North American Christian Convention
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The North American Christian Convention is an annual meeting of ministers and other active leaders in the Independent Christian Churches/Churches of Christ, a branch of the Restoration Movement. It was first held in 1927 in a reaction to the perceived liberalism of the meeting of the Christian Church in Memphis, Tennessee the previous year; a meeting which was viewed by many "independents" as part of the slide into heresy of the group now known as the Disciples of Christ.
The NACC is supported by those Christian Churches and their leaders and members who do not reject instrumental music in worship services out of hand; they do not see its acceptance or rejection as a test of fellowship as do most congregations and members of the Churches of Christ (non-instrumental). However, they are in agreement theologically with most of the other tenets of that group, such as congregational autonomy (no supervisory body superior to the local church or able to make binding decisions for it), that scriptural baptism is by immersion as it was in the time of the apostles, that baptism is for those old enough and mature enough to accept Jesus Christ as Savior on their own initiative, and that genuine Christian worship should occur each Sunday and that an integral part of that worship is the Lord's Supper. They reject the idea of "apostolic succession" in the sense that church leaders must have their hands laid upon by someone who has had hands laid upon him by someone who had hands laid upon him, ad infinitum, back to the days of the apostles, but rather they believe that the apostles' true successors are those who have remained true to their doctrine.
The NACC was held annually after 1927 until the end of that decade; the deprivations brought about by the Great Depression and the dislocations caused by World War II contributed to it being held only three times in the 1930s and four times in the 1940s; since 1950 it has again become an annual event. In recent years several members of the Churches of Christ (non-instrumental) have been invited to this gathering and some have even taken something of a leading role; this has received a mixed reception in their own group, at best, with many applauding this and many more demurring.
