Small Groups
James 5:16, Hebrews 3:13-14
When I graduated from seminary and moved back to New Orleans, my best friend from college called me and invited me to go to a restaurant on Old Metairie Road where they had installed a sand volleyball court. I had never played sand volleyball and so we got there and she began teaching me the game. A few weeks later, I met her friend Craig who began working with me and one night when we were working on spiking the ball, he came up to me after we finished and said, “Tim, if you really work at this game, you could become a real force out there.” That was all I needed to hear. It wasn’t long after that we joined a team out at Coconut Beach out on West End Boulevard. We played on the court of the second highest skilled players. The first league, we placed third. The second league, we placed second and by the third league, we were vying for first. One night, a friend asked me if I wanted to play in the Louisiana State Volleyball Doubles Championships. I told him I’d never played doubles before but I was definitely in. So over the next few weeks, we began working on the court together against other doubles teams. After about three weeks, I asked him what level we were going to sign up. Should we sign up for A League?” He said, “No.” I said, “The ‘B’ league?” He said, “No.” “The C League?” He said, “Yes. Tim what you don’t understand is that this is the first time we’ve played together. Let sign up for the ‘C’ League and see how we do.” I have to tell you, I was so disappointed but I gave in and we signed up. The day of the tournament came. It was an all day event. We easily won our first two matches. I was feeling pretty good and questioning his advice to sign up for this skill level. In our third match, we got soundly trounced. We began to get frustrated. We now found ourselves in the loser’s brackets. Well, long story short, we scratched and clawed our way to the finals and lost in the third game on the last point to place second in the state. At the end of the day, with our trophies in our hands, he said, “Aren’t you glad we signed up for the ‘C’ league?”
I learned two things that day. First, we often over estimate our skills and abilities. And second, we need someone to speak truth in our lives and sometimes readjust our vision and self-understanding to be closer to reality. I’ve also found that we often do the same thing in our spiritual lives. We often overestimate where we are spiritually. A Pew research poll asked Americans if they go to worship every week. 45% said they did. Now if 45% of the nation was in church each Sunday, every church in America would be packed. Further research shows less than 25% of Americans are in church every week. We can’t even honestly evaluate our own worship attendance! We overestimate where we are spiritually! We think we know and understand more about God and the Bible than we really do. We think we have a deeper and stronger relationship with Jesus than we really do. We believe we are more spiritually mature than we really are. Second, we need others willing to speak truth in our lives, to let us know where we really are in our spiritual journey, to challenge the view of our rose colored glasses we use to look at ourselves and evaluate our spiritual status and our spiritual growth.
Today, we’re talking about the fourth Means of Grace: accountability. The Means of Grace are the practices of a Methodist which develop our personal relationship with Jesus Christ and grow us in our faith. Thus far, we have talked about receiving weekly communion, reading scripture daily, personal prayer and fasting. Today, we’re talking about accountability.
John Wesley’s best friend was the Billy Graham of his day. His name was George Whitfield. He would hold revivals out in the fields of the country where very few people lived but there was plenty of land. Amazingly, thousands and thousands of people would come to hear the Gospel and every time 100’s would come forward to profess their faith and be baptized as a follower of Jesus. He would then just go on to the next revival. John Wesley preached all over Eng as well and also impacted tens of thousands of people but he admitted that Whitfield was a much better preacher. Whitfield and Wesley were considered to be the most significant spiritual leaders of the 18th century in England. But as George Whitfield neared death and began to assess his life and ministry, he realized he had nothing to show for it. People had come to hear him preach and were baptized into the faith but then left and went on their merry way. Wesley on the other hand preached, baptized and then discipled the people spiritually through weekly gatherings. The purpose was to hold in balance the disciplines of seeking God and serving neighbor through mutual accountability. John Wesley called these gathering class meetings and their purpose was threefold: to inquire of one’s relationship with Christ; to advise, reprove, comfort or exhort; to receive an offering for the poor. By Wesley’s death, one-third of England was Methodist!
John Wesley considered class meetings to be the soul or foundation of Methodism. John Wesley was so committed to Methodists being in a small group that he gave out a Methodist membership card. Each week when you arrived for Bible study, you got your card punched showing that you had been present. If you missed a class meeting, your small group leader arrived on your doorstep the next day to inquire as to your absence. If you missed three meetings, you could find yourself expelled from the class meeting and the Methodists. This stuff of following Jesus was serious business. You were either in 100% or you weren’t in at all. In doing so, Wesley was not far from the call of Jesus. The invitation to follow Jesus was very costly. For Jesus said, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even their own life—such a person cannot be my disciple.” And whoever does not carry their cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.” In short, to follow Jesus means to live a completely different life. Jesus warned his disciples that they could not follow him and hold onto his worldly possessions. Your devotion to Jesus has to be absolute and you have to be ready to surrender everything for the sake of the kingdom of God. We are called to be salt, light, leaven and seed for the world through the lives we lead. This is not a haphazard existence. To accept this call means living a very intentional way of life. We are to order our priorities around those of Jesus and we are to arrange our lives in the example of Jesus. The challenge of doing this in the face of the world is monumental to say the least.
And quite honestly, the track record of Christians over the last 2000 years has been mixed at best. There have been times when war has been waged in the name of the Prince of Peace, when death has been exacted in the name of the one who came to give us life, when suffering has been imposed in the name of the Great Healer and when materialism and greed has been justified in the name of the one who identified with the poor. The answer to living the life Jesus calls us to is accountability to others seeking to authentically follow in the footsteps of Jesus. This is the foundation of Methodism and the key to living the disciplined life of Jesus.
Today, we find that there are four barriers to accountability. First, we have a widespread belief in Jesus but not widespread practicing the ways of Jesus. In the past five decades, 95% of Americans have said they believe in God and 70% say they believe in Jesus, yet only 15% read the Scriptures and pray daily. While 2/3 of Americans belong to a denomination, less than a third are actually in worship on Sunday. While God calls for the tithe or 10% of your income, Americans give less than 2.4% back to God and just 4% of Americans actually tithe. LifeWay Research found that 80% of Christians agreed that sharing their faith is an important part of discipleship, and 75 percent of them feel comfortable that they are able to communicate the gospel well, but more than 60 percent haven't done so in the past six months, and nearly half (48 percent) have never invited anyone to attend a church service or program.. And that was Jesus’ last command to us and our purpose: to make disciples! In a recent study by GreyMatter, just 15% of Americans said their faith strongly impacts how they live.
Second, we believe that faith is a private matter. And yet God created us for relationship. Jesus even modeled community for us when he gathered 12 men together to share life, faith and ministry with one another. Ecclesiastes 4:12 reminds us: “Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.” Our culture only reinforces this misconception that faith is private and we can follow Jesus on our own when we have role models growing up like the Lone Ranger or Superman or we’ve even taken Mission Impossible which centered on a team of four people working in the original show and now Hollywood has made it about one individual. But as long as we remain separate and individual, the evil one wins because we will never be as strong apart as we are together. We need each other to live faithfully for Jesus.
Third, we have relationships of acquaintances rather than close friends. Close friendships are becoming more and more rare. What’s interesting is that with Facebook, Twitter and texting, we have the possibility of having more relationships and connections to other people but they have become diluted as our interactions are on surface level rather than intimate. The fact of the matter is we just don’t have many close relationships with people today where we can share life together by revealing our inner thoughts and struggles with one another. Paul Kiser has identified two factors that seem to determine the quality of my relationships. 1) Trust, 2) Common Interests and/or Experiences. The depth of trust you have with someone determines what and how much you share with that person. If there is little trust, we will always be on guard, worried about being betrayed. If there is a high degree of trust, we’re more likely to open up. It’s really an issue of making ourselves vulnerable to each other and overcoming that fear in doing so. Second is common interests and experiences which can range from a hobby or sport to a common commitment and depth of passion to live for Jesus. He writes, “I would argue that the quality and depth of any relationship is determined not by what we get from the relationship but what we bring to the table.” And that starts with trust and vulnerability as well as a shared passion and commitment to live wholeheartedly for Jesus.
Fourth is low expectations. If we’re honest, most of our lives and our church life together doesn’t manifest anything anything like the commitment that Jesus called for. We’ve lowered the bar to almost nothing: believe in Jesus and attending worship. The church is not blameless in this either. We’ve catered to people’s desires and expectations, feeding into the consumer mentality people bring with them to church seeing what they can get from church rather than what they can give of themselves to God. And the church never really ask for anything more demanding of people for fear that they might leave. The result is that we have made disciples who don’t begin to live up to the high expectations and are content with following Jesus as a fan and follower.
Philip Gons, Matthew Hoskinson and and Andrew Naselli write, “God has used many different means to emphasize to us the importance of accountability. Among these are Scripture (and) books….We thank God for raising our awareness of the importance of accountability and for giving us friendships where this can take place…Although God does not require Christians to have accountability systems as structured as ours, He does require Christians to take responsibility for each another, using their gifts to cultivate spiritual growth (1 Cor 12:7; Gal 6:1).” They go on to list the benefits of accountability:
1. Motivation: Accountability is an added incentive to glorify God with our whole beings in very specific areas, including our minds, bodies, families, and time-which all belong to God (cf. 1 Cor 6:18-20).
2. Safety: Accountability is a safety net. If one of us starts slipping or falls hard, two other concerned Christians are right there to catch him or pick him up with biblically informed advice and love.
3. Consistency: Accountability facilitates (but does not automatically result in) consistent spiritual growth.
4. Specificity: Accountability requires specific answers to specific questions. If someone asks “How are you doing?” it is very easy to cover up areas of our lives by blowing smoke about something else that may not be as significant.
5. Thoroughness: Accountability holistically challenges us in all areas of our life, rather than focusing on just a few.
6. Community: Accountability establishes intimate, healthy relationships with fellow believers, rejecting a lone-ranger mentality.
7. Intensity: It encourages us to maintain a higher level of intensity in the life we lead for Jesus.
8. Reminder that we are called to live a holy life.
In his book, “Holiness by Grace Bryan Chapel describes the importance of accountability. He writes ‘One of my more meaningful automobile trips came when a church elder drove me from the airport to his church to preach. He said he had discovered his own walk with the Lord could be charted according to his level of accountability with other Christians. He said, “I have discovered in the Christian life that you are moving either toward or away from accountability.” Very few healthy things in the Christian life happen in secret. If you cannot or will not tell your spouse, your peers, or your superiors about something, then accountability falters. Our immersion in and integrity with these patterns of Christian…accountability are ordinary means by which we grow in godliness’ and thus grow in holiness. Amen.
