Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Accountability

Here are a couple of recent posts about accountability: the one from Philip R. Gons, Matthew C. Hoskinson, and Andrew David Naselli, and one from Stephen Altrogge. The post by Gons, Hoskinson, and Naselli includes lists of benefits and potential pitfalls of accountability:
Benefits of Accountability
  1. Motivation
  2. Safety
  3. Consistency
  4. Specificity
  5. Thoroughness
  6. Community
  7. Intensity
  8. Reminder
Potential Pitfalls of Accountability
  1. Heartless participation
  2. Impressing God
  3. Impressing ourselves
  4. Impressing each other
  5. Impressing others
  6. Comparing ourselves to each other
  7. Lying
  8. Appeasing ourselves
  9. Rationalizing
  10. Lack of transparency
  11. Fearing man
  12. Avoiding face-to-face conversations
The guys also write about a scriptural basis for accountability, drawing from commentaries of John MacArthur, Thomas Manton, and John Calvin.

Altrogge shares a list of suggestions for "awkward questions" to ask your friends (and have your friends ask you):
  • Have you been consistently pursuing the Lord through scripture reading and prayer?
  • Have you diligently pursued your wife/husband this week?
  • Have you seen any persistent patterns of sin in your life recently?
  • Last week you confessed struggling with [insert sin]. Have you taken steps to fight it this week?
  • When you gave into [insert sin], what were you believing about God in that moment? What were you believing about yourself?
  • What is the truth that you need to believe in this situation?
  • When you had the conflict with [insert person], what were you craving at that moment?

2 comments:

Stephen Altrogge said...

jwd,

Thanks for linking to our blog. I hope you find the questions helpful!

Anonymous said...

Good questions, thanks for your insightful posts lately - I've missed them when you've been otherwise occupied and not in the blog world as often! :-) It seems as though the Lord has blessed me with a friend here who is willing to ask me those awkward questions, or very similar ones, and it's been very helpful in pointing me to Christ, the Truth of His Word, and my position in Him! Very good. And much needed. Love you, Brother!!!