The Failure of Accountability

Thus far we’ve seen that a disciple making culture can collapse when there’s a failure of theology, when discipleship is misconceived as an add-on or a passive experience.  Second, the culture can collapse when there’s a failure of intentionality, with unfocused goals and missing measurements.  But there’s a third trouble I heard about from pastors and discipleship experts: the failure of accountability.

I know this firsthand.  My men’s group died for lack of discipline.  The Round Table started well.  We manly men made goals and held each other to them with the “Accountability Die.”  It was a regular six-sided die, and the idea was that a man had to report on a facet of his life based on what he rolled.  Rolling a one: financial accountability.  Rolling a two: prayer life accountability.  A three?  Sexual accountability.  No one wanted to roll a three!  The sessions were candid, even brutal, yet the group thrived.  Then, a couple of years later, the group decided to give up the Accountability Die.  We got together for study and fellowship, but attendance was increasingly spotty.  The seriousness was gone.  The Round Table disbanded.

For Christians to stay healthy and growing, they need relationships.  Yet what I heard repeatedly from others is that lack of accountability in such relationships has been deadly to discipleship.  Let me concentrate on two big problems that leaders raised: the discipline hole and the job description hole.

THE DISCIPLINE HOLE

Discipleship goals get met when Christians form a community that holds them accountable.  In short, disciples need discipline.  The similar sound of the words is no accident.

To be clear, what’s in mind with the idea of discipline is not public shaming sessions or only calling out “the big stuff” (adultery, embezzlement, etc.).  Rather, it refers to rhythms of accountability.  Discipline is when people check in with each other.  Discipline is making that follow-up call when someone doesn’t show.  Discipline is where you “confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed” (Jas 5:16).  Discipline is holding one another to our commitments within a covenantal community.

As leaders rehearsed failed discipleship programs, they bemoaned how difficult discipline could be.  Lessons might have relevant applications, but “no one was doing the homework.”  Small groups were reluctant to do check-ins.  Only the hardcore Christians sought out “accountability groups.”

The numbers back up this grim picture.  A Barna study in 2010 found that “only 5% indicated that their church does anything to hold them accountable for integrating biblical beliefs and principles into their life.”  Small groups were the most common vehicle of accountability, yet only 7% of respondents said that accountability was a function of their own group.

No doubt, American-style autonomy is partly to blame.  Personal independence clashes with Christian discipline, which can feel like an infringement on privacy.  Sometimes even veteran Christians push back on accountability: “It feels legalistic,” one woman told me.  “We don’t want people to think we’re a cult,” said her husband.  

Church leaders know people are nervous about oversight.  That’s why the church pushes a new curriculum but doesn’t check to see if people are putting the content into action.  In this discipline-free zone, however, the deep conversations and transformational changes haven’t happened.  Curricula were often fine in the past, Rod Veldhuizen told me, “But that didn’t mean we were walking with each other.”

In all this I’m haunted by the Belgic Confession’s definition of the marks of the true Church: along with the pure preaching of the Word and the pure administration of the sacraments, “it practices church discipline for correcting faults” (article 29).  Let me re-state it pointedly: if a church isn’t holding people accountable, it has no reason to think of itself as part of the true Church.  Ouch.

THE JOB DESCRIPTION HOLE 

Along with missing discipline, discipleship efforts have been hampered by a hole in job descriptions.  That is, there has been little expectation for leaders to do personal discipleship functions like mentoring, coaching, or dedicated leadership training.  Functionally, many leaders today have been told that investing in select persons is extraneous to their role.  Churches inadvertently signal that disciple making is, at best, an optional hobby for highly motivated officers.   

It’s true of elders and other lay leaders, but I found that the hole in pastors’ job descriptions was emblematic.  In interviews with Alliance ministers, I heard repeatedly that small-scale disciple making has not shown up on paper, at least not in the past.  Dan Ackerman told me, “Pastors of a previous generation were not rewarded for coaching disciples.  They were rewarded for preaching or being at every hospitalization – but not coaching.”  Pastors were supposed to emphasize their institutional, public roles, to the neglect of leadership development.  Jin Han expressed to me how dangerous this model has been: “When we pastors focus on the lights, camera, action, when that’s all we’re chasing, we can lose sight of the main mission.”

The job description omission has had rolling consequences.  Discipleship programming was failing because no one was modeling the intense, personal component of Christian multiplication.  Pastors didn’t do dedicated disciple making, which meant elders and deacons didn’t do it, which meant small group leaders and members didn’t do it either.

Fortunately, there appears to be a trend toward a restoration of the pastor-as-discipler.  My own survey of pastor job postings suggest that a little over half of job descriptions today mention something about pastors “equipping” or “training” or “multiplying” other disciples.  The descriptions are still fuzzy about how this is supposed to happen, however.  Are pastors encouraged to mentor or coach individuals?  Are they to equip other office holders?  Should pastors do what Jesus did, investing in circles of three, twelve, and seventy-two?  

As it is, church leadership jobs continue to sound rather nebulous.  It’s not simply pastors.  Elders and staff and other leaders are not expected to provide accountability.  A leader who insists on exercising discipline in some form is considered nosy or intrusive or judgey – when in fact they’re just doing their job! In the Bible, pastors are granted authority to instruct, exhort and rebuke (Tit 2:15).  Again, “Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they watch over your souls as those who must give an account” (Heb 13:17, ESV).  Leaders will be held accountable for their job of holding others accountable.   

THE COST OF NO ACCOUNTABILITY

Christian communities often have many beautiful dimensions, but the failure of accountability is severely hampering discipleship efforts.  When it comes to the hole of discipline, Christians lose the disciple making culture by refusing to uphold each others’ commitments.  If people aren’t checking in, they’re checked out.  And with the job description hole, no one is really taking responsibility to equip the saints through intensive training relationships.  A disciple making culture simply can’t take hold in such conditions.