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August 3, 2007
Responsibility, Part 2
Building on the previous post, responsibility also comes with a sense of accountability.
While I was having lunch with Ken Hemphill at the SBC in San Antonio, we discussed the changing role of offering envelopes in the life of the church. He said that one of the most remarkable changes occured when we stopped asking people to complete the information on the front of the traditional offering envelope.
I was reminded of what those old offering envelopes looked like. (Much different from the four-color options available today.) It had a place to record how often you read your Bible, how many visits you made, etc.
Ken said that this initiated a shift in that we no longer held people accountable to their responsibility as believers first and active church members second.
Reflecting back on that conversation has made me realize that responsibility and accountability need each other. We cannot be responsible if accountability is absent. And accountability has no place without responsibility.
Stewardship is often an unpopular subject because it involves both responsibility and accountability. And we don't want to be held accountable because then we might have to change or alter our lifestyles and decision making.
Further, those things that bring responsibility and accountability also seem to precipitate a feeling of satisfaction. Perhaps the reason so many find a lack of satisfaction in their own personal lives as believers and in their church life is because the two greatest contributors to satisfaction are missing: responsibility and accountability.
The very thing we fear the most (driving people away because we hold them accountable to their commitment) may be the "road to salvation", if you will, in restoring satisfaction and fulfillment to the abundant life Jesus promised every believer.
Posted by bstroup at August 3, 2007 12:16 PM
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