Remember accountability partners?
I suppose the concept’s still around: believers guiding other believers to be accountable for their behaviors. And I also suppose, in theory, that this is a good thing. I’m sure people have benefited from the system and I’m sure there are those who experience very close relationships with their accountability partners.
The whole process drove me absolutely mad.
Accountability partnerships never, somehow, turned out the way I wished they would. About half the time, they turned into me trying to be accountable for things while, in practice, I ended up being my partner’s tutor through some overwhelming, tangled, needs-to-be-dealt-with-every-single-session sin: pornography, infidelity, sexual sin.
Alternatively, the process devolved into something weird and rote and not entirely honest: hi, here’s a list of sins we did, yeah, we need to not do those, okay, let’s check in next week. Not to mention that the focus of accountability always seemed to be on specific sin sets (did you sin this week? If so, how?) rather than spiritual growth in any larger sense.
I gave up on the practice years ago and haven’t given it much thought since.
But I’m being mentored at work, and the practice has made me quite reflective about the old days of accountability partners, of what it means to build someone up in faith, of what dedicated Christian relationships dedicated to growth in the Spirit could be.
My mentors at work are not Christian. One is an atheist, the other an adherent of a different faith than mine. But they have both been inestimable, wonderful helps to me: two people I absolutely treasure for their insight, wisdom, and encouragement.
What has made each relationship special is authenticity. Spontaneity. There’s no rote checklist to follow, no procedure, no protocol. We weren’t assigned to each other. One mentor is a woman who took it upon herself early on to cheer for me and encourage me, to say my name in rooms when I wasn’t present there. The other is a man to whom I reached out for professional guidance during a rocky period: he navigated me through to smoother seas and has become, since then, my confidant and sounding board and encourager.
Both of them know me well. They know my strengths and my weaknesses: the things I say I want to do and the things I’m afraid to say I want to do. They tell me, often, that I am stronger than I think, that the hardship I’m enduring is growth, and that I should always behave in alignment with my own spiritual and ethical values.
These two people have listened to me while I have cried in despair over situations outside my control; celebrated with me over victories; strategized with me through thorny situations and delicate situations requiring considerable diplomacy; given me warnings; offered advice; told incredibly silly jokes; advocated for me; made themselves available for me at times I’m sure it was inconvenient for them.
I think, I wish this is what discipleship and accountability relationships looked like.
Because faith can be messy and the spiritual journey defies rote checklists and expectations. Sometimes the thing that matters most when you’re a believer is talking something out, working through your own thoughts, figuring out how God’s word is working in your life. It takes time. It takes listening. It takes care and a willingness to be flexible, to experiment, to think through things together.
Not long ago, I had a thorny professional decision to make.
I ran, of course, to my mentor. We had a conversation about it. I agonized: this way or that way? I made pro-con lists. I rambled. I asked him what he thought. “What would you do,” I pleaded, “if you were me?”
He considered.
“I’m not you,” he said. “So that’s not going to work. And anyway, that’s not the right question here. Start very basic. Name your values. You’re a person of faith. What are your priorities then, in that case?”
And that was where we began, thinking through things from the smallest seeds of origin: my faith and how it informed my decisions and what it made me prioritize. How A or B decision held up under that lens. What it meant to make choices without worrying about outcome so much as where I’m choosing from and where those choices might guide my heart.
There wasn’t a routine or a protocol. It was a long, careful conversation, but one aimed at the heart of who I am and one that asked me to openly approach decisions from the place that matters to me, the intersection of faith and passion. It was, in many ways, an exchange that reminded me to be more me, that reminded me of everything that is possible.
And so I wish, a bit, that I could go back to those accountability partner days. And instead of showing up with checklists or sin reports, maybe we could start with broader questions: who are you, and who do you feel God is calling you to be, and what’s standing in the way? In the day-to-day, where do you struggle to choose God? Why? What do you want to do about that?
I think that I’d spend the time to get to know someone and I’d really find out who they were as a Christian: where they leaned on Jesus and where they didn’t, and why, and what made them feel distant from God or closer to Him, and start from there. Encourage them to find their own path in Christ, to be authentic to how God made them, to be deeply honest about everything that’s working and everything that’s not. Recognize that the answer is not “how I would do this or not do this” but “how God wants you to do this or not do this.”
Really, it’s relationship building.
And in the church I find that while we’re very good at creating structures for relationship-building, the building of relationships itself is another matter. It’s messy. It takes time. It defies formula. It asks us to sacrifice. But that’s exactly what makes it worthwhile. When we invest our time and our energy in people, they grow. And there’s no substitute for the growth that comes of relationship.
It’s how God allows us to edify each other.
Samaritan's Song 