And as far as workers and former workers go, it is a unique experience. We were both highly victimized, and we also participated in the victimization of others because of the place we held in the system. With more power, there is more opportunity to harm and workers certainly held more power than friends. And of course because of the hierarchy within the work, brothers held more power than sisters and responsible workers than non responsible and of course, overseers and senior brother workers held the most.
But in the end, there were/are no autocrats. The system itself is the autocrat, the beast that masters and holds hostage all. The overseers may appear to have all of the power, but just like the rest of us, every single choice they make is a bounded choice. Harmful doctrine, culture, and organizational practices keep them bound. To do anything that does not protect and preserve the system is to take a step into an unsafe, unknown territory where the identity, relational, familial, and existential threats are profound.
There may not be a gun to your head, but if you don’t do what the church wants you to do, you might as well jump off this cliff and lose your entire identity, your purpose, your vocation, your meaning making machine, your friends, your community, sometimes your family, your salvation,
When I left the work, it felt like I died. It felt like I got a divorce. It felt like my home was on fire. It felt like I had just learned that my family was actually not my family but had stolen me from my real family and sold me a lie all of these years. It was the most profoundly grief filled experience of my life so far.
So yeah, there was and is loneliness in the experience. I appreciate the recognition of the nuances around conversations about the evils of “the workers.” I understand the system of the work, the ministry, is the beast and not the individual workers or ministers. And sometimes that doesn’t come through explicitly in what people write. But I also get it.
Since the church doesn’t have a name or an institutional presence beyond the ministry or the workers, it makes sense that anger would be directed there. It’s justified. It’s a really bad thing.
And also, all of the ones still hostage to it, are hostage to this really bad thing. They are victims in a cult. So as we express our frustration and call for accountability and reparation and change, may we also yearn for each one’s deliverance and healing. The moral injury the current workers are suffering is profound. And even if they don’t yet have the words to describe it, they are being affected.
So if you know former workers in your life, check in on them. Offer them support. Share your substance with them if you have extra to offer. Starting again is exceedingly difficult.
If you know current workers in your lives, try to keep a relationship with them if it feels healthy to do so. Be friends with them as a person, not as their worker self. Encourage their agency and their identity outside of the system. Be available if things start to crumble. They’re going to need you.
RE: The special meeting visitor question.
I understand the intent behind asking about particular workers. We want to know if there are particularly alarming things we should know about. We want to know when and where we need to be particularly discerning and cautious. We want to know if there is anyone we can trust, even if it is just a little bit.
I want to add just a tiny bit of perspective here as someone who left the work in 2023 after this crisis began unfolding. When I was in the work, I did my best to live with integrity, to live with love and mercy toward others, to embody the compassion of Jesus, and to live in alignment with my values. I think for the most part, I was able to do that on most days and in most circumstances.
But because I was in a high control religion (some may say cult), I could only live with integrity and in alignment with my values of mercy, love, compassion, and honesty in so far as it did not also threaten or undermine the work or the church. I was living in a high control religion where every choice I made was bound in some way by harmful doctrine, culture, and/or organizational practices. Given these truths, was I a “good” worker? Could I be trusted? Would you want me to come to your special meeting?
It’s likely that many of you would say yes— that in comparison to some who were more entwined in the system, chained more tightly to exclusivity and legalism, more tightly grasping to the infallibility of the workers, more focused on the “Way” than Jesus, that yes I was a “good one”. I understand this thinking and maybe there is some truth to it. But I also wasn’t fully good. I couldn’t be as a worker. And I wasn’t fully trustworthy. I couldn’t be as a worker. And I wasn’t fully safe. I couldn’t be as a worker. I couldn’t fully show up without causing harm because I was bound in an unhealthy, unsafe, and abusive system.
The work is not a healthy or safe place. It is an abusive system, both for workers and for those who workers have authority and influence over, namely the friends. As such, no one currently in the role of a worker can be entirely safe and trustworthy. No one can be fully good. And it’s not because of any personal moral failing necessarily. It’s because they are representing, participating in, perpetuating, and being harmed by an abusive system. When workers enabled abuse, covered up abuse, dismissed survivors, and centered the needs of perpetrators, they weren’t an anomaly, they weren’t just personally failing in their morality. They were actually acting precisely as the system prepared them to act.
Until this system changes (and in my personal opinion, entirely shatters, burns up, and disappears), none of the workers can be fully trusted to act outside of the interest of preserving and protecting the church. It is not possible to both stay in the work and act fully in the interest of safety, spiritually, emotionally, and physically. The worker system has not substantially changed. It is still the same beast it was in 2023 and 2024.
Exclusivity is still at the core of it. It doesn’t matter which worker is coming to your special meeting. They are still an agent of this harmful system, and they are both being harmed by it and perpetuating harm. Even if they are speaking out against sexual abuse. Even if they are standing up for survivors. They are still also representing and supporting a system that is every day spiritually and emotionally abusing its precious members.
It is my sincere desire that every person both in and out of the work would be freed from the harm of the worker system.
Rebecca “Becca” Cressell
Washington, 2025