There was a time when I was in the work visiting in a foreign country that the local workers had decided to have a young people’s meeting. During that meeting the young people asked about the “rules” in the church. The senior worker assured the young people that we don’t have rules. That type of gaslighting is extremely common in the 2×2 church. Obviously the young people felt there were rules, and on many occasions when people did not adhere to the “non-rules” there were negative consequences. I was recently asked how I navigated the rule enforcement as a worker, and this is my attempt to answer that question, at least in part.
The person who asked me the question anticipated my answer by writing “I suspect we all are guilty of appeasing the unwritten rules just to conform. That was true in my case. I have many regrets from the time I enforced those rules, AND I have great compassion for my younger self who found himself in such a position.
My wife is trained in, among other things, spiritual harm/trauma and healing. I have learned from her that belonging is such an important part of human survival that just about any choice a person makes in order to belong is, for them in that moment, legitimate. That by itself is a huge topic. For anyone struggling to forgive themselves, or even another, this is a searching and rending topic.
I would say my rule-enforcing behaviors in the work followed a few stages:
- Wholehearted belief in the importance of the unrules
- Reluctantly feeling that the unrules were important because the scripture supported them, even when I was uncomfortable with them
- Seeing through the unrules and getting glimpses of how harmful they often are and choosing to just ignore them quietly. During this time, I would just avoid calling attention to people who weren’t following the unrules.
- Feebly speaking out against the unrules (essentially this was only in the last few months of my time in the ministry, after the CSA crisis broke).
What were these unwritten rules? *
They did vary from region to region but with a lot of crossover. In the Western US states I worked in, the most explicit rule was regarding divorce and remarriage, and I want to write a bit about that.
First, I have previously made a public apology for enforcing that inhumane treatment on a number of people over the years; and again, if anyone would benefit from hearing it, we the ministry have been wrong in our manner of treating you and I am sorry.
I do not understand what Jesus hoped to get across when he spoke of divorce and remarriage. There is depth and complexity in the Jewish culture at that time that I am not prepared to comment on. However, as I consider all of what we have recorded of Jesus’ ministry, I am comfortable saying what he did NOT intend. When Jesus spoke of divorce and remarriage he did NOT intend to give powerful men yet more power over hurting people in their time of deep vulnerability. Of that I am 100% certain, and yet that is exactly what we workers twisted his words into in the regions I worked in. As the years went on, I grew increasingly uncomfortable with the way we treated divorced and/or remarried people, but I continued to be a team player and enforce the rules. My belonging depended on it—I’m not proud of that. Not until after the current crisis broke did I begin to feebly speak out against it. Part of that was seeing that the church leadership was exercising more care and compassion towards pedophiles (I agree such people do need care and compassion in an informed and considered way) than toward the divorced.
[Note: I am now married to a formerly divorced lady and am glad to be a stepfather to a soon to be 10-year-old girl. Both of those relationships are precious and sacred.]Well, that was an unplanned digression, but it feels important. As far as the other unrules, I am thinking of hair, dress, adornment, etc. A few instances of how I dealt with those unrules. (These unrules affected both men and women, and we men were significantly, negatively impacted by many things in the church culture. However, it does seem that, speaking generally, the burden fell more heavily on the women than the men with the unrules.)
As a young worker, a young lady came to me and expressed her desire to be baptized. I had grown close to this young couple and was quite excited. I happily told the older sister worker, who was in their field that year, and she told me that I needed to tell the young lady to stop cutting her bangs. I dutifully did so and immediately regretted it. The young lady was justifiably devastated by such abuse. I believe I did apologize later but the damage was done.
After a number of years in the work, I got the conviction that I shouldn’t wear T-shirts at preps—only polo style I guess. Perhaps I was more impressed with my own moderate physique than anyone else and thought I would be a temptation to someone??? Anyway, after a number of years, I realized that I was simply trying to impress God with my zeal and that he had never been anything other than impressed and certainly not by my polo shirts!
A friend recently reminded me of something I did quite late in my time in the work. I had been in a certain field a couple of years and had gotten to know the people quite well. Before leaving the field I apparently felt I needed to give some advice. I don’t remember the specifics, but I had a message for the couple and then essentially told the daughter that she was too worldly, for not following the unrules. Again things I regret.
Another example: we had begun visiting in a new area and one family had professed. There were a number of things in their lives that didn’t follow the unrules. I didn’t ever speak to them about those things, but I was constantly aware of them—not so much because I was concerned about them myself, but because I was conscious of other workers who would be coming to the area and how they would view “my work” based on these peoples’ appearance. It gave me insight into what Paul might have been feeling in Galatians 6:12, pressure from others to compel his converts to conform.
I mentioned above some words of my wife. Over a year ago she asked me “Mark, when did you first realize that some of the things you were teaching were actually harming people?” I look back on my years in the ministry and see that I did much good. Also, as I get further and further from the church culture, and as I learn more and more about human development, I realize that I was part of and participated with a very harmful system. I have come to realize that the 2×2 church is not the only group causing this kind of harm. Indeed, I now feel that without careful and deliberate planning, founded in at least a basic understanding of human development, Christianity itself inevitably tends to abuse and trauma.
With respect to all who have come to realize the harm inflicted on them by the church I once represented, and to all who continue to find value there,
By Mark Simmons
Walla Walla, Washington USA
August 2, 2025
Former Worker in Western USA States (1996 to Nov. 2023)
Disassociated from 2×2 church February 2024.
*As noted above it was common to deny the existence of any rules in our church, hence the use of the newly coined term “unrules” (not my invention). An example of how this worked can be seen by looking at our treatment of people who would enter into a second marriage after a divorce. One of the most sacred parts of our church experience is the sharing of a personal testimony at the Sunday and Wednesday weekly meetings. In the areas I worked in when a divorced person would remarry they would be forbidden from participating in those meetings. Almost invariably that enforcement would be referred to as them having been “asked not to take part.” I came to say that I had never known anyone who had been asked not to take part because the use of the word ask implies some level of choice by the one being censored, and there was no choice. It was 100% obligatory. Even this, arguably the most black and white example of a rule, it was as if we could never quite admit, even to ourselves, what we were doing. Asking someone to take part felt a lot better than the more accurate forbidding someone to take part, or the even more clear, excommunication. We could not be honest even with ourselves about the place these unrules held in our church system.
Disclaimer: In this article I do touch on the harm of the unwritten rules in the church. However, this article only scratches the surface, leaving a lot unsaid regarding the possible harm. I hope what I write is helpful, and I invite you to find your own meaning in your own experience.