Tag Kip McKean

A new chapter was written in Johannesburg, South Africa. In June of 1986, Gloria and I watched religious history unfold as 22 disciples, both blacks and whites sent out by the Boston Church, flew into Johannesburg. While the two of us were there just for the first service, the 22 disciples came to live and to plant a church that would demonstrate love between the races in the midst of apartheid, the cruel philosophy and law of the land that separated the races. Since then, apartheid has died, but the Johannesburg Church of Christ with a regular Sunday attendance of 2,000 – half blacks and half whites hugging and singing together – has become a beacon of light for the Dark Continent.

Travelling the broad road (Matthew 7:13-14) is easy. It is Comfortable. Many people are going that way. the narrow road is a different story. It is difficult. It is hard to find, It is not heavily travelled.

In 1986 twelve People met with Lisa and me in our 96th Street apartment in Manhattan to begin what for years was known as the “Daytime Ministry.” Our idea was to create an alternative church schedule that would enable us to minister better to artists of all kinds in New York. Years ago, talented singers, dancers, actors and others in the performing arts would count the cost of following Jesus and wash their stage ambitions away in the waters of baptism.

What chance would thirty “would-be disciples,” who first met together in Boston in 1979, have to turn the world upside down? About the same chance that the teenage shepherd boy David had to kill a nine foot Goliath and rout his army of thousands. But David won, against all odds, and God is using the small Boston beginning in just as amazing a way. This issue of L.A. Story is a report of the tremendous growth in God’s kingdom.

THINK BIG. HOW BIG? AS BIG AS YOUR FAITH
will let you think. No matter how big you think, you will not match up to God’s thinking. A brother recently told of his listening to a tape of one of my sermons in 1988. I expected him to share how challenged or inspired he was by the lesson. Instead he said, “Boy, we didn’t have much faith back then, did we?” I have thought about what he said, and he is right.

Doubting Thomas grew in his faith and became Daring Thomas, and the first century church flourished. Nineteen centuries later the Daring Thomases are back, and the church is flourishing. The last time Gloria and I were in India was October 12, 1986, for the first service of the church in Bombay. The team of 12 from Boston were tough and seasoned. Their level of sacrifice is modern-day legend: the one-suitcase challenge. Each member and each child took with him only what would fit into one suitcase; everything else was either sold or given away.

It was a real "Garden Party" Sunday September 18, over 8000 in the Boston Garden Celebrated the fifteenth anniversary of the Boston Church of Christ.