The UP (now the UPC) is back in the news again. This time, it wasn’t me. First, Scott mentions it, then Mike. It makes me think that the steering committee is trying to drum up support for the UPC again. Why? Are they going to try to get more people to sign or something? Why on earth do that?

In any case, the following is the history of the UPC based on available documents.

History of the UPC (Statement of Facts)
At the Seattle ILC, the process to draft the UPC began. Who asked for it to be drafted? The 33 member planning committee for the next 2006 ILC in Virginia Beach, Va This committee of 33 nominated 9 brothers by secret ballot to coordinate proposals for unity and revival. (The 33 are assumed to be a similar to the 31 that met at the 2004 ILC in Chicago.) Who presented this idea of a select nine person “Brotherhood Group” to the planning committee? The leaders of the Los Angeles Church of Christ.

Previous to the 2005 ILC, LA presented its own unity proposal via its website on August 25, 2005. (This was replaced two days later by a revised version, then later removed altogether.) This proposal was born out of a meeting in Portland during the World Missions Jubilee on the afternoon of Aug 20, 2005. At that meeting, Al Baird, Bruce Williams, Steve Johnson, Doug Arthur, John Louis, Mike Fontenot, and Kip McKean discussed how to word the statement of core beliefs as a part of LA’s proposal. As stated in both versions of the Call to Unity, the leadership group of the LA Church of Christ initiated the August 2005 effort.

Therefore, it is important to understand the origins of the present UPC. It came from an effort by the LA church to unify our family of churches. This effort was LA’s second effort at unity, the first being the CALSURE/Affiliation Agreement instigated by Harvey Woodford. In April/May 2003, many emails and proposed agreements floated around. At first, the contention centered around the formation of a “kingdom level” group that could decide matters of church conflict and doctrine. Subsequent amendments all but removed the power of the central group. The ability for the ICoC to exist as a parent company to handle benefits and liability insurance was all that remained. As many as 100 US churches signed this affiliation agreement, however, a board of delegates never met to call a unity meeting as described in the final document. Many churches discovered that they could purchase liability insurance much cheaper locally, so this effort failed. In 2004, a memo was sent to the churches that the ICoC would exist as a corporation as basically an empty shell.

Unity, however, was a major topic of concern at the 2004 ILC in Chicago. A Unity discussion called a “crucial conversation” took place on September 23, 2004. A group of 31 men chosen by the Tony Singh and Steve Staten met to discuss issues of “ethics, core convictions, missions, collaboration, communication, and other topics.” Although two outsiders were to report, 2 of the 31, Andy Fleming and Phil Lam presented the report on September 25, 2004.

One item to note from the report (I have the audio) deals with identity. The three points around identity were: we can only define ourselves and not others, a name change cannot be explained to members in the ‘third world’ and a redefined ICoC should keep its distinctives. The redefined ICoC would be about evangelizing the world and discipling relationships defined through the one-another passages. The other item of note is that the decision was made to have yearly conferences. Seattle offered to host 2005, and the rest has been mentioned above.

Oddly enough, much was made of unity with other Restoration Movement Churches in Chicago, but not much has been said since.

For the record, there was only one mention of the 2003 ILC in Dallas on upcyberdown. I attended personally and can attest that this meeting was more about mutual encouragement than anything else. Yes, Bob Gempel yelled at us for not giving like we used to and Kip autographed a Bible in the lobby. (I saw both of these events personally and will sign an affadavit to that effect.) However, unity was more of a hope than an agenda item.

Conclusions

Given the history after 2003, the lead committee appears to be whomever organizes the next ILC. The organization committee of the 2004 ILC became a select group of men to discuss unity and international issues. This select group was supplanted in 2005 with a Brotherhood Group and finally a Steering Committee was formalized, complete with term limits.

Despite over 40 different proposals sent to the Brotherhood Group, and discussion with hundreds, the final UPC is very similar in content to the original Proposal forwarded by the LA leadership in August 2005. Remember that these tenets of common belief and practice were written largely by seven men, Al Baird, Bruce Williams, Steve Johnson, Doug Arthur, John Louis, Mike Fontenot, and Kip McKean.

It is illogical to believe that there is a coordinated conspiracy by any select group to ‘take control’ of the ICoC. A consolidation of power do not prove the intent of those that benefit from that consolidation.

Implications (Reasonable Inferences)

One of the biggest implications is that the ICoC on paper has become a paper tiger of its former self. A comparison of the LA unity document and the present UCP is similar in content. However, the UCP is a milder version of the basic tenets in LA’s document. In other words, doctrine has softened, but not really changed.

A few men make the rules. With all the talk of diversity and early efforts to include as many as possible, there are nine leaders of the ICoC. Their power is not fiat as Kip’s was, but their influence is considerable. Remember that the House of Representatives consists of 430+ members, but the agenda is set by the Speaker of House. In the same way, we have 70 delegates, but the agenda is set by the nine.

Without change, we will revert back to what we were. Now, two years after the UPC and four and a half years after HKL, we see the results of our folly. Things are going back to what they were pre-2003.

More later, especially with recent mentions of the UPC.