bitterness” instead of addressing the main concerns that people had with his organization. His avoidance of the issue of obtaining money from members through coercive tactics continues throughout the rest of the letter as I show in my other article; How Kip McKean’s Old Movement Fell which addresses this part of Kip’s history. It has become very clear from my previous articles that this system has not been based on “Biblical principles” on which Kip attempts to make his argument and this article will serve to enforce that as I describe his current psychological system of control.

“Word Definition Manipulation”

“Word definition manipulation” is simply my terminology for what is going on here, call it what you like. This form of manipulation is the main reason why I use quotations around certain words throughout all my articles. The ICC has its particular definition of what it means to be “spiritual”, “unspiritual”, or “divisive” and assigns these definitions according to what is most profitable to their desires. Many times the quotations I use in my articles are to indicate that the definitions of certain words have been skewed or called into question.

They also define any writing that criticizes their organization as “spiritual pornography”; using such a psychologically ugly term to deter their congregation from reading such material that could shed light on their corruption (and they tell their members that it is a sin for them to read this material as well, hence the name). I address this issue in another article; Spiritual Pornography: Kip McKean’s Gag for Hiding Corruption and Silencing Victims.

This type of manipulation is not confined to individual words alone but also to phrases that the ICC likes to use such using the phrase “put the Kingdom first” when coercing money out of members or forcing them to go to all their mandatory meetings. They also use the phrase “sold out” when speaking in context of the member’s devotion to their organization. Last time I checked their “First Principles”, the Kingdom of God is the church, the people of God, so shouldn’t they be putting the needs of their members as a priority? Also what do they mean by “sold out”? Sold out to what? Not the Bible obviously. They throw these buzzwords around like confetti with no thought to any deeper meaning.

The “Domino Effect” Control System

The “domino effect” is my name for a control phenomenon that Kip McKean puts to use during contribution raises and often special contributions as well. I actually touched on a few concepts of this in my first article about the corrupt ICC policies, but I had not yet assigned a name for this particular control method or described it in detail.

During a contribution raise it starts with Kip McKean demanding that each region leader raise the total contribution of their congregation by a certain amount. By giving his region leaders such a specific requirement the only way for them to be sure to meet Kip’s demand is to put pressure on all their members to raise their contributions. I discuss the pressure put on the congregation to raise their contributions in my previous article about corrupt ICC policies and I mentioned that it should be the decision of each individual as to whether or not to raise their contribution (2 Corinthians 9:6-7). But with Kip McKean pressuring his leaders to meet their quotas, this no longer became optional for most of the membership in the eyes of the leaders. The region leaders then tell the disciplers in the region that they need to convince the members whom they are “discipling” to give more money. I also remember the region leaders actually say to the disciplers that they need to tell anyone who does not raise their contribution that they are “unspiritual” or “selfish”; this is intentional character assassination since it is disregarding the financial situation of each individual member. 
Because these “disciplers” are eager to please their superiors in order to move up in the ranks, they dutifully comply with coercing money out of the people whom they were supposed to be advising. And because the members are told to confess all their sins to their disciplers so that they can be “healed” (James 5:16), then the disciplers have an arsenal of knowledge of the members past sins that they can use to destroy their self-esteem while coercing more money out of them, and I have seen them do this quite often. Thus the region leaders instigate members into manipulating other members, and because most of these “disciplers” are not actually employed by the church, if they cross the line with their coercion then the ICC leaders can pretend that they were not involved and can claim that they are not accountable for their misconduct, however, they do nothing to prevent it from happening. Now we see why this is called the “Domino Effect”, one action leads to another which leads to manipulation and coercion. Kip McKean can successfully get his members to manipulate each other in an indirect manner while pretending to be innocent for any abusive transgressions committed by these members while continuing to allow such abusive behavior as long as it helps the ICC’s profits.

Here is the account of [anonymous] who became a victim of this control system (since they asked to remain anonymous I replace the name with [anonymous] and any gender-indicating words with [he/she] or [her/his]):

So when I was in leadership I was the song leader and I was being trained as the single leader. This was right before the leadership was changing the leader and his wife was moving to lead a different city and so were the single leaders. When they left there were several people who wanted my spot who spread such horrendous lies about me ( these were 2 of my roommates) my discipler on the other hand ran me over every D-time saying I was in sin that I'm not doing anything and just raking me over coals. When my house was falling part I was told that it was my fault (I had no idea why the 2 that were slandering me and were in yelling matches with my other roommate on a daily basis and didn't take D-times seriously). When I mentioned I wanted to live on my own I was told if I lived by myself that I would, and I quote;  "you will burn in hell and become a drunken [gender-specific derogatory insult]", ( I have never drank and I don't sleep around, and never have).  The new leadership didn't care; they never got with me, and instead listened to the people who were pulling for my spot. I was taken out of the singles role. The male song leader made 3 of my singers cry one day while I was not there, so I called and asked what happened (not angrily or judging, just trying to find out what happened), but he went on a power trip on how I know nothing and that I need to learn how to handle the singers. The next day I got a call that I was being replaced with a person who wanted my spot and who had no music training. Still they wouldn’t even meet with me, they told me over the phone.

I was one of three singles that had a job, but was told not to get health insurance and to put it towards my tithe instead. I was giving $100 a week (I made $400 a week) and I was told I had to give more (via text message). When I told him I couldn’t he wanted to know why so I had to tell him everything I paid for.

I was guilt-tripped so much; I was told that I was not giving and that I didn’t rely on God.

I left, my dad came during a devo, I was packed and on the curb before he even got there. We packed everything I had in the back of his ranger ( I moved to the city in a U-Haul I had sold my bed 9 months before for food money because I couldn't afford my bills (student loans and rent) and most of all my tithe). I had to do it this way. They were checking up on me all the time coming over unannounced.

I'm getting better now. I have issues like most do when they leave a situation like that. I have PTSD and can't open the front door when someone knocks without fear that they they'll be behind it. I go to therapy and am getting through it. I have my faith and it is strong but to them I am a fall away.

For people hungry for leadership, even positions that are supposed to be skill-specific such as “song leader” end up being used to quench peoples thirst for a position of recognition within this organization. These positions and minor roles of leadership are dangled in front of the members, to use as leverage to motivate them whenever the next contribution raise or special missions contribution comes up. Such power plays are not uncommon, back when I used to live with ICC members, I would witness certain roommates being slandered by others who were gunning for their leadership positions and heard similar situations happen in many other households. What [anonymous] also experienced here is a type of reverse quid pro quo; when someone in a minor role of leadership does not increase their contribution by the amount of money dictated by the upper leadership or does not give the amount imposed on them for a special contribution, they face possible demotion or being taken out of leadership entirely. This concept of reverse quid pro quo is not only used on members in minor positions of leadership, but it is also used on dating couples in the church as well to determine whether they are “spiritual” enough to continue their relationship (I will address this in the Control of Dating section below).

So why is there such a hunger for leadership and struggle for power within this organization? The ICC tells these people that their organization can make them into someone great and many of these people have abandoned getting higher educations and they see becoming a leader in this organization as their last chance to make a name for themselves. To desire recognition for their existence, the ICC provides an easy outlet for people who foster such desires and tells them that they can achieve greatness by moving up the ranks of their organization; just keep on giving that money and raising those contributions and one day they too will be admired as a “spiritual leader for God”. But with so many people vying for recognition this creates a power struggle and the results are as we see in the account of [anonymous].

Also notice how [anonymous] was giving 25% of [his/her] income, and still the leaders character assassinated [her/him]; telling [him/her] that [she/he] was not sacrificial. With such a competition for leadership, the decision for whether or not you get to keep your position often does end up on whether you keep increasing your contribution whenever the upper leadership tells you to. I have seen people coerced into giving 30% and still be called “selfish” if they didn’t increase this amount at the next contribution raise. Let me remind you that the last time I heard Kip McKean talking about how much he gives, that he claims to give 15% of his income and that he is “all in”. In terms of percentage of income, many of the other members are coerced into giving much more sacrificially than Kip. You see what is wrong here? This organization is no longer about the “heart to give”; when the region leaders ask the disciplers to get more money out of the people whom they are “discipling” because Kip has demanded for each region to meet a certain quota, it becomes all about the money and not about the heart.

“Seeking Advice” for a Means of Control

To deter any members who harbor thoughts of not raising their contributions because they are struggling financially, the ICC has a system where they tell the congregation that “anyone who thinks that they cannot raise their contribution, go seek financial advice from your discipler.” Now after reading the section immediately above, it is pretty obvious what happens when these members go to their disciplers to try to seek this so-called “financial advice” about whether to raise their contribution. Also any members who attempt to avoid going in for this “financial advice” are rebuked by the leaders if they find out that they do not intend to raise their contribution (they claim to be rebuking them for “not seeking advice”, but it is clear what results they actually want since this “advice” is meant to subject them to manipulation). This is to try to ensure that members do not escape from being manipulated and to bring accusations against those who try to escape from it.

To confirm this, never in my six years with the ICC did I ever witness any discipler giving “financial advice” in accordance with an individual’s financial situation. 99% of the time (I leave the leftover 1% as a mere courtesy for any unknown cases, but you get the picture here) the members were always told to raise their contribution by the amount that the leadership dictated or referred to another leader to get additional “advice” if the first attempted coercion failed. 
      After some time in the church, members will eventually catch on to this system of “seeking advice” and therefore become less convincible, the ICC leaders try to counteract this by preaching that it is “spiritual” for members to take advice even when they believe that such advice is awful and even when they think they already know what this advice will be (which they do). They tell their members that they will be blessed for “obeying their leaders” and to “take advice even though you think it is stupid” (yes an ICC region leader literally preached that) and they will quote Proverbs 12:15. It is because of this that members who do not take the “financial advice” (allowing themselves to be coerced into giving more money) are considered to be “unspiritual”.

When these “advisors” are trying to coerce the people whom they are “advising”, they play it off as if they are their “spiritual coaches” and that they are discipling them to be more sacrificial and spiritual by pushing them to give more money. “This will help you to grow your faith”; they will say. They try to project this positive image over their manipulative actions, but this image doesn’t really fit the situation since they were supposed to be “financial advisors”. This kind of “coach” analogy is being deceptively applied here (2 Corinthians 9:6-7). If the potential victim still stresses their inability to increase their weekly contribution these “coaches” quickly change into interrogators, trying to find any weakness to exploit and even using a list of their past confessed sins against them, trying to assault their self-esteem and attack their sense of spirituality; calling them “unspiritual” and then presenting this contribution raise as the solution for regaining their “spirituality”.

This “coach” image is also used when these “advisors” are trying to coerce members into giving whatever amount of money the leadership decrees for them to give during a special contribution; trying to convince these members that the dictated amount of money is a “goal” and that the pressure which they put on them is synonymous with the pressure that coaches put on their athletes to meet their goals. I described this in my article The ICC’s Corrupt Policies for Money (Part 2).

Therefore, to summarize this section; if you don’t “seek advice” (even when you already know what they are going to tell you, which everyone does) you are considered “unspiritual” and “prideful”. If you don’t take the advice (no matter how unreasonable it is) you are considered “unspiritual” and “arrogant” (and some will even go as far as to say that the member is in “sin” if they reject the “advice”). If you do not raise your contribution when told to do so you are considered “unspiritual” and “selfish”. For any one of these things a member may be disqualified for a promotion into leadership or even demoted as well as having their reputation slandered (members are not allowed to “slander” (criticize) leaders, but leaders slandering members of lower rank is tolerated).

The godly give good advice, but fools are destroyed by their lack of common sense.-Proverbs 10:21, NLT

Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the sear of scoffers;…-Psalm 1:1

A wise man will hear and increase in learning, and a man of understanding will acquire wise counsel.-Proverbs 1:5

There was not any care taken to the quality of the “advice” that was being given, they didn’t care how foolish it was as long as their policies were followed without question and as long as they got their money. This “advice” cannot be classified as actual advice at all, these are merely autonomic responses; answers that are given in accordance with the desires of their superiors without any thought given to an individual’s financial situation or any other factors in their daily lives.

This system of “seeking device” is also used to deter members from missing any of their mandatory meetings (I will discuss this subject shortly) and is also used in controlling many other aspects of members lives (especially if that aspect has to do with money).

Confining Primary Social Circles

In the above section I mentioned that certain actions will cause the leadership to label people as “unspiritual”. For some who are unfamiliar with this organization, they may say to themselves “why is this so bad?” Putting aside the effects of reverse quid pro quo with the denial of promotion and even demotion, besides those who are trying to obtain a spot in leadership, and besides those who are trying to date another member (see Control of Dating below), how will these labels negatively affect other people in the organization?

The ICC puts an aggressive emphasis on their members to have all their primary friends in their church; as often as a few times a month during one of the mandatory meetings it will be preached “do you have all your best friends in this church?” Now I think it is good to have friends in the church and I think this could be seen as the occasional and well-meaning good advice if given in the proper context, but to preach this to the congregation from the pulpit nearly every month? There are hundreds of different lessons that can be learned from the Bible, so why do they repeatedly return to this subject at least once to several times a month?

People are also pressured to go to all the ICC New Years parties, Labor Day parties, etc. Members who attempt to go to a New Years party or Labor Day party other than the one hosted by the ICC are ridiculed for “not putting the Kingdom first”, which is another one of those phrases they like to throw around without thinking. Also take into account all the mandatory meetings (discussed below) that these members are required to go to. What the ICC does is it swallows their social lives until their organization becomes their predominant social circle. They insist that putting so much of their lives into the church will keep them “faithful”, but isn’t relying on social support to keep us “faithful” actually rather superficial? Last time I checked it was our own faith in God which matters. Once again this is Kip capitalizing on the effects of group psychology.

Now let’s go back to the original question; how does the label of being “unspiritual” affect these people? Now we know that this is a death blow socially where for many cases, the majority of the member’s social circle has now been taken up by Kip McKean’s organization. It is now apparent why they seem so keen on hammering these social concepts into the heads of their members.  The social pressure that they are capable of unleashing against their members becomes magnified. This is especially effective on teenagers and college-aged people who are concerned about their self-image and the way that other people view them, not to say that is doesn’t affect older adults as well but it has more of an impact on younger people.

When you take into account that in a few years most of the members will have the majority their friends within this organization; now what if that member gets disfellowshipped and marked? They instantly lose their connection to years of friendships. Now we see why the threat of being disfellowshipped and marked is not merely expulsion from the “church”, but stealing away years of relationships as well. This allows the ICC upper leadership to establish significant terrifying control over their members.

“Salvation Issues” and the ICC’s Propaganda Against the ICOC

In this section I appear to side with the ICOC on some issues to a certain degree, but never was I a member of the ICOC, I have no ulterior motives for writing this section (and the article that follows this one) other than to expose hypocritical behavior on the part of the ICC leaders and contradictions to their arguments that they make against their former organization. Since I am now not affiliated with either organization, I can remark on whatever observations I make about these organizations and can wield the truth freely here. If anyone reading this is not really interested in hearing about the squabble between these organizations; this section still sheds light on some of the inner workings of the ICC and so I would encourage you to read it anyway.

In the midst of the ICC’s coercion of their congregation, the ICOC churches were providing these people with a way out and Kip did not like that at all. He needed a way to prevent them from leaving and therefore he needed to convince them that going to the ICOC would still result in them losing their salvation.

In the beginning, the ICC did seem to have some compelling reasons for believing that people who left the Church were also leaving God, and I did not want to doubt their sincerity. But it is now apparent that there is much manipulation going on and this salvation issue is now being used as blackmail against the members. It won’t be necessary for me to go into too much detail as to why this belief is held but in summary it has to do with:

[1]. A Church teaching that baptism is necessary for the forgiveness of sins (Acts 2:38, 1 Peter 3:21, Colossians 2:12). 

[2]. Having a congregation in which everyone is evangelistic and has the goal to save lost souls (Matthew 28:18-20, Luke 9:23-26)

[3]*. Having all the members of the congregation in “discipling relationships”.

Though number 3 is not actually a Biblical requirement as a salvation issue (though it is good Biblical advice as can be seen from scriptures such as Proverbs 27:17), I will include it anyway since the ICC insists on using this in their arguments and it will soon play a role in this article. These “discipling relationships” are part of the reason why the “advice” system described above works so well, because each person has an assigned “discipler” who they are required to answer to. Also, for anyone that was reading this article who was somehow hoping that I would disagree with the ICC’s doctrine on baptism, sorry, I can’t help you there. The belief that baptism was necessary for the forgiveness of sins was held by the early Christians and the idea that baptism was not necessary for remission of sins did not really arise in Christianity until the writings of John Wycliffe in the 14^th century who wrote about it in terms of his opposition to the sacraments, but it did not become popular until the 1500’s. I prefer to stick with the earliest held beliefs rather than those that are the most popular today, realistically speaking, choosing to place your trust in a form of Christianity that was not even invented until over a millennium after Jesus Christ seems equivalent to gambling with your own salvation, but that’s the end of my spiel on baptism.

After that side note, let’s go back to the subject at hand. The ICC would discourage their members with anti-ICOC statements in their sermons, but with people still leaving to go back to the ICOC it was at this point that Kip McKean decided to turn up the pressure and thus the “Five Core Values” were invented. Of these five core values I address four of them (1-4) and three of which were introduced as “salvation issues” in their anti-ICOC propaganda. Here are the “Five Core Values”:

1●Central leadership with a central leader (they really like to stress the underlined part)

2●In a discipling relationship with a discipleship partner

3●Evangelizing the world in a generation

4*Speak where the Bible is silent and be silent where the Bible speaks

5*(The fifth is not even worth mentioning word-for-word at this point, it’s basically the same “we are just following the whole Bible” type of shallow claim we have all heard before that such religious organizations baselessly like to throw out there and which we all know is not the case for this organization which has an obvious profiteering agenda to their teachings. In other words, the 5^th is just propaganda to convince members that their teachings are “Biblical”)

These could not be considered “core values” since they were something that did not even exist until 2014-ish, nearly 8 years after the Church was already “founded” (there was some shaky stuff involved with this “founding” if you read about what Kip did to the Portland church), especially the “central leadership” part since it was obvious that it was gradually phased into the church over time by the upper leadership until finally it was announced as a “core value”.

The 4^th “core value” has also been the source of some squabbles between the ICC and ICOC. Here Kip McKean is basically claiming that he is free to elaborate on issues on which the Bible is “silent” claiming that 1 Corinthians 10:23-32 gives him this right. The ICOC began to have concerns with this because of the blatant over exaggeration and exploitation of certain scriptures during Kip’s time of leadership in the ICOC (and we now know that these methods were being used to coerce and control the congregation) and after removing Kip from leadership many ICOC churches began to have a policy of being “silent where the Bible is silent” in order to prevent further abuse. The ICC leaders like to point out that some ICOC churches went overboard by saying that they couldn’t have positions such as “region leader” since these terms are not used in the Bible. Criticizing their former organization for the titles they decide to use is a petty argument to make; at least these churches were trying to prevent further abusive policies from being created, and now we see Kip putting his abusive policies into practice once again using this “core values” as an excuse.

Before the creation of these “core values” the leadership would often preach that the ICOC had abandoned discipling and that they no longer believed in evangelizing the world since the ICOC churches had become autonomous and were not a single “movement”. They would follow this up by saying that the ICOC churches were “dead spiritually” and that they were no longer evangelistic. From some people that I spoke with, it appeared that there were indeed some ICOC churches that were no longer aggressive evangelistically, but this was not a representation of the ICOC as a whole; from other sources I have heard that there are ICOC churches that are still very much evangelistic.

When ICC leaders make statements about how the ICC churches have abandoned discipling, they often quote a specific example where the membership actually applauded when it was announced that there would no longer be assigned discipleship partners. The ICC leaders would comment on this applause with slanderous statements that they were glad to not have accountability so that they could “go back to lives filled with sin.” This makes absolutely no sense; if these people wanted to live sin-filled lives then they would not have even bothered showing up at church in the first place. The reason why the congregation applauded can be derived from realizing how abusively these “discipling relationships” were used, as can be seen throughout my articles (and the ICOC Apology Letters). You can hardly blame them for seeing the discipleship partner setup as an abusive system that could no longer be trusted and the applause that followed the announcement of the disbandment of this system. There are still ICOC churches that practice discipling with discipleship partners, as well as ICOC churches that practice discipling without assigned discipleship partners (meaning that they are free to choose whom to be discipled by), and yes there are ICOC churches that do not have a mandatory “discipling system” because this system has been abused in the past (and is currently being abused by the ICC). The ICC’s general statement that the ICOC does not disciple their members is fairly inaccurate and even slanderous.

Despite the ICC’s propaganda that people who went back to the ICOC would effectively lose their salvation because of their “lukewarmness”, there were people who were aware of the fallacies to their attempted persuasion and therefore when the ICC’s abuses and corrupt policies began to mount up these people began fleeing back to the ICOC. It was at this point that Kip McKean needed something else to threaten these people with eternal damnation, something besides discipleship, evangelism, and baptism for the forgiveness of sins. Back when the ICOC was a one-of-a-kind organization, these three qualities were enough to keep people from leaving even in the midst of great abuse, but now with the existence of both the ICC and ICOC, there were two organizations that shared these qualities. Kip now had a “competitor”, and as the ICC’s corruption grew he was beginning to lose members to this competition. He had to think of something else, and he had just the thing; central leadership (with a central leader). Being a cunning man, Kip had planned for this in advance since the leadership would often include statements that threw negative light on the ICOC’s autonomy ever since 2008 (but it was not yet being taught as a “salvation requirement” at this time), so when the ICC’s abuse had grown to the point that people were beginning to flee, he was ready to put this doctrine of central leadership (with a central leader) into action by embedding it into his “Five Core Values” and bringing it into the Church in 2014. Please see my next article The ICC’s Psychological Control System (Part 2); The Issue of Central Leadership for more details on this. This one-man leadership doctrine had allowed Kip to monopolize power during his reign of the ICOC, but this time it would often be presented to the members as a salvation requirement if they thought about leaving.

Now before we go any further let’s first clear up how they influence members into believing that leaving the church means losing their salvation. There is a certain misconception about the ICC in forums on the internet where people claim that the ICC teaches their members that anyone who leaves their church is going to hell. Even though there is no doubt that they want members to believe this, they do not impart this belief on their members in such a forward manner (although they do indeed tell anyone who tries to leave that they are going to hell).

When studying the Bible with potential converts or talking with outsiders they don’t come out and say “anyone who leaves our church is going to hell” or that they are the “only true church in which you can be saved”; as I said before this would bring too much scrutiny against their organization and recruitment would become hard for them. Therefore they use a somewhat stealthier method; they say that in order for members to “ensure their own salvation” that they need to go to a church that has certain “requirements”, and in their sermons they subtly insert propaganda to make their members believe that the ICC is the only church that meets these said “requirements”. Therefore when you hear ICC leaders or members assuring potential converts during the first principles studies; “oh no, we don’t teach that anyone who leaves our church is going to hell”, this statement is actually half true (kind of), although this is something that they want to members to subconsciously believe once they have been brought into the organization.

Now I do believe in having standards for a church, but notice what Kip McKean does next; in order to stop people from fleeing to the ICOC, Kip needed to make up another “requirement”, and thus now we see the ICC leaders trying to sell this doctrine of “central leadership with a central leader” as a requirement for “God’s Church”. Now for members who attempt to flee the ICC to go to the ICOC, this is used as blackmail.

Soon this issue of central leadership became a matter of salvation, just as Kip McKean intended. I was present at a leader’s meeting when an ICC leader came to the front and told the congregation “I have a new conviction” he said; “whoever goes from the ICC to the ICOC is going to hell because the ICOC does not have central leadership and they know that is wrong. We all need to have deep convictions in this”. This so-called new “conviction” as an issue of salvation was soon being peddled around the fellowship by the other ICC leaders; when one of the sisters left the ICC to go an ICOC church (this ICOC church was very evangelistic and it had discipling) the leaders called her and told her that she was “in the darkness” and that she was going to hell. When other people left to go to the ICOC as well, rather than saying “they went to the ICOC” the leaders would instead tell me that “they fell away from God”, that they had turned their backs on God and left their salvation behind. This idea of central leadership was being imposed on everyone as a salvation issue and therefore served to prevent members from going over to the ICOC (because losing members = losing money).  

Now to reiterate what has already been presented in this section; when doing Bible studies with potential converts, they do not tell them that anyone who leaves their Church is considered to have “lost their salvation” as this person is not yet under their psychological control and this would most likely scare them away (when I say “psychological control” I am of course referring to the group psychological theories of Gustave Le Bon and Sigmund Freud which I have alluded to in other articles). Instead the new converts will potentially find out about this when either they or someone else tries to leave the organization and then witness the leadership accusing them of having “lost their salvation”. Even when trying to leave the ICC to go to the ICOC people still receive phone calls saying that they are “in the darkness” and they are going to hell.

For most of the members that are doing Bible studies with potential converts, their omission of this information is not intentionally manipulative but has more to do with the fact that there has never been an official announcement from the ICC leadership that they believe that anyone who leaves their Church is going to hell (at least not in that exact wording) as this would bring scrutiny upon themselves and make it harder for them to bring in new members. But in recent years the ICC the leadership’s behavior toward this issue is becoming fairly obvious and therefore the church members will usually try to avoid this subject entirely when studying with potential converts, however, I have seen some flat-out lie about it at times due to their own over eagerness when they see that a potential convert is close to joining. Misinformation is tolerated (if it will help them achieve their goals) because most of these people are not what you would call “professionals” since they are not actually employed by the Church, it is easy for the ICC leaders to disregard these as “rookie mistakes” and can easily escape any legal obligation to be held accountable for any possible misconduct, but of course they do very little to prevent it from happening and actually instigate the members to manipulate each other as we saw in the previous section about the “Domino Effect” control system.

Strong Enforcement of Multiple Weekly Mandatory Meetings

Kip McKean strongly enforces his members to go to a certain amount of mandatory meetings every week. They try to use Hebrews 10:24-25 to say that members must come to every single meeting:

And let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching. –Hebrews 10:24-25, NKJV

Many scholars believe that it was Paul who wrote Hebrews, and the original wording that is used here is egkataliepontes; which means to forsake, to desert, or to abandon.

The question here is how long does it have to be for something to be considered “abandoned”? A couple weeks? A month? A year? A decade? The definition of this is left to some discretion, though most would agree that this means to either leave permanently or for an extended period of time, however, the ICC leaders come down on and rebuke anyone who misses a single “mandatory meeting”; this suspiciously shows that there is another agenda at work here. Also this verse is written along the lines of corrective advice and there is no rebuke given toward those who do forsake meetings, there is nothing in this verse to justify the ICC’s harsh crackdown on anyone who doesn’t come to every meeting they have (usually 3 to 4 meetings a week for college students and between 2 and 4 for singles and marrieds).

Another set of scriptures they attempt to exploit to enforce their policy of mandatory meetings is 1 Corinthians 12:12-31 and Romans 12:3-8. In these scriptures Paul uses an analogy to describe God’s church as a body to say that each member in the church has a role, just like each part on a physical body play a role for certain functionalities. The point that Paul is trying to make here is that everyone has an important part in the church. The ICC attempts to go beyond this by making an additional analogy to a different aspect of a physical body; and this aspect is in the event that a body part is separated from an actual human body, that body part will begin to rot. The ICC further insinuates that because the church is the “body of Christ”, this means that members must come to every one of their mandatory meetings or else they will “die spiritually”.

To describe this in my own terminology, I would refer to this as an overanalogization; this is basing doctrine off of an analogy while ignoring the author’s original intent for said analogy, this is unsuitable for doctrinal derivation. Jesus did teach using analogies, however, Jesus also had the power on earth to forgive sins (Matthew 9:2-6), and he was the son of God. It is quite presumptuous of these people to just go around making up their own analogies based on other analogies and then trying to use these analogies as a base for church doctrine as if their ideas are ordained by God. An analogy is an imperfect representation that is meant to get across a certain point, so for someone to try to draw up conclusions around an analogy that are outside the authors intended use, this can yield inaccurate results. It is too obvious that this organization does not care about accuracy; they only care about what scriptures they can exploit for their own purposes. They now repeatedly throw around the phrase “it’s a meeting of the body” when telling their members that they can’t miss any meetings, like the rest of the buzzwords they use, they mindlessly throw this phrase around without any thought to the errors of its derivation.

           

There are regions of the Church where members who are college students are told that they cannot have classes on Wednesday nights even if these classes are required for their major because these would conflict with their midweek meetings and that they must “put the Kingdom first”. Once again, this shows their total ignorance to what the “Kingdom of God” really is; the Kingdom of God is not a meeting, the Kingdom is the people of God. If a person in the Church has a need for a specific class, then the Church should be accommodating to meet that need. They claim that the required meetings are so that all members may be “encouraged” but what they are actually doing is mindlessly suppressing their members which is in fact the opposite of encouraging them, especially when there are significantly more meetings required for college students which decreases the time they have to study. Also take into account the increased work hours these students have to take up in order to keep up with constantly raising their tithes; it is no wonder that their college ministries are comprised predominantly of students with college majors that have lower study time requirements.

I mentioned before the dangers of group psychology and quoted Gustave Le Bon who writes “The most striking peculiarity presented by a psychological crowd is the following: Whoever be the individuals that compose it, however like or unlike be their mode of life, their occupations, their character, or their intelligence, the fact that they have been transformed into a crowd puts them in possession of a sort of collective mind which makes them feel, think, and act in a manner quite different from that in which each individual of them would feel, think, and act were he in a state of isolation.” 
Le Bon comments further on the effects of this collective mind by saying; “In the collective mind the intellectual aptitudes of the individuals, and in consequence their individuality, are weakened. The heterogeneous is swamped by the homogeneous, and the unconscious qualities obtain the upper hand.” Sigmund Freud refers to this as the “herd instinct” or “group mind”, which leads to a lowering of an individual’s capacity to think in a more intelligent manner. Once again, I am merely conveying the content of the conclusions of these psychological authoritarians and I do not write this to insult the congregation’s intelligence. Hopefully many who read my first articles also followed my suggestion of reading the writings of these men so as to be aware of the nature of the psychological influences of which I am alluding to in my articles.

Kip McKean takes advantage of the psychological effects of the group mind mentality by telling his congregation that they must be “united in mind and thought”, quoting such verses as 1 Corinthians 1:10 and Ephesians 4:3. These verses were originally meant for the congregation to be united in the apostle’s teachings, but now this is used against any member who begins to object to the ICC’s actions; as if they are the real problem by disrupting the “unity of the congregation”.

The insistence that all members attend at least 2-4 mandatory meetings every week serves to accelerate the transition of new members into the group psychological state as well as to make sure that this state is maintained for the older members. This makes them more susceptible to methods of coercion and it also serves to stealthily feed beliefs to the congregation that cannot be taught up front, such as the belief that anyone who leaves the ICC loses their salvation. They cannot teach this during the first principles studies since it would scare them away, so instead this belief is subtly introduced to the members and repeatedly reinforced through many mandatory meetings. These required meetings are also meant to subject members to the psychological factors of repetition:

Given to exaggeration in its feelings, a crowd is only impressed by excessive sentiments. An orator wishing to move a crowd must make an abusive use of violent affirmations. To exaggerate, to affirm, to resort to repetitions, and never to attempt to prove anything by reasoning are methods of argument well known to speakers at public meetings. –Gustave Le Bon, Book 1; The Minds of Crowds, Ch. 2.3

Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it. –Adolf Hitler

These meetings also have another purpose besides psychological influence; there are practical reasons as well. In my first two articles titled The ICC’s Corrupt Policies for Money parts 1 and 2, I showed how the ICC would spread misinformation and half-truths to institute corrupt policies for their own profit. Some people refer to these as “smoke and mirrors” tactics. These tactics can backfire, however, if a record of statements is kept that could be referred back to at a later time to prove the leadership’s dishonesty; therefore they cannot afford to have such statements in a written form or a form of communication that can be stored as a record. The best method is to influence the congregation through oral communication. By having 3 to 4 mandatory meetings a week, this provides the leadership with the ability to ensure that all members are present to receive the orally-delivered propaganda and then to have this propaganda repeated to induce subconscious psychological acceptance. The reason they stress that every single member be present at all meetings is important since if even one member escapes their psychological influence they can become a danger to the system and can easily shatter a carefully created illusion in the minds of other members. This is why certain members are aggressively marked for being “divisive” and all members are coerced into breaking off all communication with such people.

This is an attempt by Kip McKean to capitalize on the concepts of group psychology to influence the minds of his congregation and to keep them under his influence.

(Added commentary 9/28/2015)

I mentioned above that the ICC is wary of having a record of statements which could potentially reveal times where they have been deceitful (such as the claim that “anyone who goes to the ICOC is going to hell”; which was said during an unrecorded leaders meeting), however, I would like to point out that sometimes they let certain things slip during sermons or written articles which are recorded.

A good example of how the ICC is afraid of being caught in their own contradictions can be seen by the account of the original author of kipmckean.com. Before the ICC used threats to grab it from him; his site would often post material that revealed the things that these ICC leaders said in the past. Here is the author’s account of why the people in the ICC leadership were afraid of his site:

I purposely kept the site neutral in its content and supplied very little, if any, commentary as to my views about events that were happening in the ICOC and to McKean.  Believe me, I could have said a lot more, but decided to offer links and comparisons and allow website visitors the opportunity to be fully informed and to make their own decisions based on the information they researched.   For instance, had a website visitor wanted to read the letters and articles that were addressing McKean’s divisive actions in 2005, they would have to know and go to each individual churches website to read the letter that that church wrote in response to McKean’s announcement that he was forming a new movement and then attempting to pull members out of his former church into his newly formed church.  Instead, the website visitor could now read both McKean’s articles and each churches letter in an easy to read timeline.

I also pulled quotes from McKean’s sermons and articles that where inflammatory against his former fellowship or quotes used to confuse members as to who a Christian truly was, what the church taught regarding the possibility of any other church outside his movement being Christian, and how McKean’s doctrine added to the scriptures regarding the steps needed in becoming a Christian, etc.  Once again, I only pulled quotes directly from McKean.  I did not give my commentary on the subject.  I used only McKean’s words.

Then he goes on to remark on the ICC’s celebration of the transfer of the domain name kipmckean.com into the ICC’s hands:

What follows over the next several postings, will be my account of events that have caused them to claim “When this transfer is complete this week, it will mark the end of the worst persecution we’ve received from any website on the internet!” and “This is undoubtedly the largest victory we’ve seen in our Cyber-Ministry!!!” While flattering as this is to me, I also find it laughable that they think they have overcome some huge obstacle.   Apparently posting their own words on the website seems to be the worst thing they have faced.   Showing both sides of a story is something they cringe in fear of.  These men are not men of God.

The rest of the author’s account of how the ICC used deceit and threats to wrestle the kipmckean.com domain name from him can be found here.

This website also includes the original material that was on kipmckean.com before the ICC took it over to post their propaganda.

A prime example of where the ICC leaders constantly contradict themselves is with the following reasoning:

1. ICC loses members = “God is pruning us; that proves we are God’s movement.”

Compare to:

2. ICC gets baptisms = “God is adding to our number; that proves we are God’s movement.”

Whatever happens; whether the ICC is gaining members or losing members, they want their people to believe that they are “God’s Kingdom” and therefore resort to all kinds of contradictive reasoning to justify whatever they want to believe.

Control of Dating

The ICC leadership will only let their members date if the leaders have approved that these members are “spiritual”. Members are not allowed to date unless they are approved by the leadership, of course this is not something that they have announced, but rather they use methods that highly discourage members from even attempting to form a “romantic” relationship with another member without going through the proper channels; such as talking to their discipler first and then getting the approval of the region leader. 
       With this system in place hardly ever is an “illegal” couple formed, however, there have been a few cases where I have seen members attempt to date each other without leadership consent, in this case the leaders would demand to have a meeting with the couple and then ask them to break up on the grounds that their relationship is “unspiritual”. While doing this they coerce the couple with statements that they are “just concerned with their well-being and spirituality.” So we see that even though they do not officially tell the congregation that they are not allowed to date without their approval (they do not make this announcement because their abuse of power would become too obvious), they do have a system in place which ensures that unapproved couples do not get formed. It is one thing to be concerned about the well-being of an individual, but it is another thing entirely to be controlling. If God’s heart was to be controlling then he would have put Adam and Eve in a cage rather than allowing them to roam the Garden of Eden. God wants to give us the freedom of learning from our mistakes.

            The leaders claim that they want to make sure that the couple relationships are approved as being “spiritual” according to their definition of “spirituality”. Now recall from my previous writings that for members to not give their full special missions contribution (that was imposed on them, these amounts are not voluntarily agreed on) or who did not raise their contribution when “called” to do so, this is regarded as “unspiritual” by the leadership. And if these members are “discipling” other members, then they are expected to “disciple” them into raising their contributions and giving whatever amounts of money that are dictated during special contributions as well. So for a member to appear “spiritual” in the eyes of the leaders, they need to comply with these things that the leaders tell them to do. This is a very effective method for controlling young college-aged people with raging hormones.

It is not too hard to put two and two together to see the result of this; if members of the Church want to become a couple, they must behave in compliance with these policies. So if a brother becomes interested in one of the sisters, then to get leadership approval in order to ask her to date him he had better be ready to fork over whatever amount of money that the leadership asks for or else this approval will not be given. Well, now we see why they are so eager to “help make sure the dating couples are spiritual”, for this is a great deal for them in terms of monetary profit. Also these couples must continue to comply with these ICC policies in order to be considered to be “spiritual” enough to continue their relationship, so in effect they must give whatever money the leadership asks for, whenever they ask for it, or else it will affect whether these couples will even be “allowed” to get married. For these young people, the ICC’s control of dating becomes a highly effective leash to be used against them as well as controlling their young minor leaders.

There have been times in the ICC where I have been around newly married couples who didn’t even seem to love each other; there was kind of an awkwardness about them. I saw more affection in the relationships that my married friends outside the church had (and their relationship were pure). Some of these newly married ICC couples would brag that they were “so deep in God” that their love for God overshadows their love for each other. Is that so? In order to get married you of course have to comply with ICC policies (because you have to become a couple first, and I already showed the prerequisites required for that to happen). These people had to give whatever money the leadership demanded as well as coerce the people they were “discipling” to raise their contributions as well. So do they mean to tell me that they are so “deep in God” that I cannot see their love for each other even after they have been going along with these policies that are clearly against the scriptures? What is really happening here is that the lack of love I was seeing in these couples was due to the ICC’s attempts to make sure that their love for one another did not supersede their loyalty to their organization.

The ICC takes measures to insure this back when the couple first begins dating, if they see them getting too close they will intervene and tell them that they can only interact or talk to each other on certain days of the week. They claim that this will help them to be more devoted to God and that it will help their relationship, in some cases I have seen couples that were only allowed to talk to each other for one day a week. They keep this up for a couple months until the leaders see that their loyalty to their organization becomes solidified.

The reason they started doing this was because sometimes after a couple becomes allowed to date they leave the organization together. This is because the ICC leaders have used their control of dating to coerce these people to give more money, as well as getting them to manipulate other people into giving more money. Once these people get what they wanted and look back at what they had to go through in order to get it, they finally realize that it is better to leave the organization and therefore the couple leaves together.

By limiting their contact with each other and ensuring their loyalty to the organization, they can prevent couples from leaving together and even threaten to break them up for being “unspiritual” if they slack on their contributions or do not raise their contributions when told to do so. This also explains why Kip McKean and Victor Gonzalez Sr. were so confident when they told Karl W. that they would convince his wife to divorce him if he should dare to leave their organization (thankfully their plan didn’t work).

Conclusion

I have only provided a few examples of the scriptures which the ICC leaders twist to their own purposes. The ICC leaders distort a great number of other scriptures which can be disproven if we would only think critically. It is the profession of these people to use the Bible to make money after all. You need to ask yourselves for each scripture; what was the intent of the author when this scripture was written? Does this intent match what these Church leaders are trying to do? We need to be unified on the scriptures, but in order to make sure that our unification is based on the Bible we need to be able to think critically like the Bereans did rather than allowing ourselves to be pulled into a group mentality.

For Kip McKean, as a master architect of a system of control, he has realized that you cannot manipulate people if these people are aware that they are being manipulated. . Likewise, for a church filled with many good-hearted people in the lower ranks, it is very hard to get them to manipulate others if they become aware of what they are actually doing. Therefore this manipulation needs to be disguised as something else whether it be “advice” to influence people to make decisions according to the ICC leadership’s desires, claiming to be “concerned for your salvation” whenever abusive policies are questioned and “concern for your spirituality” whenever they want you to give more money, etc. The ICC has done a very thorough job of obscuring the main function of these policies and trying to present them as something else. As for those who become increasingly aware that something is wrong, Kip knows that everyone has their price and controls them via relationships, threats to upset their financial stability (for those who are employed), spiritual blackmail, etc.

With this Hebrews 4:12 comes to mind once again, like a double-edged sword the scriptures can be used either for good or evil, and for those who use it for the latter, as an instrument of control through fear and psychological terrorism, they are going to have to answer to God for it on judgment day.

See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ. –Colossians 2:8