Great Commission International, later known as the Great Commission Association of Churches and Great Commission Churches (GCC), was an association of independent evangelical Christian congregations that developed from a campus evangelism effort in the late 1960s. The movement was founded by James Douglas McCotter, a businessman and former student evangelist born in 1945.
Over more than five decades, the movement developed from a loosely organized group of student converts into an international network with dozens of member churches and tens of thousands of adherents. It formally dissolved in 2020. Throughout its history, former members, journalists, scholars, and cult-monitoring organizations raised concerns about its internal practices and leadership structure.
The movement’s origins date to 1965, when McCotter moved from Colorado Springs to Greeley, Colorado. Raised in the Plymouth Brethren tradition, he believed that contemporary Christian denominations did not reflect the church described in the New Testament’s Book of Acts. McCotter developed a doctrine known within the movement as the “Heavenly Vision.” It held that Christians had a biblical mandate to evangelize the world within a single generation through rapid church planting. He began evangelizing at the University of Northern Colorado and developed a small group of followers.
In 1967, McCotter was drafted into the United States Army. During basic training, he met Dennis Clark, and he later became acquainted with Herschel Martindale following a tour of duty in Vietnam. In the summer of 1970, McCotter, Clark, Martindale, and approximately 30 college-age followers began “The Blitz,” a coordinated evangelistic effort on university campuses across the southwestern United States. The campaign used direct street proselytizing, religious literature, and group singing to establish new campus ministries, which were called “works.”
By 1973, the group’s national conference attracted nearly 1,000 participants. The movement subsequently expanded into Midwestern college towns, including Lawrence, Kansas, and Kansas City, Missouri. Members lived in communal arrangements, generally rejected conventional career ambitions, and participated in frequent informal fellowship modeled on practices associated with early Christianity.
During this period of campus expansion, affiliated groups became involved in legal disputes concerning religious expression on public university campuses. In Oklahoma, several affiliated speakers were arrested for trespassing after preaching without prior university authorization, although the charges were later dropped.
A more significant case involved an affiliated student group at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, which challenged university policies prohibiting religious meetings in university facilities. In 1981, the United States Supreme Court ruled 8-1 in Widmar v. Vincent that the university’s restriction violated students’ free-speech rights. The decision established a legal precedent concerning religious access to public university property.
In 1983, the movement formally incorporated as Great Commission International (GCI), with McCotter and Clark sharing leadership. The organization was created in part to centralize administrative, publishing, and fundraising operations. GCI subsequently launched outreach programs including “Invasion ‘85,” which sent teams to 50 college campuses. Many of the resulting ministries had difficulty continuing because of insufficient preparation.
In late 1986, McCotter resigned from GCI leadership to pursue secular business and media ventures. He subsequently moved to Florida and ended his regular contact with the organization. In 1989, GCI was reorganized as the Great Commission Association of Churches (GCAC), which was later renamed Great Commission Churches (GCC). That same year, Great Commission Ministries (GCM) was established under Dave Bovenmyer to train campus ministers and manage fundraising.
In 1996, the Internal Revenue Service selected GCM as a test case concerning “deputation,” a practice in which individual donors contribute directly to support specific missionaries. The IRS ultimately upheld GCM’s tax-exempt status. GCM was renamed Reliant in 2006 and expanded its services beyond the GCC network. By the mid-2000s, GCC encompassed approximately 60 churches in the United States and about a dozen international congregations, reporting more than 43,000 members in total.
At the same time, the organization faced continuing criticism concerning allegations of authoritarianism and cultlike control. Newspaper investigations in Iowa, Kansas, and Maryland during the late 1970s and 1980s included accounts from former members who described extensive regulation of personal behavior.
Critics alleged that church leaders used “home groups” to supervise aspects of members’ lives, including dating, clothing, reading material, financial giving, and family relationships. Former members also alleged that leaders encouraged severe forms of child discipline intended to break a child’s spirit and pressured members to place church obligations ahead of family relationships.
In 1989, the University of Guelph in Canada prohibited the movement’s campus ministry from operating on campus because of concerns about its practices. GCI’s leadership consistently rejected the characterization of the organization as a cult, maintaining that its doctrines were orthodox and its governance was based on the Bible. At the same time, leaders acknowledged past administrative and pastoral problems.
In 1991, GCAC launched “Project CARE,” which included a public confession acknowledging mistakes such as authoritarian leadership, legalistic discipline, elitism toward other churches, and restrictive views concerning dating. Some former members considered the statement insufficient. However, several long-term critics, including academic researchers and exit counselors, later revised their assessments to recognize organizational reforms implemented after the mid-1990s.
On July 13, 2020, the GCC board of directors announced that the association would formally dissolve by the end of that year. The leadership stated that GCC had fulfilled its purpose as organizational scaffolding and that its member churches had developed into independent congregations capable of governing themselves without centralized oversight.
Key Sources:
Grove, M. (1978, March 28). Bible Study plays role in mental breakdown. The Iowa State Daily.
Guerra, J. (1986, February 6). Ex-members scorn, current members praise GCI. The Montgomery County Sentinel.
Healey, J. (1980, March 16). Controversies in Iowa Christianity: The rise of a fundamentalist. The Des Moines Register.
Owen, D. (1973, March 31). Group claims infringement of civil rights. The Oklahoma State University O’Collegian.