Well, here I go again. I am going to try to write more. Recently, I have had several friends (new and old) encourage me to put thoughts down for people to read, wrangle, and/or rip up. With that in mind, I will start with a simple regurgitation of something that I heard at one of the most stellar conferences that I have ever been to. About a week ago, I attended the Off-the-map.org conference entitled "Revolution." Now, I know that many have taken shots at the conference from several different angles- "too rad" or "to kind" but I loved it. I met great people and was thrilled to see so many practioners in the "missional" movement from such a wide variety of ages and backgrounds. It was awesome and I believe that God was smiling if not dancing about the conversations it provoked. Enough said about that, I will get to what I wanted to write about now.
I attended a workshop with Joe Myers, author of Search to Belong. He is pretty random if not a.d.d. but gave some great info. One of the best things I took away was an insight about healthy accountability or in his language "edit-ability".
He explained that accountability often has the right heart behind it but quickly becomes "accounting" or simply keeping track of what has been done or what is going wrong. He then cited 1 Corinthians 13:5 "Love keeps no record of wrongs" and asked how we felt taht addressed the most common form of accountability.
He went on to suggest that we approach accountability more as an editor than an accountant.
An editor's job is to help you fix spelling errors and eliminate poor grammar and sentence structure in order to best present your ideas. The editor looks at the picture you are trying to paint and helps you get rid of everything that might hinder or distract the reader from your intended thought or idea.
I guess what he was saying is that by asking people for edit-ability in our lives, we are asking them to help us see the picture of what God desires for our lives nad then to help us "edit" out the stuff that gets in the way. Personally, I find this alot more motivating than being asked if I blew it every week. I think God would want us to look forward to the future of what He wants to do in and through us rather than looking back and living in the guilt of our failures. Not that sin doesn't need to be addressed, but it isn't the focus. Rather God's dream for our lives is and the sin is slached through with the editor's pen as it tries to hinder the overall plan.
Maybe it's semantics, but it makes good sense to me!
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3 comments:
Jonas,
Your blog rocks! Editability rocks! I get around the whole record of wrongs thing by just calling my accountability, oops, I mean editability parnter *before* (if possible) or immediately after I break one of my bottom lines. Then he says "yeah, so so what ya gonna do now?". And I tell him what my plan is. and that's the end of that wrong--no more record. Awesome. But he rather prefers the *before* to the after thing, and so do I!
hi jonas, chris, your families! we miss you too! it was lovely the way us randomly taking the last two seats in the front part of the revolution conference ended up with us getting to meet and talk and lunch with two such excellent people!! here's to random excellencies!
Editability makes sense. Think about it. People are habitual creatures. You will continue to make the same mistakes over and over until you are shown how you are making that misatake and how to fix it. My husband is one of the best editors in my life. Without him, I'd still be living life on the fence of faith. Now that I really have embraced my faith, I see the weird moments where God is my editor. Those miracle moments, as I call them, where you suddenly see your faults and know how to fix them. God's talking to me everyday, correcting me, making me see that the grass really is greener on His side of the fence. Each day, each moment, each time I hug my kids good night, God is helping me be at my best. I think so many people are afraid to have someone edit them. They have to admit their wrongs, that is uncomfortable, but it's humbling, and miraculous if you let God in to be your editor.
Anyway, just a thought....or two.
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