The 'A' word
Last night was bible study and we gave Eph 5 a shot. Paul doesn't give you much room to move in the first 21 verses so there was not too much room to hide.
But we did end with a discussion by way of application with a word or two about accountability. Here are some of our thoughts, we were just flying a kite, but see what you think.
I think that in our Christian circles the word 'accountability' has gone the way of 'rebuke'. It has been overused and abused and no one really knows what it means anymore or even if they like what they think it might mean.
In our inevitable way, we have taken something very relationally driven and jammed it into a structure. In doing so we might have broken it. We realised that it is very hard to manufacture 'accountability' if it doesn't grow naturally out of friendship. You would hope that your group of friends is a soft place to land, and that in that kind of place, people can keep you walking the path with the kind of checks and balances that friends have.
So we decided not to pair up with accountability partners, but instead, work a little harder on the firednships in our Bible study and get them to 'do the work' that we have become so used to farming out to 'proffessional accoutnability friends'.
What sort of characteristics will these friendships have to make this work?
Well, we thought that we need to be gentle, but not soft with each other.
Compassionate, but not careless.
We also thought that rather than being a 'Mr Fix it' for each other, we should be more like guide dogs. Walking the road hand in hand. (Yes, know dog's don't have hands.)
Those are some of our thoughts from last night.
Got any more to add?
Scott