Real Accountability
by Gary Johnson
To download sample elder evaluations for your team, click here: https://e2elders.org/elder-evaluations.
We measure what’s important. For example, if our health is failing because we’re obese and we want that to change, we’ll step on a scale every day to measure our weight.
Do we measure our leadership?
We may be effective, or inept, as leaders.
For the good of the Bride entrusted to us, will we tackle this difficult but necessary topic of conversation? Do we individually assess ourselves as elders, then hold each other mutually accountable? If we don’t, then we are saying by our inaction that our leadership quality doesn’t matter. If we merely show up to elders’ meetings week after week, month after month, year after year, and do not have any type of performance review, then we are declaring by abdication that improving our leadership doesn’t matter.
We measure what’s important.
The health and effectiveness of a local church starts with her elders. Too often, annual reviews are limited to paid staff. Those serving the church as volunteers are only rarely subject to review. It’s a pervasive mentality that volunteers shouldn’t be reviewed or assessed. Since elders are volunteers, they don’t, in the vast majority of churches, have an annual review.
Regretfully, such common thinking is wrong. It’s anti-biblical.
Accountability is readily found on the pages of Scripture.
“You are that man!” (Nathan confronted David in 2 Sam. 12.7)
“Yes, each of us will give a personal account to God” (Rom. 14.12).
“…Everything is naked and exposed before [God’s] eyes, and he is the one to whom we are accountable” (Heb. 4.13).
“Obey your spiritual leaders, and do what they say. Their work is to watch over your souls, and they are accountable to God…” (Heb. 13.17).
“When they arrived in Jerusalem, Barnabas and Paul were welcomed by the whole church, including the apostles and elders. They reported everything God had done through them” (Acts 15.4).
“The apostles returned to Jesus from their ministry tour and told him all they had done and taught” (Mark 6.30).
Even Satan is held accountable by God (Job 1.7 and 2.2, Revelation 20.10).
Elders should also serve the local church through their mutual accountability. In the 1st century Church, “apostles,” individuals sent out by Jesus, oversaw various congregations’ elder teams, whether Paul oversaw those churches he and Barnabas helped plant (throughout Acts), or Peter, John, Matthew, Bartholemew, etc., oversaw Jerusalem’s first church (Acts 1-8) and other churches later. Though in the 21st-century Church there are no “sent ones” like Paul, Simon, Thaddeus, etc., to oversee elders, a team of elders can, and should, hold themselves accountable to one another. How they live their lives and how they lead the local church should be subject to peer review by their fellow elders. The practice of accountability is both biblical and practical.
Accountability cannot be practiced without assessment. To be held accountable, elders must assess one another’s performance as shepherds. Minimally, elders should conduct a written annual review of themselves and each other. Each elder on a team should complete a self-assessment, which is then shared with the other elders. Once all assessments are completed and given to the entire elder team, a “360° review” of each elder can be completed in one meeting. This peer review, wherein elders “speak the truth in love” (Eph. 4.15) to each other, greatly benefits each elder individually and the team as a whole. “As iron sharpens iron, so a friend sharpens a friend” (Prov. 27.17). Elder assessment and accountability sharpen leadership skills and our souls as Jesus-followers.
It is vital to weave assessment and accountability into the spiritual DNA of an elder’s life and the elder team – and by example and extension, the church’s. Without it, elders will never develop into the men of God they are meant to be.
NEXT STEPS
To put accountability into practice, consider and implement…
Have you given someone permission to speak pointed truth into your life? If not, who will you invite to do so?
Do you have an established set of 5-10 hard questions to check up on and pursue greater health (spiritual, emotional, mental, relational, physical)?
Jesus had an “inner circle” of Peter, James and John. Do you have an inner circle of trusted friends with whom you practice mutual accountability?
