1 /5 Ed Williams: I’ll give my honest opinion and detailed examples of my experience with this church. There are genuine people who truly love the Lord that attend this church, but it indeed has many cult like practices that should be warned.
As a former member and impromptu leader of ICOC/ Alpha Omega (campus ministry) for 5+ years (left in 2020) here.
1. If you leave: If you decide to leave (as a baptized member), some will relentlessly try to convince you to stay. If you decide to leave as a potential member, they will consider you a failed recruit. They will consider you fallen away and some even an “apostate” for leaving. They will ask others to pray for you and pray that you will return, but they will move on to more recruits.
2. Baptism: They believe in Baptismal Regeneration. Which means baptism is the only way you are saved. They also believe that anybody that doesnt teach this view of salvation is a false teaching church and are not true Christians. You are not allowed to be baptized by any other church. If you are or have been, they will consider your baptism invalid.
2.Bible Study Series: If you visit, they will try to invite you to a bible study series with the person/friend that invited you. This bible study series is an indoctrination. Essentially they will outline a list of spiritual topics with the goal of getting you baptized. Typical study series goes (Seeking → Word → Church → Light/Dark → Sin → Repentance → Baptism). If you don’t agree with something or question them/debate them on their ideals, they’ll politely chastise you. If they can’t convince you, then they will pull in their leaders/older members of the ministry/church to persuade/convince you that you are wrong. If you still don’t agree, they will consider you a lost cause and end the study series. They will probably stop hanging out with you
3.Secrecy: They keep a lot of their practices hidden because they do not want to scare off newcomers. They don’t want to tell people they are a part of ICOC, the leaders instruct the members not to tell newcomers, so they don’t look up the history of the ICOC (which is a whole other discussion). They keep secret files on everyone that gets baptized, including your sins.
4.Attendance: They have multiple events throughout the week and you will be expected to attend as many as possible. (Bible study, Bible discussion, Friday Devotionals, Midweek, Wednesday Night College Service, Leadership meetings, Hangouts, Sunday Church, etc). Your life will be surrounded by this church and people in it, and they encourage this. If you want to take a break from it, they will question you.
5.Dating/Relationships: You are only allowed to date people that are baptized members of the church. They are linked with the Georgia State, Emory, Georgia Tech college ministries (known as sister ministries) and you can only date within these ministries unless you date someone from an outstate Icoc ministry. (They are spread across multiple college campuses). Men are expected to take women on “encouragement dates” which are platonic glorified hangouts which are made to make the women feel special. You are not allowed to go on single dates. You have to get permission from your discipler and “advice” from her discipler and approved before you start dating. If you don’t, youll be “rebuked”. You are not allowed to call the opposite sex past 11pm (this is known as “purity” hour). You’re also not encouraged to indulge in PDA outside of holding hands, unless you are married. If you date outside the ministry, they will try to convince your partner to join or will find a way to break your relationship up.
If you are interested in more examples, send me an email and I’d love to share more. There’s many in this church that are genuinely trying to love on others, but many have been corrupted in a harmful church system that dates back decades.
Be very careful.
