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January – International Sunday attendance exceeded 100,000
July – goal of having disciples in all 50 states reached with the plantings in Fargo, North Dakota; Sioux Falls, South Dakota; and Burlington, Vermont
Church Growth Today names LA Church the fastest growing church in North America (2nd year in a row)
Nelson Mandela receives first HOPE Unity Award
HOPE worldwide registered with USAID
Baghdad planted
Morocco, Turkey and Iraq plantings
LA Church breaks 10,000 Sunday attendance
200th church planted: Pakistan
World Missions Leadership Conference – Johannesburg
In 1995, just as the Internet was beginning to explode, people in a number of Christian discussion groups on the Usenet, the Internet’s bulletin board system, started complaining that people discussing and arguing about the International Churches of Christ were drowning out other conversation. At the request of a former member, Chris Lee, the Usenet newsgroup alt.religion.christian.boston-church was created.
This year also saw the appearance of the first WWW pages by former members. The ICC itself didn’t get on the WWW for another year, which may explain the ambivalent attitude its leaders have towards the Internet. It was a source of information about the ICC which the leaders could not control, and access to which they could not block. Increasingly, current members who were having doubts about the group would search the Internet for information, find the WWW sites of former members, and end up leaving.
In 1995, at a leadership conference in Johannesburg, South Africa, Al Baird, one of the ICC’s “World Sector Leaders”, referred to the “shepherding crisis” in the ICC. In this same speech, he estimated that there were two former members for each current member in the group. The ICC leaders resolved to change how the church operated to prevent this — again.