Tag / Accountability

by Michael

My Blog: Who’s With You

Most of us work around people. Or we live near people. Or we serve them or parent them or date them.

When you think about the community around you as you live, work, and play, notice the people. Notice who’s with you. Isn’t it more important to know this, to notice this, than any other thing?

In some ways, it’s a foregone conclusion that you’ll get where you’re headed. Either you will or you won’t. The unknown is who’ll be with you.

I wonder if all the people you’re spending yourself over will be the ones with exhibited faithfulness after the course is finished and once the long run is done. Maybe the more important matter is not where you’re headed but who your company is on the way.

by Michael

Relationships of Accountability

I believe that anyone who has a responsibility for the spiritual guidance of others should be in a relationship of accountability with another for the sake of the people he or she guides, teaches, or preaches to.  Otherwise we are going to grow, if we grow at all, in a deformed shape that will be passed down to others.  I see such distortions frequently.  It is a biblical concept to be accountable to someone else.  Timothy was mentored by Paul, Paul by the disciples in Antioch.  Friedrich von Hügel, author and spiritual director, once wrote: “Behind every saint stands another saint.  That is the great tradition.  I never learnt anything myself by my old nose.”

From John Ackerman’s Listening to God (pg. 67).