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Showing posts with label accountability. Show all posts
Showing posts with label accountability. Show all posts

Benefits of Mentoring

Posted in , , By Patty Kennedy 0 comments

"As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another" (Proverbs 27:17).

In my decades of church involvement, I have heard very little about mentoring. That seems strange, given that the Bible is clear that we are to be accountable to one another in the Body of Christ.

Honestly, I think the reason we don't hear much about mentoring is that the majority of people don't WANT to be accountable to anyone else on a personal level. They don't want to check in with someone who is going to ask them how they are doing, for example, in their prayer and devotional life. Or how their battle with pornography is going. Or whether or not they are being good stewards with their finances. We want to show up on Sunday morning with our "goin'-to-church" masks, and not share with anyone else what the rest of our life is like.

A couple of years ago I met a wonderful young woman who asked me to be her mentor. As I grew to know her and love her, I found she was accountable to several people about her comings and goings, because she genuinely wanted to be a godly woman. Though she was barely 30 years old, she had a firm grasp of the truth of Proverbs 11:14: "Where there is no guidance, a people falls, but in an abundance of counselors there is safety."

Since that time, I have been involved in several mentoring relationships, and I am incredulous that I missed out on it for so long! Proverbs 27:17 says, "As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another." If we don't bare our souls to another on a regular basis, how will we ever grow as human beings, let alone as followers of Christ?

The past couple of years, I have been privileged to watch my husband mentor different men who were part of a life recovery program. These men have overcome various addictions and negative life patterns and their lives are heading in a more positive direction. It is a joy to see them blossom and grow as the result of these mentoring relationships.

Jesus mentored the disciples. Eli mentored Samuel. Elijah mentored Elisha. Paul mentored Titus and Timothy. Mary, when she found out she was pregnant with Jesus, took the initiative and left town to go visit Elizabeth, a woman "full of the Holy Spirit," who spoke truth to her and encouraged her. It is obvious throughout the Bible that these iron-sharpening-iron relationships were the norm -- not the exception. We are not meant to be "lone ranger" Christians. James 5:16 says we are to confess our sins to each other so that we can be healed. And that's precisely what happens in a healthy mentoring relationship.

If you sense there is something missing in your relationship with Jesus, this might very well be the thing. Is your Christianity "me and Jesus" only? Or is there a mature Christian in your life to whom you confess your shortcomings? If you are not currently involved in this type of relationship, I encourage you to ask God who in your circle of relationships might serve as a mentor to you.


Radical Accountability

Posted in , , , By Nick Smith 1 comments


I’ve been thinking a lot lately about accountability for churches.  It seems that the only accountability many churches have nowadays is popularity.  If the church is popular, more people come; when more people come, the church gets more money; when the church gets more money, the church can buy more stuff to become more popular and the cycle repeats.

Ugh.  I’m so sick of this cycle where the church only exists to bless the blessed and get more people in the door.  It’s things like this that make the Bible just as radical today as the early days of the church.  The Bible does not support this cycle.  I would love to see accountability to Biblical standards.

There are three particular verses that I have in mind for this accountability (I’m sure there are many more that would also be applicable):

1) “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” – Matthew 28:19

2) “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.” – James 1:27

3) “My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.” – John 15:12

The Bible tells us to go and make disciples, to look after orphans and widows, and to love each other.  Here are standards worth living up to.  Here are standards that Christians should feel compelled to hold their churches to.

Unfortunately, the accountability that I’m referring to doesn’t exist…yet.  Churches are accountable to God and to you, its members.  Church leaders will most definitely have to answer to God for skewed priorities on the day of judgment.  But that doesn’t help in fixing our churches in the here and now.

There’s still you, though, and you can make a difference.  How, you ask?  There are a couple of ways.

The most important is also the most difficult; you need to look at the man (or woman) in the mirror and be the change you want to see in the world.  Following God and the Bible isn’t something you can pass on to somebody else, even to your church leadership.  When you stand before God for judgment, you will do so alone, so take responsibility for living out the Bible in your own life.

A second way you can make a difference is by not feeding into the popularity cycle.  Don’t pick the church that is the flavor of the month and don’t pick just because everybody else is going there.  Heck, don’t even pick because you went there and you liked the general feeling and how many people said hello to you.  Do some research.  Get to know the church’s core beliefs and find out if they are actually living those beliefs or just paying lip service to God.  One way to determine a church’s true beliefs is to look at its pocketbook.  Find a copy of the church’s budget and determine what percentage it is spending on outreach, missionaries, supporting orphans and widows, feeding the hungry, and other ways that fit the three verses I mentioned.  For many churches, this percentage is small.  I would argue that the percentage should be 30% - 50% for the churches that are truly living God out loud.

If your church doesn’t meet that criteria, you have a choice to make.  You can either find a new church or you can strive to be a catalyst for change within your church.  Start living out the Bible by looking for (and possibly creating) opportunities to serve others and meet needs.  Draw your like-minded friends from your church into these opportunities.  Start something where you are showing (not simply telling) your church how church should be done.

We don’t have to settle for churches that strive for less than God’s best.  We can find Godly churches and we can be Godly churches.  Do your part in holding our churches accountable.

Iron Sharpens...

Posted in , , , , , , , By Mike Johns 0 comments

I love the verse “as iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.”  Proverbs 27:17
Today I see it in a completely different light.  
I wonder if there is more to the verse than we are reading…   
I have always really held this verse closely as an accountability verse; we need people in our lives that sharpen us.  We need people in our lives that hold us to a higher standard.  
But does iron really sharpen iron?
My understanding is that iron really dulls iron – Is it impossible for two items of the same core strength to sharpen each other?

What if this proverb was looked at more simplistic and logical?  After all, isn’t that what the proverbs are simple yet logical observations in live?
What if it were not looked at through a positive, affirming light?
We understand that many of the proverbs are somewhat witty, if not completely satirical.  We also understand that God has a sense of humor and a unique way of pointing us back to Him.

As I understand it, we need something harder to sharpen a blade.  When I go to sharpen a kitchen knife, I do not just run to my silverware drawer and start rubbing knives together.  That would be ludicrous; I would end up with two butter knives.  I have to have a stone, a flint, a rock to rub them against to get the blade to proper sharpness.  As side note, I notice that older knives that have been sharpened are less and less of the original iron… the blade becomes smaller.  What a great picture of how we need to grow as followers of Jesus.
So – does iron sharpen iron?  No it just creates heat and creates dullness.

What if the point is the obvious, that man does not sharpen man… we need something stronger, more solid.  We need a rock or a stone to be sharpened.  Continually in scripture, God is referred to as a Rock or a Stone.  What if the point is that real growth has to come based on our contact with the Rock.  True growth is from God… it is an incredible blessing that sometimes He allows us to take part in a fellow believer’s life.

I see this in my experience with accountability and relationships.  I notice that sometimes our attempt at iron sharpening iron, to hold someone accountable, just creates heat and anger.  I am not a Hebrew scholar, but I understand, that the Hebrew word for “sharpen” refers to fierceness, anger, or heat.  I have experienced people who become angry when we attempt to hold them accountable.  This has gone to the point that I feel powerless and incredibly inept at speaking words of life into them.

What are your thoughts?
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