Accountability Ability August 29, 2011
Posted by Dan R. Dick in Christian witness, Church growth, Congregational Life, Integrity, The United Methodist Church.Tags: Christian Community, Church Leadership, The United Methodist Church, Values
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Three “laws” of accountability:
- There is no progress without accountability — holding people accountable to the vows they make is the key to development, growth and maturing
- Actions have consequences — where there are no consequences (positive or negative) there is no accountability
- Lack of accountability renders relationships meaningless — if it doesn’t matter whether or not I keep my word, why bother?
Now a story:
Four years ago I was working with a southern church of considerable size (over 2,000 members on the books) that was being systematically undermined and torn apart by two former Baptists who joined the church, then decided that United Methodism was too liberal and “wrongly-structured” for their tastes. These two toxic-influencers started spreading rumors about how apportionment monies were spent to promote abortion, fund Democratic political groups, and drive the GLBT (gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, transgender) efforts to destroy the church. They launched a whisper-campaign to attack the pastor’s reputation and undermine his leadership. They conducted an email campaign to spread rumors about misconduct of elected leaders and to encourage people to stay away from worship, withhold their giving, and to resign from leadership positions. They held a “prayer-rally” where they incited people to either leave the church or to mount a crusade to get the church to leave the denomination. Happy times all around.
