A Culture of Accountability
I was surfing through Churchbusiness.com when I noticed a recent “culture of accountability,” webinar and felt palpably startled. The site said the webinar would be about “accountability,defined as “ the acknowledgement and assumption of responsibility for actions, products, decisions and policies, including the administration, governance and implementation within the scope of one’s job.” Accountability also encompasses the obligation to report, explain and be answerable for results and consequences. (Godevenos)“For some strange reason, it doesn’t come easy to theology students or church leaders in general; yet, accountability has been around since the beginning of man, from the early chapters of Genesis to the Jesus’ parable of the talents,” Godevenos continues. “It’s still going strong today in our public and private systems of governance. It involves either the expectation or assumption of account-giving behavior.”
In its simplest form, accountability has also come to mean “the willingness to stand up and be counted,” he says – but how do we get our staff (and possibly our congregants) to do just that?
Awareness of this concept in the church is critical but it is also critical that the concept have a context for without grace, accountability will turn an institution that is to be a ministry of grace into just another form of the law. This is not to say however, that the concept has no place–it does. A pastor, for example, may not be able to guarantee a 20% increase in giving or in membership of a particular church, but it should guarantee that the pastor is indeed preparing well for his preaching, visiting well to support his congregation, and finding creative ways to reach his surrounding community. Accountability is an important concept for annual evaluations in the church but the challenge will be to properly place it in the broader context of church life.
