Two by Twos / 'The Truth' (no-name fellowship)

The "Two by Twos" -- also called The Truth, The Way, or Workers and Friends, and known as 2x2 from its practice of sending ministers out in pairs -- was founded in Ireland in October 1897 by William Irvine, an evangelist with the interdenominational Faith Mission who began teaching that the itinerant, unsalaried ministry described in Matthew 10 was the only valid method of evangelism for all time. The movement grew rapidly outside Ireland, but Irvine's later teaching that any formal church hierarchy was illegitimate proved controversial within the group he had founded, and church overseers expelled him around 1914; one of the movement's most prominent evangelists, Edward Cooney, was expelled roughly a decade later in a further split. The church that remained has no legal headquarters, no formal name, no published doctrinal statements, and no buildings of its own: members ("Friends") host twice-weekly worship meetings and annual conventions in their own homes, while itinerant, unpaid ministers ("Workers") travel in pairs and depend entirely on host families for housing, food and transport.

This structure concentrates real authority in the Workers, who are treated as the sole legitimate interpreters of doctrine -- transmitted only orally, never in an official published form -- and whose approval shapes members' major life decisions, including marriage. The movement teaches that it alone constitutes the true, continuous church since the apostles, a claim that fosters sharp insider/outsider thinking, and members who leave commonly experience social severance from family and friends who remain inside. Because there was historically no central financial reporting and no independent outside oversight body, allegations of misconduct by Workers had nowhere to go but to other Workers.

That began to change on 20 March 2023, when overseer Doyle S. Smith circulated the "Dean Letter" informing members that deceased worker and overseer Dean Bruer had a documented history of predatory sexual abuse. The disclosure triggered a wave of further reports worldwide: former minister Robert Corfield admitted sexually abusing a boy in Saskatchewan, Canada, over several years in the 1980s, and by 2024 estimates put the total at hundreds of perpetrators and several thousand identified victims -- substantially larger than earlier public estimates. The FBI opened an investigation into the church in the United States in 2024, and New Zealand Police began assisting that inquiry the same year; former New Zealand minister William Stephen Easton admitted 55 child sex-abuse charges spanning three decades, and former American elder Raymond Zwiefelhofer was sentenced in November 2024 to 120 years in prison on ten counts of possessing child sexual abuse material. The movement's Australasian overseers issued letters acknowledging the abuse in 2023 and launched a public apology website in May 2024, but victim advocates, including Jillian Hishon, have criticised the response as lacking independent oversight or accountability, and a 2025 BBC investigation separately reported allegations that some Two by Twos women had been pressured into giving up children for adoption.