Prayer as an instinct – Praying Together, Part 3

I visited my son, daughter-in-law, and two grandkids in Pittsburgh recently.  Though my kids live in Lancaster, my granddaughter was born four hours away in Pittsburgh because she has a heart condition.  So I got to meet her for the first time in the Cardiac Intensive Care Unit of UPMC Children’s Hospital.  She was hooked up to all sorts of machines and tubes and wires. 

But you know what was in her mouth?  A pacifier. One of those big aqua colored rubber circle pacifiers just like the one in the picture above.  My granddaughter was working that pacifier, just like every baby does.  Why?  Because babies have a natural instinct to perform a sucking motion.  It’s what keeps them alive, right?  Instinct activates a motion so that they can receive nourishment. 

I think we see another life-giving instinct in the early church. In Acts chapters 3 and 4, Peter and John had been preaching about Jesus, ministering in the city of Jerusalem, and the Jewish religious leaders who disagreed with Jesus threw Peter and John in jail. Peter and John were two of Jesus’ 12 Twelve disciples, and part of his inner circle of three, Peter, James and John. 

The next day the religious leaders release Peter and John, threatening them to stop preaching about Jesus.  What do Peter and John do?  Let’s find out in Acts 4, verse 23,

“On their release, Peter and John went back to their own people and reported all that the chief priests and the elders had said to them. When they heard this, they raised their voices together in prayer to God.”

The natural reaction of the first Christians was a movement toward prayer.  Gather and pray.  Cry out to God together. 

It was like an instinct. 

Instinctual habit brings life.  Even though she had been on a feeding tube for three weeks since the day she was born, my granddaughter worked that pacifier like a champ. A few days later when my son fed her from a bottle for her first ever bottle, she downed it no problem. 

Instinctual habit brings life.  Prayer is no different.  Prayer can and should be an instinctual habit for Christians, because it brings life.  The earliest Christians demonstrate this instinctual habit. 

In this and our first two posts this week here and here, as we’ve noticed in the account of the first Christians in the book of Acts, there is not a single story about a person who prays to God by themselves.  All we see is the instinctual habit of praying together with others in the church.

That is not to say that the Bible never depicts people praying by themselves.  The Bible has loads of those stories, including many in the life of Jesus, who famously went off by himself to pray.  But he also often prays with his disciples and others, and thus he taught them not just the content of prayer, but also the practice of praying together.  When we observe Jesus and his first followers, their practice of prayer is both a commitment to praying alone and praying with others. They are so committed to praying together, it’s like an instinct, a natural first reaction that sustained them. 

How about you? Is prayer a life-giving instinct?

Photo by Alexander Grey on Unsplash

What happened when the first Christians gathered for prayer – Praying together, Part 2

In the previous post, we observed the prayer meeting the followers of Jesus held right after he ascended back to his father in heaven. The book of Acts tells us that at the 10-14 mark of their nonstop prayer meeting, something powerful happened.  Look at Acts chapter 2, verses 1-4:

“When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.”

They were still together when the Holy Spirit showed up, filled and empowered them for ministry.  Their commitment to gathering for prayer was the prerequisite for empowerment of the Spirit.  I’m not saying that we won’t have empowerment of the Spirit if we don’t gather for prayer.  I’m not saying that the Bible is telling us to have 10-14 day long prayer meetings or else we are going to be a failing church.  I’m simply asking you to observe what was important to the first Christians: praying together, and then the Spirit arrived. 

Now empowered by the Spirit, the first Christians concluded their prayer meeting, and they went outside, proclaiming the good news about Jesus to the people in the city of Jerusalem. We read in Acts 2, verse 41 that 3000 people were added to the church that day.

With that many people, they couldn’t possibly continue meeting to pray together could they?  Maybe their practice of gathering for prayer was temporary, only for those early days, because now the Holy Spirit had arrived.  God had answered their prayer.  They don’t need to pray anymore, do they? 

Jump ahead in Acts chapter 2 to verses 42-47.  What do we notice?  Let me read it to you:

“They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. … Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.”

After the Holy Spirit fills the church for ministry, after they experience fantastic growth, what do they do?  They do many things, but notice verse 42.  They devoted themselves to prayer.  They had previously been devoted to prayer, and now they continue to be devoted to prayer.  Prayer was a primary focus for them. 

Also look at the description of their meetings.  They met in the temple courts, which had space enough for a large group.  They also met in homes, which were small groups.  It is no stretch whatsoever to envision those first Christians meeting together, whether in the temple courts or in homes, and praying together.

If you skip ahead to Acts chapter 4 verse 4, the author of Acts tells us that the church now numbered 5000 men.  We’ve seen the church grow from 120, to 3000, and now to 5000 men, which when you add the women and children, could easily be a couple thousand more than that.  Do they keep praying?  Don’t they have to focus on creating an organizational structure for all those people?  Don’t they need to spend most of their time teaching all the new people who have joined them?  Don’t they need to create ministries and programs for the people?  Doesn’t it seem as though gathering for prayer would need to make space for many other activities in the life of the church?

We’ll find out in the next post.

Photo by Pedro Lima on Unsplash

What kind of prayer meetings does God desire? – Praying together, Part 1

Do you remember the Asbury outpouring that happened last year?   From February 8, 2023, all the way to February 24th, 2023, that’s 17 days, there was a continuous, 24/7, worship and prayer event at Asbury University in Wilmore, Kentucky.  Throughout history there have been numerous such extended prayer efforts. In fact, the International House of Prayer in Missouri has a 24/7/365 prayer room.  Every day is divided into two-hour segments, and each segment is led by a team with prayer and worship.  You can watch their livestream anytime here. 

Do we need to pray like that?

Our current blog series is about relationships in the church family.  Previously in the series, I wrote about the importance of meeting together. Those six posts start here.  In those posts, we looked at how the very first Christians met together to see if we could learn anything from them.  They spent three years with Jesus, so they would best know how he wanted them to meet together.  In today’s post, let’s review a bit of what we learned in the previous posts.  What did we see the first Christians doing when they met together? 

In Acts 1, verse 12, we read the story of what the followers of Jesus did right after Jesus ascended back to the Father in heaven, 

“Then the apostles returned to Jerusalem from the hill called the Mount of Olives, a Sabbath day’s walk from the city. When they arrived, they went upstairs to the room where they were staying. Those present were Peter, John, James and Andrew; Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew; James son of Alphaeus and Simon the Zealot, and Judas son of James. They all joined together constantly in prayer, along with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brothers.”

The very first expression of the followers of Jesus is “they all joined together constantly in prayer.”  We don’t know precisely how they did this.  We know there were 120 of them, which you can see if you glance at verse 15.  But they had no church building, so did they have a space that 120 people could fit into at the same time?  Did they break into small groups? What about food?  Sleep?  Work?  Hygiene? 

We’re obviously not going to answer those questions because the text doesn’t give us answers.  But we don’t need to answer all those questions.  Instead let’s just observe what the text tells us the first Christians did.  The first Christians, the men and women who were Jesus’ followers, were committed to meeting together for prayer.

We believe that this very first prayer meeting of the church lasted somewhere in the vicinity of 10-14 days.  Think about that commitment to wait and pray together.  Jesus had told them to wait, and they were obedient.  I applaud their determination to wait and pray because 10-14 days seems to me like a really long time.  After a day or two, I would probably be thinking that Jesus was a fraud, and I just gave the past three years of my life to nothing. So the first Christians’ example of commitment to pray is instructive to us.  It can be done!

But please don’t hear me saying that God is calling us to have 10-14 day long prayer meetings.  We can choose to like the International House of Prayer.  Or a nonstop prayer meeting might break out spontaneously like the Asbury outpouring.  But as we will see in our posts over the next few days, the New Testament doesn’t instruct us to have nonstop prayer meetings.  In fact, the book of Acts never again mentions a nonstop prayer meeting.  So what else does Book of Acts describe? In the next post we’ll find out.

Why I decided to cancel our church’s weekly prayer meeting, and why I told people I would not start it back up – Praying together, Preview

When I started as Faith Church’s Youth/Associate Pastor in 2002, Faith Church held weekly Sunday morning worship, Sunday evening worship and Wednesday prayer meeting.  A few years later the Sunday evening service had dwindled to the point where maybe a handful of people attended, and we canceled it.  At that time Wednesday prayer meeting was very similar to a worship service, including singing, a devotional from the pastor, and frankly, not much prayer time.  We met in the Fellowship Hall and many of the tables were filled. 

When I became pastor in 2008, concerned that Wednesday prayer meeting didn’t involve much praying, I decided to change the format, hoping that the gathering would be truer to its name and purpose. Prayer meeting attendance, which had been declining, continued to do so.  We 8-10 regulars decided to move prayer meeting to the conference room because it felt more intimate.

From July 2008 until March 2020, we had prayer most every Wednesday evening, 7-8pm.  Remember what happened in March 2020?  The Covid shutdown!  In place of in-person meetings, I wrote a weekly prayer guide and devotional, which I continue to this day, available here on my Substack.  After the Covid shutdown lifted, I received requests to restart prayer meeting.  I decided that anyone could restart prayer meeting, but it didn’t need to be me. At least one person believed that since I was the pastor I was duty-bound to restart prayer meeting. I disagreed. I referred them to Ephesians 4:11-12, where Paul writes about leaders in the church raising others up to do the work on ministry. Having attended prayer meetings for most of their lives, I suggested they were quite ready to take the lead.  I was thankful when they stepped up and decided to start it again, with a new format, and importantly, emphasizing prayer.

I often thought about how attendance at prayer meeting over the years has averaged 8-10 people, while Faith Church’s Community Nights, which include a meal and a program, have 30-40 people in attendance.  Should more people attend prayer meeting?  As a church family, we can and do pray in many ways.  Think about how much your church family prays together. Here are some of the ways Faith Church includes prayer in our gatherings:  During Sunday worship and classes. During home based care groups and Bible studies.   Our Leadership Team and Serve Team meetings all begin with times of prayer.

So do we have to have a prayer meeting on Wednesdays at 7pm? No. But before we get ahead of ourselves, it is important to learn what the Bible says about Christians praying together.

This week I continue the blog series on relationships in the church, and our focus is praying together.  What does the Bible say about praying together?  It actually says quite a bit about the amazing vitality of praying together.  Check back tomorrow!

Photo by Jack Sharp on Unsplash

How accountability supercharges our discipleship to Jesus – Holding others accountable, Part 5

I first experienced accountability with my friend Chris.  We met in the dorm in college, where he was my RA, resident assistant, in charge of my dorm section my sophomore year.  We started meeting weekly to ask each other accountability questions.  We wrote out lists of questions we wanted the other person to ask us, then each week we would meet, ask each other the questions, and pray. 

In the previous posts this week, I’ve primarily been writing about the Bible’s teaching regarding reactive accountability. Reactive accountability is when we react to someone who has sinned. Accountability can also be quite helpful in a proactive sense.  Proactive accountability is when a person volunteers to submit themselves to accountability.  They desire accountability. 

That kind of small group accountability is rooted in the biblical teaching of building one another up in discipleship to Jesus, as well as in the admonition to confess our sins to one another.

For me, that was and still is Chris. We both graduated college in 1996, and we have continued to meet ever since.  We don’t have the sheets of questions anymore, but instead have a open, honest discussion about our lives, which have changed significantly over the past 30 years.  Marriage, parenting, jobs, health.  We still meet every couple months or so in person, with lots of texting and phone calls in between.  We have found this a very encouraging accountability.

Certainly family members have a natural built-in accountability as well.  You likely spend more time with your siblings, parents, or spouses, than any other people.  There is a phrase in scripture “iron sharpens iron,” and that is perhaps most true when it comes to family.  Family iron sharpening iron is a natural built-in accountability.  Often times we push hard against it.  We might not like it, at all, when our family members try to hold us accountable. 

Proactive accountability is extremely beneficial, however, whether with friends or family or church family, when we nurture humble, teaching hearts.  That humility is the raw material for accountability to do its good work in our lives.

In this podcast, a gentleman reveals how he and his family so deeply wanted to be in accountable community, that they were even willing to submit their major financial decisions to their friends.  Every expenditure of $1000 or more went before the group of friends. It was a small group of trusted, godly friends, and they made a group decision about those expenses.  That’s accountability.

In our society we tend to believe that people who aren’t good with money need to be held accountable with their expenses.  We also believe that those who are good with their money have developed the right habits about money, and they don’t need to be held accountable.  What this means is that the people with very little money have accountability, but not people who have moderate or large amounts of resources.  Because our money is actually Jesus’ money, we stewards of Jesus’ would be wise to submit ourselves to financial accountability, particularly if we have a lot of money. 

It could be choosing to place accountability software on internet devices.  It seems to me that disciples of Jesus who are on the internet would be very wise to submit themselves to internet accountability, on all their devices. 

So who is holding you accountable?  Will you consider being proactive, inviting someone to hold you accountable? Will you meet with an accountability partner or small group to regularly ask, “How goes it with your soul?” 

Photo by Redd F on Unsplash

The Bible’s helpful teachings about confronting others – Holding others accountable, Part 4

I hate confrontation. I think most people also hate confrontation. When I have to confront someone, I can delay and avoid like a champ. Then when I can wait no longer, and the confrontation actually happens, I can say far less than I ought to have said. My emotions and fears take over. I can physically shake. I hate it. But if we are to be people who practice healthy accountability, we need to confront others sometimes. Does the Bible have anything to say about how we can confront others?

In this week’s study of what the Bible says about accountability, we have not read any passages that mention the word “accountability.”  But we have read an important principle that undergirds accountability, that of making an evaluation of another person’s spirituality.  We learned from Jesus, “by their fruits you will know them.”  We are, therefore, to examine the fruit of others’ lives, the produce or products of their lives. 

What is flowing from their lives?  Is it the good fruit of the Spirit?  Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control.  We must evaluate.  We must look for those fruits.  Do we see them?  What do we see?  This evaluation is not judgmental.  It is simply factual observation.  It could be that what we observe is not the Fruit of the Spirit, but produce that is rotten.  Sinful.  Selfish.  Greed.  Lack of self-control. 

You might think, are we like the Gestapo going around sneakily observing our church family?  Doesn’t this sound like some weird Hitler youth kind of thing?  No.  It is not like that at all.  Instead is real life.  We are regularly interacting with each other, regularly observing one another.  It is normal life.  Jesus and Paul are saying, “Don’t ignore it.  Don’t act as though bad fruit isn’t happening when you are seeing and experiencing bad fruit.  Instead see it. Respond in love.”

That’s accountability.  Responding in love to those in our church family who have sinned, who might be struggling with sin, or who might be in danger of sinning.  Accountability is making an evaluation about their lives, out of love for them, so that we can lovingly, graciously, point them to Jesus.

Jesus in Matthew 18 talks about this.  Verses 15-17,

“If your brother sins against you, go and show him his fault, just between the two of you. If he listens to you, you have won your brother over. But if he will not listen, take one or two others along, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’ If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, treat him as you would a pagan or a tax collector.”

Notice that there is a three-step accountability process Jesus teaches.  What I have experienced over the years is that people ignore Jesus’ process.  Instead of following Jesus’ Step 1, where you go to the person, people talk about the person to someone else.  It can be very difficult to hold a person accountable, and people will purposefully avoid doing so. 

I know the feeling.  I hate confrontation.  Perhaps you also hate confrontation. It is normal to hate confrontation.  Even those people who do not avoid confrontation usually say that they do not like it. 

When we give in to fear about confrontation, rather than talk with Person A, who ought to be held accountable, we start divulging our concerns to Persons B, C, and D.  In my role as pastor, I’ve had people express their concerns to me about Person A, hoping that I will intervene so they don’t have to.  I have sometimes, wrongly, said that I would talk with Person A.  That’s wrong of me.  In those situations, I should say, “You must first follow Jesus’ step 1, and you go talk to Person A.  As Jesus taught, if that doesn’t work, then come talk with me, and together we can follow Jesus’ step 2, and go to Person A.” 

But sometimes I say, “Okay, thanks for letting me know.  I’ll talk with Person A.”  I shouldn’t do that.  Why do I?  Because I’m giving in to my people pleasing tendency, which is actually a way of avoiding holding someone accountable. 

What is really going on when you and I avoid holding Person A accountable, and then you go to Person B and talk with them about Person A?  You are (1) avoiding doing what Jesus taught, (2) likely gossiping, and (3) placing Person B in a position where they now should be confronting you.  That’s three strikes.  Avoid all that by simply doing what Jesus said, lovingly, graciously, talking to Person A.  Then, of course, follow the two steps if necessary.

But when you hold someone accountable, do so with gracious love, as Paul writes in Galatians 6:1-5,

“Brothers, if someone is caught in a sin, you who are spiritual should restore him gently. But watch yourself, or you also may be tempted. Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ. If anyone thinks he is something when he is nothing, he deceives himself. Each one should test his own actions. Then he can take pride in himself, without comparing himself to somebody else, for each one should carry his own load.”

What Paul means is that you should not bulldoze people when you confront them.  Some people have that bulldozer kind of personality.  They might believe they are good at confronting because they are not afraid to do it.  They see themselves as speaking their mind.  Might take pride in it.  Might leave carnage from all their bulldozing. But when the carnage is pointed out to them, they say things like, “The truth hurts. They couldn’t handle the truth. I spoke my mind. I am who I am.” 

Paul says, however, that accountability should be done gently and toward restoration.  Not everyone is good at that kind of restorative accountability.  Don’t assume that you are good at it.  Instead pursue gentleness.  Pursue restoration and reconciliation.  Always remember Paul’s teaching in Ephesians 4:15 to, “speak the truth in love”.

There is reactive accountability and proactive accountability.  For the most part, what I’ve been talking about is reactive.  A person sins, and we react to them, hoping to restore them.  But accountability can also be very very powerfully helpful in a proactive sense. In the next post we’ll talk about proactive accountability.

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When we can and should judge in a church family – Holding others accountable, Part 3

In 2013 my congregation’s leaders proposed a significant change to who could become leaders in the church.  Prior to 2013, we had a system where, at our annual congregational meeting, people were voted onto our various serve teams.  Then at the beginning of the year, at the first serve team meeting, the members of the serve team would decide who would represent their team on what was then called the Ministry Council. 

Certainly there were times when qualified leaders rose to the top.  But there were also times when serve team members would be staring down at the meeting room table, not wanting to look up, not wanting to give any indication that they might be a candidate to represent their team on the Ministry Council.  Representing your team on the Ministry Council meant going to more meetings.  More responsibility.

As the serve meeting drug on, the team had to make a decision.  Someone had to rep their team on the Ministry Council.  Deals were brokered: “I’ll be the team chairperson if you go to Ministry Council.”  What that meant was that sometimes people ended up on the Ministry Council who did not really want to be on the Council, and, worse yet, they might not have been qualified to be a leader in the church.  This was a very poor way to select leaders for the church, not to mention this selection method had no grounding in biblical principles for leadership selection.

So we proposed a change to our church by-laws, a proposal that would do away with that old system, electing people directly onto a Leadership Team, people who had clearly demonstrated that they were spiritually mature, which is the biblical principle.  There would be a process, led by the Nominating Committee, meant to be very intentional about only nominating people who had clearly demonstrated for years that they were spiritually mature.  Then after the Leadership Team had been voted on by the congregation, the Leadership Team would decided which of its members would be liaisons to each serve team. 

As with the proposal I mentioned in the previous post, this idea was called into question.  Who are we to judge another person’s spiritual maturity?  Wouldn’t it be wrong of the Nominating Committee to make such judgments?  Jesus said we should not judge. 

Or did he?  At the time, I wrote a position paper on this topic of judging.  Yes, Jesus said, “Judge not, you will be judged.”  But Jesus’ teaching is confusing, especially when other passages of Scripture seem to ask us to make judgments.  For example, Jesus himself would also say in the same passage a few verses later, Matthew 7:15-20, “By their fruits you will know them.” 

Wait, Jesus, are you saying we are to make a judgment call about their fruits? Yes!  But didn’t you just say, “Don’t judge”?  Yes.  So what is going on here?

In this passage Jesus is speaking about false prophets, saying that people will need to examine their fruits and make a decision.  This implies a judgment call.  Maybe making judgments is acceptable in some situations.  This is not just about determining whether or not a person is qualified to be a leader in the local church.  This is also vital for the topic we are discussing this week: holding one another accountable in the church family. 

Consider what Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 5:12, “What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church?  Are you not to judge those inside?  God will judge those outside.  Expel the wicked man from among you.”  Clearly the situation in this passage is not one of judging leaders based on spiritual maturity.  Instead the context is judgment of people in the church who are sinning.  Paul explains the specific situation earlier in the chapter, verses 1-2.  People in the church were being sexually immoral, and the Corinthian believers were not dealing with it.  So he strongly urges them to judge the sin and address it.  Hold them accountable

Paul will go on in 1 Corinthians chapter 6 to say that churches should appoint people to do the work of judging disputes between believers. Here we have at least two kinds of situations in which judging was not only encouraged but described by Paul as necessary: addressing immorality and disputes in church families.  We can conclude that, despite Jesus’ teaching “do not judge”, Paul understood Jesus not as banning all forms of judging but instead as teaching a general principle that should be used in most situations.  There will be, however, those rare situations, Paul explains, where judging is not only permissible but important. 

But you might respond that these passages aren’t really about holding one another accountable. They don’t mention that word “accountable.” That’s true. In the next post we’ll talk about how these passages relate to holding one another accountable.

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How judging killed a discipleship effort in the local church – Holding others accountable, Part 2

Over the years in my church family, people have raised the concern about Jesus’ teaching, “Do not judge” on more than one occasion.  “Who are we to judge one another,” people say. It sounds very spiritual. But I think they are interpreting Jesus incorrectly. 

The first occasion people raised the concern about judging was probably 20 years ago.  Our denomination has a guideline in which local church leadership team are to examine the members of their church before they take communion to see if there is any issue that might prohibit a person from taking communion.  Historically, our denomination has practiced quarterly communion, and 20 years ago, Faith Church was also practicing quarterly communion.  For the past 15 years we have been holding monthly communion.  But even with the less frequent quarterly communion, Faith Church’s leaders were not examining the congregation before every communion. 

So we talked about it.  Should we start?  How would we do this examination?  Bring each person into the office, sit them down, turn a bright light on them, strap on a lie detector machine, and interrogate them?  Set up a confessional booth in the lobby, and require everyone to confess their sins before taking communion? 

Before you start wondering if our denomination’s guideline is bonkers, there is an even longer history to this idea.  Our denomination was started right here in Lancaster County by a tile-maker named Jacob Albright who was from Ephrata.  The small, private Albright College in Reading is named after him.  Albright committed his life to Jesus and joined a Methodist class meeting, and that’s where his story connects to the story I’m telling in this post. 

“Class meeting” is a way the Methodists described house churches, which were essentially small groups.  At the beginning of a typical small group meeting, the class leader would ask the question, “How goes it with your soul?”  Then the people would go around the room and they would divulge the truth about their spiritual lives.  They would confess to one another.  This was an accountability measure. 

But as churches became institutionalized, they got away from small group confession to one another.  Maybe they thought it was too Catholic.  Maybe they thought it was too invasive. Maybe they were concerned it would keep people from interest in their churches. As small group house churches turned into large groups with church buildings, accountability faded away.

At some point, our denomination thought that each local church should the practice of accountability, and that led to the suggestion that each church’s leadership team should examine every person before they take communion.  I distinctly remember being in Faith Church’s Leadership Team meeting where we discussed this idea.  The heart behind the idea is for real discipleship.  God does not want us to have any sin in our lives. It is in our best interest to not have sin in our lives.  So an examination like this would have the intention of love and care and spiritual growth for everyone in the church.  It’s a desire for healthy accountability.

Wonderful, right?  Caring, right?  Loving, right?  Accountability that encourages discipleship, right?

We weren’t going to perform any lie detector interrogations.  We weren’t going to set up a confessional booth.  We weren’t going to have a public discussion requiring everyone to answer “How goes it with your soul?”  What we talked about the idea of getting out the list of everyone in the church, and just going down name by name and having a confidential discussion amongst ourselves to see if anyone had any concerns.  If there was a concern one or two from the leadership Team would privately and confidentially talk with that person.

Awesome idea, right?  The idea went over like a lead balloon.  Why? 

Numerous members of Faith Church’s Leadership Team said that they felt deeply uncomfortable judging another person’s spiritual life.  They mentioned Matthew 7, judge not or you will be judged.  They said that they were sinners too, and they had no right judging others’ spirituality.  With that, the idea died. 

Then years a couple years later the idea came back to life. I’ll tell that story in the next post.

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Is accountability disobedient to Jesus? – Holding others accountable, Part 1

I have an app on my laptop and phone called Ever Accountable.  It’s there to monitor everything I do online.  It is watching me.  I can’t see it, of course, but I know it is there because I installed it. 

It’s not perfect.  It doesn’t have God-like abilities to know everything.  But it’s good enough.  It doesn’t have to be perfect.  

Here’s why: When I installed it years ago, part of the installation process is a requirement to pick a person whom the app will notify if it saw me looking at websites that are inappropriate. 

That is the app’s genius.  It involves a friend who knows me, who cares about me, and who will check up on me.  When I’m browsing online, I know the app is watching, and will notify my friend, so I am much more motivated to say No to temptation.  I’m glad for that. 

I also have to admit that I don’t like it.  Why do I need accountability?  I can tell myself, I don’t need it. Or that I shouldn’t need it. 

Some therapists believe that accountability can be hurtful, holding people back, perhaps even creating unhealthy dependency on others.  Some spiritual leaders believe accountability is detrimental to spiritual growth.  We need to be free in Christ.  In other words, when we are so in love with Jesus, we shouldn’t need human accountability. 

How do you feel about that?  I hear some truth in that.  One ancient Christian famously said, “Love God and do what you please.”  If you love God, you’ll only do what God loves, so the argument goes.  Therefore, if you truly love God, you won’t need accountability. 

But how likely is it that we Christians, we disciples of Jesus, will so thoroughly love God that we will always and only do what God loves?   

Perhaps accountability, done well, can actually be a good thing.  Perhaps accountability is a realistic and helpful approach to human nature, and to what we’ve talked about already the previous two weeks: encouraging one another and meeting together.  We need each other, we need community, and part of the beauty of being in community with other people is a willingness to hold one another accountable.

What, then, does the Bible say about accountability?  Can you think of a passage of Scripture, a teaching of Jesus in fact, that might support the idea that accountability is damaging to a person’s spiritual life? 

Here’s a clue: holding one another accountable usually involves making judgments about the person you’re holding accountable.  Jesus taught, “Do not judge”!  Does holding people accountable mean we will be disobeying Jesus?

Jesus teaches that famous phrase in Matthew chapters 5-7, near the conclusion of his Sermon on the Mount, a sermon focused on giving us a powerful description of what a person with a Kingdom-minded heart looks like.  In chapter 7, verse 1, Jesus teaches, “Do not judge, or you too will be judged.”  As a result we followers of Jesus have just cause to avoid behaviors or attitudes that could be described as judging others.  We should not be judgmental people.  Jesus is particularly concerned about people who have a judgmental posture toward others, when those judgmental people have plenty of issues of their own.  Like our phrase, “Well, if that isn’t the pot calling the kettle black.” 

So some have interpreted Jesus as meaning that his followers should never make any judgments against other people, and thus we should not hold people accountable.  Is that what Jesus intends here? 

We’ll discuss it further in the next post.

Photo by Scott Webb on Unsplash

Do Christians need accountability? – Holding one another accountable, Preview

In my county, there’s a company with a sign advertising “Ultimate Accountability.”  How does “ultimate accountability” sound to you?  Harsh?  Restrictive?  Legalistic?  Freeing?  Gracious?  Good?

Accountability is a fraught concept.  That company is an accounting firm, working with businesses to make sure their bookkeeping and taxes are legal and ethical. Very important. But accountability can be nerve-wracking, even in the business world.  Who among you enjoys being audited?  Who likes having someone else look over your work, checking what you’ve done, line by line by line?

Accountability is a fraught concept because while it can help keep us on the straight and narrow, which we do want, accountability (if it’s any good) will also tell us when we have veered from the path, which we might not want to hear about or deal with.

Every August I get my annual performance review, and our Pastoral Relations Committee is always so kind and gracious.  But still I get nervous as I wait to enter those meetings and hear what they have to say.  Even though I know there are always ways I can improve, and I want to improve, and I know the people on the PRC care about me, my mindset before those annual job performance evaluations is not, “This is awesome! I am so excited to be held accountable. I am going to grow and learn.”

If any of that resonates with you, then this coming week’s blog posts, I hope, will help.  Part of our blog series on relationships in the church, this coming week we’re going to talk about how disciples of Jesus like you and I faithfully hold one another accountable.  Do we need accountability?  Why?  What does Scripture have to say about accountability? We get started on Monday.