real community

We all need to make decisions about what values we want to honour, what spiritual practices we need to engage in, what kind of friends and neighbours and sons and daughters and husbands and wives we will be. But decisions alone are not enough.

We need accountability. We also need someone who will ask us, “how it going?” is your way of life working? Do some things need to change? What are you struggling with in regard to sin or temptation?

Anything that is subject to human limitation or error requires the collegial presence of another person to ensure responsibility. It is a fact of life. - David Watson (Covenant Discipleship p17)

In the movement associated with John Wesley, people met together in little communities to help hold each other accountable for their deepest values and most important decisions. Wesley had a beautiful phrase - “watching over one another in love”.

Before someone entered into this community, they would be asked a series of questions to see if they were serious about living in mutual accountability:
Does any sin, inward or outward, have dominion over you?
Do you desire to be told of your faults?
DO you desire to be told of all your faults – and that plain and clear?
Consider! Do you desire that we should tell you whatsoever we think, whatsoever we fear, whatsoever we hear concerning you?
Do you desire that in doing this we should come as close as possible, that we should cut to the quick, and search your heart to the bottom?
Is it your desire and design to be on this and all other occasions entirely open, so as to speak everything that is in your heart, without exception, without disguise, and without reserve?

Can u imagine people in your family or your circle of friends answering yes to such questions? In Wesley’s day they did – by the thousands. They did so simply because they knew they could never grow into the people they wanted to be without help.

Over time, however, the commitment to truth-telling got lost. When these small groups shifted their focus from mutual accountability to vague sharing, most of the power of these little communities was lost. Eventually they die out. People tend to drift away from truth-telling.

p173, 174 Everybody's Normal till You Get to Know Them John Ortberg

A life of total dedication to truth also means a life of willingness to be personally challenged… but the tendency to avoid challenge is so omnipresent in human beings that it can properly be considered a characteristic of human nature – Scott Peck (The Road Less Travelled p52,53)