In the aftermath of institutional collapse within transnational religious networks, how do former leaders and congregants navigate the complexities of shared trauma? This article frames research not merely as data collection, but as a missiological act of return. Grounded in the biblical mandate of Acts 15:36—“Let us return and visit the brethren”—and the missiological vision of “second missionary journeys,” the study traces a shift that is both methodological and relational. Originally designed to analyse a Colombian congregation’s post-2003 transition to autonomy through Roland Allen’s “three-selves” framework, the research trajectory changed during a series of six talking circles with study participants, a married couple). The initial narrative of institutional success gave way to a more unsettled and candid dialogue about pre-crisis relational dynamics and researcher complicity. In this space, duoethnography emerged not as a preselected method, but as the lived expression of a relationship in which safety made possible critical intimacy. Drawing on Ivan Illich’s ‘She/It’ distinction, the foregoing analysis argues that research itself can cultivate transforming mutuality, turning the scholarly process into a site of relational repair and decolonial knowledge production. References to trauma are used descriptively rather than diagnostically, naming relational and institutional harm as narrated and processed over time rather than assessed in clinical terms.