International Council of Community Churches
International Council of Community Churches belongs to the Ecumenical, union and community churches family of churches.
Governance: congregational.
International Council of Community Churches reports 57 congregations in the United States (RCMS 2020 (ARDA national table), 2020).
A council of community churches — congregations that belong to their towns rather than to denominations — born in 1950 of an interracial merger years ahead of its time.
Heritage
Formed in 1950 by the merger of two councils of community churches: one of predominantly Black congregations, one predominantly white — making it one of the earliest intentionally interracial mergers of church bodies in American history, undertaken before the civil rights era made such things imaginable to most. Community churches themselves arose in the early twentieth century wherever a town wanted one good church rather than five struggling denominational ones. The Council links these free congregations for fellowship, clergy credentialing and ecumenical representation while leaving each fully self-governing.
Theological family
Deliberately post-denominational: broadly Christian and ecumenical, receiving members from every background; the Council prescribes no doctrinal test, and its congregations range across the Protestant spectrum.
Who decides what
Congregational: every community church governs itself; the Council is a voluntary fellowship with an annual conference, offering standing for clergy and a connection to the wider ecumenical movement.
What a first-time visitor would find
Whatever the community's church has grown into — commonly a warm Protestant service blending traditions, since the congregation itself blends them; communion practices and music vary widely.
What it has always cared about
The community itself as the church's parish; unity as a local, practical achievement rather than a negotiated document; and an interracial character claimed at its founding, not retrofitted.
Its gift to the wider church
Its 1950 merger showed American Protestants that Black and white church bodies could unite as equals — and community churches everywhere demonstrate weekly that denominational division is not the only way to organize the faith.
Commonly confused with
With "community church" as a mere name — thousands of independent evangelical churches use it without any tie to this Council; and with the United Church of Christ, a denomination with a similar ecumenical temper but a very different structure.
Range of views inside it
Wide: member congregations differ in theology, worship and social stance as their communities differ; the Council holds them in fellowship, not conformity.
A note from the mapmakers: Nothing here may be asserted of a specific congregation, and a church called "community church" usually has no connection to this body. RCMS 2020 counted 57 ICCC congregations. Sentences drawn from this record hedge as "ICCC congregations typically…" and yield to the congregation's own materials.
Sources: International Council of Community Churches — about (ICCC) · Handbook of Denominations in the United States (Abingdon Press) · 2020 U.S. Religion Census (ASARB)
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