Improving Accountability

How to be the accountability partner everyone hopes to find.

by Randall Neighbour

Accountability partnerships typically go stale inside a year when the people involved don't take responsibility for their own healing, growth, and forward momentum. Here are a few principles to help you be the kind of accountability partner others want to meet with.

1. Confessing sin is the "what." That's what everyone knows how to do. But to be a good accountability partner, you need to also share the "why" behind the sinful action so that you get to the root of the problem. Just sharing the "what" may make you feel like you unloaded a pile of guilt, but your partner needs to know and see that you are working on the root issue and seeking deep healing.

Confessing sin week after week gets old for your partner and it means you are stuck! Go deeper. Get to the root of the issue and find freedom. Freedom is good for you and it makes your accountability partner want to dig deeper, as well.

2. Discuss important things you need or want to get done in life, ministry, work, family, and around the house. Just like the first point, go further than "what" by sharing your step-by-step action plan for accomplishing your goals with times or calendar dates. In other words, become accountable to get the project done by next Wednesday at noon. Make it a priority.

Sharing how you don't get things accomplished gets old for your partner and means you are stuck! Sound familiar? Share the particulars of how you plan to get that thing done and invite your partner to call you on it if he or she doesn't receive a phone call with a praise report.

3. If the Lord gives you a word of knowledge for your partner, share it with them. But don't confuse this with man-made advice given when it was not requested. My accountability partner does a great job of asking me questions to bring me to the same advice he might give. This way, it was my idea, and I am to blame if what I decided to do didn't work.

4. Pray hard for your accountability partner between meetings. And when you meet, pray together. Oddly enough, Christians get together for accountability all over the world and don't pray for one another or with one another.

Accountability partnerships are all about taking responsibility for your future actions as well as the past and the present. With a strong focus on your future, you will find yourself too busy being a productive person and believer to become stuck confessing sin week after week. Give it a try, and work on the "why" and the "how" instead of just talking about the "what."

Randall Neighbour is president of TOUCH Outreach Ministries in Houston, Texas. He has authored numerous books on small-group life, leadership, coaching, and team-based evangelism, including Community Life 101 and The Pocket Guide to Coaching Small Groups.

Randall blogs regularly at www.randallneighbour.com.