In CJ Mahaney's book on Humility he talks about accountability and how getting friends close to you to search out and mortify your sin. A very practical guide for pastors, (and with a little tweaking, for anyone) on evaluating how we are doing in some key areas on a regular basis is this guide found at Desiring God.
Though accountability can be done poorly and for the wrong reasons, and feel quite plastic to boot, it is, nonetheless, biblical and necessary for our growth.
One thing to note: there is a big difference between what often happens in accountability groups and what genuine accountability is. This is worth discussing at more length which I will perhaps do later. For now, it is enough to say that what often happens is a catharsis with no real remedy. Men or women share their junk and mistakenly believe that the healing comes in the sharing--the venting of the stuff. But that is merely like lifting the hood on the car, pointing at the broken fan belt, having others acknowledge the brokenness of the belt, saying together that it shouldn't be that way and then closing the hood and doing nothing more after that. While sharing our junk is hard work, the real hard work comes in extracting the sin, not in merely identifying it.
No comments:
Post a Comment