Accountability

Years ago, when I was on a business trip to New York City as an HR consultant for one of the banks, I attended what I still call a Sunday School class (the rest of the world has moved on with new and various titles but I am nostolgic at times). It was just after nine-eleven and the topic of this class was money. What were people supposed to do? Jobs had been lost in a heartbeat and these class members were sitting in a room at Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan talking about Jesus.

I thought I was only attending the class because it was Sunday and that is what I do on Sundays, go to church. I am humbled to even think God had plans for me that morning, but what happened in that class blew me away. Sitting on not terribly comforable seats, we leaned forward as a man at a chalk board pulled us out of ourselves and got us to think about how Jesus could be in this violent and financial mess. Not the "how" of metaphysical how, but in reality, what was He doing here? How was He connecting New Yorkers to Himself and how was He getting His people to share the burdens of the time?
Then a word came up and impacted my life. The word came from the man at the front of the room and that word he spoke so clearly was "accountability," but what blew me away was what happened next. Here in an urban environment, where trust had been rocked to ground zero the members of this class were talking about openly sharing their financial situations with each other. One man spoke of how me met with his "accountability partner" at lunch and they opened their checkbooks to each other with the goal of working to support their families with Christ like standards.What? In New York share your checkbook stubs?
Yesterday, and this is now 2010, I had the priveledge of meeting with someone from Redeemer to talk about accountability for writers. The result of that meeting is that I've been asked to write a proposal for a writers conference to be held here in New York City. Working title: Urban Christian Writers Conference. Purpose: to be blown away by God's role for writers. Writers accountable to Him by challenging each other to be all He meant us to be.Let's pray!