Accountability Again

From someone else's blog. This was sent to me by a member of my small group. Unfortunately I can't find the original link.

The other day Lucy offered a superb reflection on accountability vs. redemptive relationships as part of Christian community building, spring boarding off a quote from Doug Pagitt, who says in part: Accountability is built on the notion that a person will do her own work as she seeks to live a Christian life while others do what they can to keep her on track. This may seem like the best our local [church] community can offer us, but we are striving for more. We feel called to vulnerability. Lucy follows up on this, saying: Accountability is such a shallow way of relating to each other. Making sure each other are doing what they are supposed to be doing isn't what I see Christian relationships as being about at all. I don't think that accountability is so heavily emphasized in the Bible. Redemptive relationships are ones where we each actually become the agents of transformation, love, care and restoration in each other's lives.

When I was in seminary, the small group/accountability movement was getting in to full swing. A fellow student asked me one day to hold him accountable for his goals. I thought about this and replied that he could simply remind me of them and how he felt he was doing in their achievement, without comment or judgment on my part, but that friendship seemed a better option. Apparently that wasn't what he was looking for since a friendship never developed between us.

Several very spiritually detrimental things are hidden in church accountability groups. First and foremost, "accountability" is often a synonym for "blame". This type of accountability turns we who are to be servants into masters. We scrutinize and inevitably criticize how others in the church are serving us, be it the pastor, Sunday school teachers, choir, choir director, worship team, you name it.

Second, accountability is far removed from interactive relationships. Jesus didn't hold his disciples accountable to him. Rather, in a church as the Body of Christ we hold ourselves accountable to each other, relationally, not legally or even per se morally; more on the lines of, "How is it with your soul?" And "Are you growing in Christ? Is he growing in you?" Or the old Methodist question: "Are you going on toward perfection (in God's love)?"

The business world uses "accountability" as a means of wielding control over employees. When churches ape this, they move contrary to the servant spirit of Jesus Christ, enslaving rather than freeing. Yes, we are told to "confess our sins to one another" but in the spirit and context of forgiveness and redemption, not approbation and censure. No one's sin is greater or more heinous than another; those are human qualifications; sin is sin in the eyes of God. We are each sinners confessing our sin to other sinners, others who fall short of the glory of God and are in need of Christ's redemptive grace. Without this kind of humility with each other, confession rings hollow, or is absent altogether. The practice of accountability, as it is both understood and enacted in today's culture, does not foster humility but a quiet arrogance, especially when and where accountability is demanded.

Finally, followers of Jesus Christ are to be bearers of his agape, his self-giving. This, as Pagitt notes, requires vulnerability, not a pretty or easy thing in most churches. Accountability produces a lopsided, one-way, quasi-vulnerability. It must be understood that making oneself vulnerable does not mean opening oneself to abusive attacks. Not at all, and such attacks must be confronted immediately. Rather, vulnerability is opening ourselves to our own wounds and the wounds of others, not to wear them as badges of honor or excuses to hurt each other; but to be healed through Christ's redemption spoken through us.