Okay, scrap that last, it was way too specific; I couldn't even answer the questions. Can we try it free association style? Please? (I'm pretending you just gave me a pitying/resigned/I'm-your-friend-and-you're-looking-so-cute-and-beseeching-so-I'll-say-yes-but-I-secretly-hate-you look.) Goody!
Right, so I say, "accountability," and you say whatever comes into your head.
Ready?
Accountability.
Go.
3 comments:
Okay, I'll start.
I never liked it. It was always one of those things I felt guiltily compelled to do, like flossing, and the more purposeful an accountability partnership was, the more quickly it fell apart. In high school it was easier -- the accountability part would stop happening, and the friendship itself would deepen; in college it was often an outgrowth of a Bible study or small group, and an attempt to make a new friend, but within a month or two the unpleasantness of having to meet once a week over dinner and talk about how badly we were each doing in our "struggles" in our own "walks" (which produces some odd mental pictures if you want to visualize the mixing of the metaphors) discouraged the meetings and eventually the friendship.
I don't know if it's a generational thing, a gender thing (I saw some of my high school guy friends seem to get a lot out of encouragement out their accountability partnerships), a personality thing, or what, but for me, the relationships that encourage me the most in my faith are the ones that AREN'T contracted to do so. They're the ones that arise naturally -- and the encouraging person can hold any kind of belief system him or herself. My parents. My sister. Leigh Ann. Meg. Joan. My Grover friends.
My experience in the church has always been, from very early teeneage years, a sledgehammering of guilt which continued through college and only stopped when I came to South Bend. I'm not sure now whether my own early experience colored my perception everywhere else until I decided to discard the lens, or whether the lens was prevalent at Grove City, too; but I feel that I ran into a great many people as bogged down with unnecessary (heretical) burdens of guilt as I. That guilt made accountability partnerships absolutely unbearable. Because all that could be focused on was the failure, not the progress. It was the lack of arrival, and not the journey, that was important. (No wonder those partnerships never lasted.)
I have some semantic contentions with using the term "accountability" as regarding the relationship of believer to believer. But that, as they say, is another story. I'm running late for work.
I don't have an accountability partner, per se, but I have started getting some form of accountability from various people at church.
I think what helps is if you set a specific 'thing' to be accountable for ... i.e. quiet times for me.
That way it's less generic and less likely to be depressing every week. After all, there are going to be stumbles and problems every day and if you're just rehashing those every time you tell how your 'walk' is going, it's going to cycle in on itself. But if I can tell DeDe (the lady who calls me once in a while), that while I've skipped a couple mornings, I've still managed 75%, I'm going to feel pretty good about myself while still feeling the urge to do better.
This may be too rambling, but that's free association for ya.
Also, Free Book Alert!
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