"In a loud voice [thousands upon thousands of angels] sang: "Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise!"
Revelation 5:12

From around the world, six hundred Elders, Evangelists, their wives and Women's Ministry Leaders gathered in Chicago for three historic and very healing days. The theme of the International Leadership Conference was "Worthy Is The Lamb." Mike Taliaferro, former African missionary now the preacher in San Antonio, Texas, gave the opening address, "He Will Strike Your Heel." Mike shared from Genesis 3 that Satan would strike mankind's heel (as he has in our fellowship) but that God would "crush his head." Mike passionately preached that God ultimately will be victorious over Satan. However, his most sobering remark was that God's victory and an evangelized world is not guaranteed in our lifetime. Therefore, individually and as a fellowship it is either "forgive or failure." Ongoing bitterness will destroy us. Then he reminded us of the admonition of Paul in Romans 16:20, "The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet." I will never forget Mike's declaration of faith, "The heel will heal!" This speech set an extremely hopeful tone for the entire seminar.

Later that evening John Louis of Singapore spoke on the theme "A Rock Was Cut Out." Early in his lesson, he had a picture of a giant iceberg put up on the screen. We saw that the "tip of the iceberg" above the water was only one tenth of the entire massive "rock" of ice. He admonished us that our discipling must mature to "look beneath the surface." He shared very candidly about his marriage and the professional help he and Karen needed to have a strong marriage. All of us were encouraged by his openness and certainly called higher. Truly, we have to take the time to get deep into each other's life, if we are going to lovingly and effectively disciple our brothers and sisters to maturity like Jesus. A superficial admonishment based on behavior or what we see outwardly will not deal effectively with the real challenges of the heart. John's practical challenge of getting deeper also included a more thorough preparation of disciples for the different transitions of life.

Though others gave awesome speeches and classes, the last sermon to impact me was "He Went Around Doing Good" delivered by Wyndham Shaw of Boston. He encouraged all to have the perspective that the early builders of the "ICOC" were purely motivated by the love of God to evangelize the world. The leadership structure, upon which all the leaders of that day agreed, was meant to facilitate world evangelization. In time, many felt it was too controlling and lacked the flexibility to allow greater degrees of independence needed by maturing congregations. Then Wyndham paralleled our fellowship to the World Trade Center. As with the World Trade Center, the engineers that will build on that decimated site in the future will exercise greater care to build better and stronger than in the past, so that the "structure" will not collapse again. Since our fellowship's unity will have less structure in the future, he preached that this will require greater efforts in our relationships for our churches to be unified.

The conference was healing for each participant to be able to renew relationships that have been fractured by Satan through hurt, anger, bitterness, distance and lack of communication. For Elena and me it was so encouraging to fellowship with brothers and sisters we have not seen for years. Late Thursday evening, I was invited to participate in a direct, yet warm discussion about unity with church leaders from Boston, Seattle, Savannah, Phoenix, Dallas, Los Angeles, and Athens, Georgia. We realized that our perspectives on some issues may differ but we reaffirmed before God our respect and love for each other. Elena and I also had excellent meetings with brothers from Syracuse in the USA, as well as London and Moscow. In these meetings, we were asked to share practically how God had healed the Portland Church from a church split sixteen months ago into a warm, "sold-out" congregation of disciples. Several others at the conference expressed the desire to visit and learn from the Portland Church.

Friday night a group of thirty brothers met to discuss "retying together" our fellowship with a brotherhood directory, an International Campus and Teen Ministry Conference (to be hosted next year by San Antonio), as well as reaffirming the financial ties between the first world and the third world churches to continue the dream to evangelize the world. There was also a reaffirmation to call our fellowship the International Churches of Christ, but individual congregations may use any descriptive name they choose: ICOC, Church of Christ, Church of Firstborn, Christian Church, etc... The only "down moment" I experienced during the conference was not being invited to play in Friday's early morning basketball game. To this moment, I do not know if Doug Arthur left me out because of age or fear of my dunking ability!

Truly, all the conference participants were humbled and moved by the exaltation of the Lamb, Jesus. The Chicago Church, and in particular Steve Staten and Tony Singh, are to be commended for this extraordinary effort to bring all of us together. Next year the International Leadership Conference will be hosted by Seattle. Let us pray that we will forgive as God has forgiven us. In this way, the world will see our love one for another and be drawn to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. And to God be the glory!

Kip McKean