Tom Smith is a peculiar person, and a peculiar pastor—in the best sense of the word. His story is also peculiar. Ten years ago he was on “the fast track” in ministry in Johannesburg, South Africa. As a young man he was a quite talented minister and rose quickly through the ranks, being groomed to one day lead a large, successful congregation. He soon had a prestigious position at a megachurch.
Unfortunately he was also burning out. Ministry had become a job, a task, and was not fulfilling. Tom and his wife spent time praying and discerning what to do. They decided to get off the fast track to success and spend time learning what it means to be a Christ- follower and to be part of a community of Christ-followers.
They sold all they had and took a sabbatical in the United States. Tom was searching to see if he had anything left for ministry and for the church. During his time of rest and reflection, a new passion emerged from within. He caught a vision for a new way of approaching community and then returned to South Africa to let God lead in a new and risky way. The following is his description of the community they created: the Claypot Church.
In November 2003 a few pilgrims prayed together, searching for God’s direction for them as a community. We searched for a biblical metaphor that would inform the rhythms of our group. After a few weeks of study and discerning God’s voice together we landed on 2 Corinthians 4. In this passage Paul talks about us as jars of clay, and Christ the treasure: “But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.”
The metaphor grabbed us and we chose it as our biblical informant. We searched for a clay pot to serve as a visual reminder. After some vigorous searching, and after discovering how ridiculously overpriced pots were, we found the perfect pot. It was a discarded pot at a nursery that was filled with mud and had a few chips.
At the conclusion of one of our services we placed the pot in a big bag and broke it on the concrete floor. It symbolized our brokenness; everyone in the community took a broken piece home. All of us wrote a prayer on our shards and we came together to reassemble the pot. Although the pot is glued together, it still isn’t a picture of perfection. Yet when we put a candle in it, it radiated a glorious light.
What do you see as the distinction between the two questions in invitation 3? How would understanding this affect your life?
Tom and his people did not simply want to build a big church, they wanted to be the church, for one another and their community. Tom asked everyone in the community to make the following commitments in order to keep this light shining. He calls it responding to six invitations:
“Plug in” with God each day, either through prayer, Bible reading or other spiritual exercises.
Have three “bread breaking” times a week with each other as well as with those who don’t know Christ.
Ask not “What is my spiritual gift?” but “How am I a gift to this community?” and offer your giftedness to the community.
Develop a friendship with someone who is different than you (race, religion, class, etc.).
Develop a servant mentality—downward mobility—wherein you seek to distribute your life’s resources (time, treasure, talent) to those in need.
Discover a healthy rhythm in the way you use your time—margin, sabbath, not exceeding fifty hours at work.
In addition, each member made one very important commitment that would help him or her keep these commitments. Tom explains:
Every member teams up with at least one other family member in order to keep one another accountable. This accountability serves as an encouragement and sounding board for the rule of life in our community. We recommend that accountability partners meet at least monthly in order to stir one another up in love and good deeds (Hebrews 10:24-25).
There is one more peculiar practice in this community. Each year at the end of December Tom asks the people to begin a time of discernment for the entire month of January. Tom jokingly likes to say, “For the whole month of January I am the pastor of a church of none.” The people are asked to search and discern where God is calling them. If they are led to return to Claypot for another year, they are asked to come on the last Sunday in January, when they meet to break a new jar, hand out the pieces, have each person write a prayer on their piece and then reassemble it the following Sunday.
The story of Claypot reveals the importance of commitment and accountability—two things that are becoming increasingly scarce in the Christian life. They are not a large church—less than a hundred—but they are being shaped as a people into Christlikeness. As our churches lower the bar of expectation and commitment, Claypot Church dares to raise it. They are standing in opposition to a false narrative held by many in our pews and perpetuated by many in our pulpits.
False Narrative: The Community Serves My Needs
When we hear the terms rule of life or covenants we often write them off as unnecessary and legalistic. This is because of a false and pervasive narrative: The community exists to serve me and my needs. The community should not tell me what to do—that is up to me.
We live in a consumer culture. Each day we are treated as a customer, and this leads us to believe we are entitled to have all of our needs met. We have become spoiled. The modern ethos of narcissism is pervasive in our culture and prevalent in our churches. The phenomenon of “church shopping” reveals our comfort with the consumer narrative. It is also revealed when we are treated as something other than consumers. Several years ago I was speaking with a group of pastors about this false narrative, and one of them had a story that illustrates this. “A year ago I felt called by God to encourage our people to read the Bible more,” he said. “I challenged them, from the pulpit, to read the Bible for an hour each week. Not all at once, but perhaps for ten to twenty minutes on different occasions. After offering this challenge on several Sundays, a woman who had been in the church for several years came up to me and said, ‘Pastor, I want you to know that I am leaving the church.’ I asked why, and she said, ‘Because when I joined this church, reading the Bible was not in the contract.’ ”
While it may be true that treating churchgoers as consumers by trying to meet their stated needs may make them feel more comfortable, by lowering our expectations of them as active participants we are decreasing the possibility of genuine transformation. We may end up with a massive church campus, but we will not end up with people who are being formed in Christlikeness. That entails a commitment the average consumer is not likely to make.
True Narrative: The Community Shapes My Life
The good and beautiful community is not made of merely comfortable Christians but Christlike men and women growing in their life with God and each other. In order to become that kind of community we need a new narrative, a biblical narrative, to reshape our behavior. Here is the true narrative regarding the rights and responsibility of the community: The community exists to shape and guide my soul. The community has a right to expect certain behavior from me, and can provide the encouragement and accountability I need.
From the beginning the ecclesia of Jesus has practiced soul shaping through many means: corporate worship, the breaking of bread, the teaching of the apostles, corporate fasting and holding each other accountable to live godly lives. Transformation into Christlikeness has been the aim and responsibility of the church from its beginning (Hebrews 10:24-25).
Our uneasiness comes from seeing too much abuse in power. How have you seen this at work in the church?
If the church has that responsibility, it also has the right to encourage certain behaviors from its members. We can and must offer forgiveness and reconciliation to all who seek it, and accept all who are broken and dysfunctional. But acceptance does not mean we ask nothing of the people who join our community. I realize that this approach causes uneasiness. We are reluctant to ask people to take a stand against sin, hesitant to challenge them to develop a prayer life and not inclined to telling people what to do in general. Some of the uneasiness is good, I think, because we need to have a healthy fear of being controlling or manipulative, or of abusing power.
Though these concerns are real, they do not mitigate our responsibility to encourage certain behaviors from the members of our community. The good and beautiful community has the responsibility and thus the right to lead people into godliness, which is the same thing as wholeness.
The soul-shaping role of the church is not just for our own spiritual nurture—it is meant to propel us out into mission. We gather together to worship, and in doing so we learn our ancient family language, tell our family narratives and enact our sacred moments. We also listen to the Spirit speak to us through sermon and song. In so doing we are shaped into a people, a community being transformed into goodness by our God who alone is good. But then we are sent. We leave worship as all new people, inspired by our connection to one another and to the old, old story. We leave to go out and, quite simply, change the world. We change it by our very presence. We cannot help but make a difference because we are the aroma of the resurrected Christ to a world that knows only death. We also behave differently, unselfishly, generously, and in so doing preach without saying a word. And of course we do preach when the time is right, ready with the right word in due season, telling our story of hope to those who hunger for it. We are shaped, and we are sent. We cannot have one without the other.
I want a community who will take an interest in my well-being, a community who is not afraid to ask me to make a commitment to my own spiritual growth and service to others, a community who dares to offer me a reliable pattern of transformation and then backs it up by challenging me to enter into some form of accountability in order to help me meet our commitments. I want a community who will challenge me to become who I already am: one in whom Christ dwells and delights, a light to the world, salt to the earth, the aroma of Christ to a dying world. I want a community who reminds me of who I am and will watch over me with love—which means offering both comfort and warning—so that I might live a life worthy of my calling.
But how do we do this without being judgmental and legalistic? How do we do this in the spirit of the One who loves us without condition and offers forgiveness and reconciliation no matter what we have done? How can we be both comforting and challenging at the same time? I believe it entails three things: (1) reminding each other who we are, (2) showing each other what we can be and (3) having the courage to hold each other accountable.
The Community Reminds Us Who We Are
On a particularly challenging week I decided to skip church. I was tired from traveling and grading papers, and I rationalized my absence by reminding God of all the good work I had done for him that week. I had gone to a chapel service earlier in the week, and that was the final rationale I needed to sleep in and not feel guilty about missing church. Then my wife reminded me that it was the Sunday our son was getting his Bible presented to him for completing confirmation class. There would be no sleeping in. So I got ready, and we piled into the car as we do nearly every Sunday of the year.
We settled in to our usual spot in the sanctuary, and the service began. Early in the service we sang one of my favorite hymns, “Blessed Assurance,” which begins:
In a gentle way I was being reminded of my identity. This is my story: I have the blessed assurance that Jesus is my Savior; I am an inheritor of salvation; I was redeemed by God; I am born of the Spirit, and I am cleansed by the blood of Jesus.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer affirms community’s impact on the individual, saying, “The Christian needs another Christian who speaks God’s Word to him. He needs him again and again when he becomes uncertain and discouraged.” When have you experienced these moments in your own life and community?
That is the metanarrative that has become my story, the story Jesus has written me into and has written into me. It forms my identity. I know who I am: loved, forgiven, cleansed, made alive and destined for eternal joy. As we sing, the community reminds me who I am. The community has this power. We are bound by a common story, and as we tell it we are reminded of our true identity. In the epistle to the Hebrews, the author tells the people who they are: “we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all” (Hebrews 10:10 niv).
The death and resurrection of Jesus was an atoning sacrifice for those who believe. Just as the sacrifice of a bull or a goat took away the sin of the individual or group, so the sacrifice of Jesus—the Lamb of God—took away the sins of the world. Those who gather in his name are a sanctified community, made holy through his sacrifice. We are set apart from the ways of this world. We are the ecclesia—those who have been called out from the world. We are the light of the world, the salt of the earth, a city set on a hill.
This is why Paul boldly addressed his letters to the “holy ones” or referred to them as “saints” (from the same Greek root word for holy, hagios). In fact, he addressed nearly all of his letters in this manner:
To the saints and faithful brothers and sisters in Christ in Colossae. (Colossians 1:2)
Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus,
To all the saints in Christ Jesus who are in Philippi, with the bishops and deacons. (Philippians 1:1)
He called them “saints” because those who have put their confidence in Jesus and follow him as their Lord and Savior are holy—even when they know that their behavior does not match their identity. In a sense, we already are holy, and yet we are learning how to be holy.
We have been made holy by the work of Jesus, but our behavior often betrays our true identity. We are fallen, broken, prone to wander and to leave the God we love. Paul made this bold statement: “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). Holy yet broken. That is a part of our identity. And that is another reason I like the practice of the Claypot Church. They break the jar and give a piece of it to each person. When the jar is reassembled it is not perfect—no church or community is—but the earthen vessel contains the treasure, which is Christ, whose light can shine out of our brokenness. In some ways he shines best through our brokenness, when we have allowed God to heal and restore us.
Take a few minutes and write down “Holy yet broken. Broken yet holy” in your journal. Reflect on the seeming inconsistency these phrases offer, and then write about how they really do fit together.
Holy yet broken. Broken yet holy. Broken yet able to carry the presence and power of Christ. This balance is important. There are churches that stress holiness in terms of certain behaviors. Taking their eyes off Jesus and focusing on rules, they become judgmental and hypocritical. There are other communities where the call to be holy is never heard. The good and beautiful community of apprentices of Jesus must keep this balanced awareness: we are holy, we are broken, and we are called to live holy and godly lives. The community reminds us who we are. They tell the story we need to hear repeatedly. Our memory is not that good, and the world we live in is telling us a different story. Only the community of Christ-followers has the truth we need to hear.
The Community Shows Us What We Can Become
We not only need to be reminded of who we are but also to be challenged to reflect that identity in our daily lives. This involves encouragement, admonishment and watching over one another in love. A good and beautiful community creates an ethos in which people are encouraged to engage in specific activities on a regular basis (some daily, some weekly, some ongoing) in order to become the people we truly are. This means setting high expectations. Each member should be asked to engage in growth-producing activities, from time alone with God to making friends with people outside our comfort zone to meeting monthly with an “encouragement” partner.
In short, the church is asking the people to reflect the glory that is already theirs. We are strengthened when we plug into God. Christ, who dwells in us, reveals himself in the breaking of bread, just as he did on the road to Emmaus. The Spirit who leads us uses our unique abilities as gifts to other apprentices. Those who stand in the strength of the kingdom naturally offer their resources to those who are in need.
These are not laws but opportunities for us to be who we are called to be. It is what we naturally do. Christians are a new creation, with new capacities. We can now interact with the Ruler of the universe. We have the joy of making deep connections with people—Christian or not. We are partakers of the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4), and our lives are meant to be gifts to others. We live under a new economic system: kingdom economics. What we share we never lose. These are not obligations but invitations to live out our calling.
We should approach these exercises as opportunities, and thus with excitement and joy. My dog gets excited when she thinks she might be going for a walk. If I walk into the room in tennis shoes, she starts to shake with excitement. If I reach for the leash, she goes crazy. I can hardly get her leash on because she is jumping around with unspeakable joy. We can do this only when we are reminded who we are and taught how these things work. I love the way Paul encouraged the Christians at Rome: “I myself feel confident about you, my brothers and sisters, that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge, and able to instruct one another” (Romans 15:14). He believed in them and called them to live that out. The community is empowered to tell us who we are and to challenge us as to what we can become.
One of my favorite verses is found in Hebrews. It offers a clear call to challenge one another to live as apprentices of Jesus: “Let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another” (Hebrews 10:24-25). Notice the phrase “let us consider.” We need to think about how we could encourage our fellow Christ-followers—literally, “provoke one another”—to love and good deeds. We need people around us who can encourage us to become the kinds of people Christ has called us to be.
The Community is Unafraid to Hold Us Accountable
All of this sounds good on paper, but in real life this kind of enterprise involves many ups and downs, successes and failures, happy surprises and deep disappointments. Accountability involves the art of encouragement and admonishment. Encouragement is needed when we begin to lose sight or strength to keep fighting the good fight. We need someone in our corner to strengthen and encourage us, just as Paul and his fellow workers did when they visited the churches Paul had planted: “They returned to Lystra, then on to Iconium and Antioch. There they strengthened the souls of the disciples and encouraged them to continue in the faith” (Acts 14:21-22). In the next chapter of Acts, Judas and Silas do the same: “Judas and Silas, who were themselves prophets, said much to encourage and strengthen the believers” (Acts 15:32).
Encouragement is an indispensable part of accountability. We often think of accountability as a negative thing, as an interaction of tough love. But in reality it is as much about the art of encouragement as it is about the art of keeping high expectations. There is so much in life that beats us down and discourages us that we need a steady dose of encouragement. We each need a fellow Christ-follower who is absolutely convinced that we are great and can do great things. We each need fellow apprentices who applaud us when we succeed and pull us up when we fail.
Encouragement also entails admonishment. To admonish is to warn, to watch out for and to offer guidance to another. Paul told the Colossians, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom” (Colossians 3:16).
When we open our lives to another, we do so with the expectation that he or she will freely offer us a word of warning when we need it. I was in an accountability group with four other men, and we met weekly to share what was going on in our lives. It was quite common for one of us to challenge someone who needed it. This was never done maliciously or with a hint of meanness. Quite the opposite; it was done carefully, and with love.
For example, at one point I had accepted several speaking engagements, and while the ministry work was good, it was taking a toll on several other areas of my life. The guys could see I was tired, and they heard guilt in my voice when I spoke about having to be away from my family, especially when our kids were small. One of the guys said gently, “Jim, I am not sure that you need to take every invitation you are offered. I think it is hurting your soul and your family, even though it is obvious you are doing good work.” The others concurred. Then we talked about working together to decide which engagements I would accept. We came up with a plan, and they offered to help me decide, through prayer, how I would respond. They stepped in, had the courage to admonish me and then offered to bear this burden with me. It was community at its best.
Holding someone accountable is not easy; it takes discernment. Paul told the Thessalonians to treat certain people in certain ways, fitting their condition: “We urge you, beloved, to admonish the idlers, encourage the faint hearted, help the weak, be patient with all of them” (1 Thessalonians 5:14). I love the verbs in this verse: admonish, encourage, help and be patient. This is the grammar of community. Certainly encouragement is necessary, as is helping others and being patient. Those are the characteristics of an apprentice of Jesus, and they are birthed only in community, not in isolation. But the first verb, admonish (warn), is not something many of us feel comfortable with. Still, it is a dimension of love.
What if my accountability group had chosen not to admonish me? What if they, out of fear of hurting my feelings, had simply looked the other way? They would not have been loving me, which by our definition is “to will the good of another.” I understand the reservations: Will the person we admonish get angry? Will he or she leave the fellowship? What if my discernment is wrong? Those are good questions, but they must not prevent us from doing the hard but necessary work of admonishment. If we are to watch over one another in love, we will have to overcome our fear of speaking the truth to a fellow apprentice. Always, though, we must speak the truth in love.
A Radical Method
In the eighteenth century the early Methodists were one of the purest examples of the power of accountability in community. The leader, John Wesley, preached to countless people, and thousands were converted. John was encouraged to preach outdoors to the masses by his longtime friend George Whitefield. Whitefield was, by most people’s estimates, a far better preacher than Wesley. He preached to larger audiences and saw greater numbers of conversions than Wesley. But there was a difference in how they instructed people to live after conversion. Whitefield had no plan; he simply assumed that people who gave their life to Christ would find a church and live out the Christian life.
Wesley, on the other hand, insisted that people join what were called societies, which functioned very much like churches (though without Communion, as Wesley was a true Anglican and wanted people to attend an Anglican church as well). In these Methodist societies the people were encouraged to attend many times a week to hear the preaching of Wesley or one of his other ministers. In addition, they were asked to join a class, which consisted of twelve people and a class leader. Each week they were challenged to come to the class meeting to share candidly with one another about the state of their souls. Wesley was so serious about this that if people failed to attend the class meeting, they would not be allowed to return unless they came to him and shared why they were absent.
Though Wesley’s practice might not work in today’s world, it certainly did in his time. He offered people a method (hence the name Methodists) to grow in Christlikeness in the context of communities. The movement spread rapidly and continued to grow in astounding numbers. He asked a lot of his people, but he saw a lot of transformation. The Methodist movement stands as one of the great movements in the church. The work of Wesley continued on through many generations. George Whitefield, however, left no such legacy. While considered one of the greatest preachers, Whitefield never started a movement.
In one stark entry in Wesley’s journal, he commented on a time when he failed to establish societies and classes in a region where he had preached. He returned twenty years after a great revival in a region called Pembrokeshire and was grieved to see that no evidence of their evangelistic success remained. He concluded,
I was more convinced than ever that the preaching like an apostle, without joining together those that are awakened and training them up in the ways of God, is only begetting children for the murderer. How much preaching has there been for these twenty years all over Pembrokeshire! But no regular societies, no discipline, no order or connection. And the consequence is that nine in ten of those once awakened are now faster asleep than ever.
Though “begetting children for the murderer” is quite harsh, it shows how important discipline, order and connection were to Wesley. And they should be to us as well.
Challenging Those Who Are Ready
I know three things from experience. First, people rise to the level of expectation. We fail because we do not ask for accountability and commitment. Second, people intuitively know that when things are made easy there is little chance that any good will come from it. We lower our expectations because we think people will respond in greater numbers, but in reality we do them no service, and most people sense this. Third, while not everyone in every church is ready to make a commitment to transformation, there are many who are ready and are not being challenged. Far too much attention is being paid to getting people to come to church, and far too little is paid to those who are hungering for a deeper life with God.
When I first started teaching material in The Apprentice Series, I stood before our congregation and offered an anti-pitch pitch to the people. I said, “I am looking for people who are serious about their life with God and are willing to make a commitment—a steep commitment. I am asking for thirty weeks of your life—a few hours each week to read the material and engage in the soul-training exercises, and then to come each Sunday to gather as a group to share how we are doing. You can only miss three of our sessions together. If you cannot make that commitment, then I encourage you not to apply. If you are serious, I need you to write an essay telling me why you want to enter this program. I will read your essay and let you know if you have been accepted.”
Many of the people later told me they were shocked. No one had ever stood up and offered such a challenge. Many felt intimidated. But over forty people wrote essays in order to get in the twenty-five open spots. Those selected came to the group with a lot of excitement, as if they had been selected to do something important. The commitment level was high; the people read, engaged in the exercises and came to the group ready to share. Every person in the group experienced lasting change. I took this same approach for the next three years, ultimately taking over one hundred people through the program. The impact on individual lives, as well as on our church, was evident.
Dallas Willard believes that in any given church approximately 10 percent of the people are ready to grow and willing to make an effort to make it happen. He thinks the church puts too much emphasis on trying to light a fire under the 90 percent, and neglects to challenge the 10 percent who are sitting idle but wanting help. Dallas theorizes that if we challenged the 10 percent, they would grow and subsequently would begin to effect change in others. This method, he believes, has been used by all of the great leaders in Christian history, including the most important of all, Jesus himself. Jesus invested heavily in a small band of followers, who in turn changed the world.
I do, however, want to offer one warning that comes from my experience in churches: the “80/20 rule.” That is, 80 percent of a church’s work is done by 20 percent of the people. There are people who are natural servers, natural doers, who will respond to every call to serve. We tend to take advantage of those who are willing to do whatever is asked. This almost always leads to burnout. We need to challenge the entire community to be involved. Many churches do not ask enough of everyone, and therefore ask too much of only a few, often those who have trouble saying no.
In many of our communities, service is reduced to doing things for the good of the church (e.g., serving on a committee, helping out with activities and events). This is one way to serve, but there are many others. Sometimes we feel as if service to the church is more important than service to the sick and needy. Service is an aspect of discipleship, but service itself is not discipleship. The current arrangement puts too much pressure on a few people to engage in specific acts of service to the church, which ends up overextending those few while the rest sit on the sidelines. In place of the 80/20 rule we need to encourage the entire community to engage in a balanced and comprehensive pattern of apprenticeship where everyone is involved.
A Year of Encouragement
One summer I spent two weeks working with Dallas Willard, assisting him in a class he was teaching on spirituality and ministry. We had long talks about formation and the difficulties faced in growing as apprentices of Jesus. We concluded that a key is to have someone standing with us who will hear the state of our soul, someone who will push us to be who we want to be and will be there in the end to ask, “How are you doing?” A moment of silence hung in the air. I wanted to ask Dallas if he would be willing to do that for me. Then I realized that I should offer to do the same for him. The thought of asking my wise, Christlike mentor, “Dallas, would you mind baring your soul to me and letting me hold you accountable?” seemed ludicrous.
Which is why I did it. And amazingly, he agreed without hesitation. We were driving to an airport and had about thirty minutes in the car, and another forty-five in the airport. During that time he shared the areas of his life that needed a little nudge, and I did the same. My need for nudging far exceeded his, but you get the idea. We agreed to hold each other in prayer for a year, and every time we saw each other we would ask how we were doing. We ended up being in the same place three times over the year, and we never failed to ask how our plan was working.
Knowing that Dallas knew what I wanted to do and that he was counting on me to stand with him in prayer and encouragement helped me that year. I was able to make some real strides in a few areas, and believe it or not, Dallas did as well. It showed me that no matter who we are, no matter how deeply we live in the kingdom, we still need to be encouraged, admonished and challenged to grow in Christlikeness; we need to be accountable to an encouraging community.
Soul Training Finding an Accountability Friend
This week, find a person who can encourage you and watch over you in love. I recommend you find someone within your small group or church (if you are involved in one). If not, seek out a trusted friend. It may be your spouse, though this is not recommended. It is probably better to ask a good friend, someone who would not be terribly surprised at being asked to do the following exercise with you.
The key here is finding someone you feel safe with. You will discuss the state of your soul with this person, so it is imperative that you feel comfortable with this person. If you sense that this person might judge you or react to what you say in an unloving way, then choose someone else.
Once you have chosen this person, be sure to make clear what you want from him or her. It is not necessary for the person to reciprocate; you are not asking your friend to bare his or her soul with you, but to ask you some questions and listen, and to offer some encouragement or admonishment if necessary.
When you meet, use the following questions. Be sure that your partner asks them of you, and if they’re comfortable, you ask the same questions of your friend:
How is your soul?
In what ways do you need to be encouraged right now?
What, if anything, is holding you back from living more fully for God?
These are great questions. They elicit a lot of good responses. And if you answer them openly and honestly, it will lead to some very fruitful discussion.
If the person is simply there to ask you these questions and not to answer them in return, do not be surprised if he or she decides to answer them anyway—especially if you model transparency. People long to know and be known, and when they feel safe they will usually share a great deal. We live in an age of much talking but little listening. If you show a willingness to listen, be prepared to do so. People are hungering for a safe place to share from their depths.
That said, be careful about what and how much you share. Unless you have a long-standing relationship and have done this kind of thing with this person, you cannot be sure of his or her reaction. Should you share something shocking, this exercise could turn out badly. A good rule of thumb is to share only what you think the person can handle. Should you need to share something deeper and more painful, I would encourage you to seek out a pastor or a mental-health-care professional, because they are trained to deal with information or problems that others are not trained to understand.
Above all, be at peace. If this is the first time you are doing something like this, do not enter into it with a great deal of worry and concern. This exercise is designed to be a gift, not a burden. Approach it with an attitude of joyful expectancy. If it becomes uncomfortable, keep the discussion at a more informal level. It may take time to develop trust with this person. Again, be at peace. You cannot rush these kinds of interactions. If, however, you are able to find it—now or down the road—you have found a treasure more valuable than gold.
One other concern: when choosing your partner within an existing group, be mindful of the fact that this can lead to hurt feelings. Someone may not be asked to be anyone’s partner. Try to be sensitive to this, and if necessary, ask that person to be your partner—it is all right to have more than one.
