Every week a pastor hears things. A man stops him in the hallway after the service. A couple asks for an hour on Tuesday. Someone calls on the drive home. Over time, the pastor becomes the person in the church who receives accounts. So here is a question worth asking about accountability for pastors: when does the pastor give his?
I’m asking it of myself. I’ve been a pastor for a long time, and for twenty-five years I’ve done it bi-vocationally, running companies by day. I know how easy it is to spend a whole week hearing other people’s reports and never render one.
The shepherd still has a pack
Hebrews 13:17 is the verse pastors are most likely to know on this subject. It tells a church to obey its leaders, “for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account.”
Notice how that verse ends. Even the shepherd’s watching is framed by his own accounting. He keeps watch because he will report on how he kept watch. He does not stand outside Romans 14:12, “each of us will give an account of himself to God.” He is one of the each.
Galatians 6 says the same thing from another angle: “For each will have to bear his own load” (6:5). In Giving Account I wrote that “my pastor cannot resist a temptation I have decided to give into.” The reverse is also true. Nobody in the congregation can carry the pastor’s load for him. His conduct, his choices, what he did with his hands and eyes and mouth this week, are his. Ordination doesn’t change what is in the pack.
And look at the verse just before: “Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted” (Galatians 6:1). The man doing the restoring is told to watch himself. Paul knew exactly who was at risk.
Oversight is not the same as an account
Most churches have some structure for this: elders, a board, a denomination. Those are good things. Shepherds should be watched over, and Scripture assumes leaders who pursue.
But oversight can quietly become the pastor’s version of “hold me accountable.” The board meets. Someone asks, “How are you doing, Pastor?” He says, “Good. Busy.” Everyone moves on. The structure exists, so everyone assumes the account is being given. It isn’t. A structure can ask. Only the man can report.
This is the same trap the book describes in any men’s group. Watching, motivating, and catching are jobs another man can’t do, and a board that meets once a month can do them even less. Nobody on the elder board is with him at 11:30 at night when the phone is in his hand. Nobody is at the checkout, or in the garage for the third drink. The one percent they see is the part he has arranged for them to see.
Why pastors go quiet
Chapter 7 names five reasons men stay silent, and every one of them has a pastoral version.
- Fear of consequences. For a pastor the fallout could include his job, his family’s income, and his name in the town.
- Fear of being known. He is supposed to be the one who has it together.
- The hope that it will pass. If I can just stop, there is nothing to confess.
- A false read on the brothers. He assumes they would think less of him, or couldn’t handle it.
- Pride dressed as protection. The church has enough to deal with.
Each is understandable. None of them makes the bones stop wasting (Psalm 32:3). And the pastor has one more reason the men in the pews don’t: he is usually the one leading the room. It is easy for the leader to draw out everyone else’s account and never give his own. He asks the questions. He prays at the end. He goes home unreported.
What a pastor can actually do
Here is what I’d suggest, drawn straight from the practice in the book.
Find two or three men and give them your account. Not the congregation, and not a committee. Two or three men who have agreed to give each other honest reports, every week, before anyone asks. They need to be men who will not treat you as the pastor in that room.
Go first. Chapter 10 says the first man to give a real account sets the depth for everyone. If the pastor offers a vague struggle, the group will settle at vague for a year. If he reports a real thing, the others will. That is leadership, and it is harder than preaching.
Use the same four questions as everyone else. What happened this week? Where was I tempted? What did I actually do? What do I need? The Weekly Self-Report doesn’t have a pastor’s edition. It shouldn’t.
Report on your stewardship, not just your sins. Chapter 2 frames every account as stewardship: God entrusts, man manages, man reports. A pastor has been entrusted with a great deal: people, time, words, a family. Some weeks the most honest line is about how he actually spent his hours, or how he spoke to someone in his care.
Give someone permission to be Nathan. David was the king, the most powerful man in the nation, and he hid for the better part of a year. It took a man walking into the throne room to say, “You are the man” (2 Samuel 12:7). A pastor needs at least one man who will notice when his accounts get thin and go after him. That man can only notice if he has been hearing the accounts in the first place. The Chapter 6 companion has more on what that pursuit should look like.
The pastor’s final account
The pastor, like every believer, will stand before Christ and give account of himself. For the man in Christ, that day is not a threat, because there is “no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1). But it is real. And the pastor who has spent years telling two or three men the truth every week will already know the room.
That is the argument of Giving Account. I have sat in a lot of men’s circles, and I have been the man who asked to be held accountable. Pastors are not exempt from any of it.
If you are a pastor, here is a question to sit with this week: who heard your last account, and when? If the answer takes a while, start small. Text one man you trust and ask him to breakfast.