When I first moved to Jacksonville, an area minister reached out to me and offered to be my “accountability partner.” At this point in my life, I had only been back in church for five years (most of which had been spent in mainline congregations), so when those words came through his lips, they were familiar, but I didn’t fully grasp them. I thought to myself, “I don’t know what that is, but I know it’s a thing Evangelical Christians have.” And so, I got an accountability partner. It turns out that, in Evangelical circles, an accountability partner is really someone who texts you once a week to see if you’ve been looking at porn. They use questions like “How’s your purity?” as if the only things that matter to God are how often you’re having orgasms and how many people are present in the room when you do. I got these weekly texts for about two months before I finally broke down and asked to go to lunch with my accountability partner. He must have assumed that I was going to confess some huge moral failing because he was visibly disappointed when I revealed my reason for the meeting:

“Hey man, I appreciate your willingness to help, but I’m just not really struggling with sexual sin right now. My big problem area is actually pride. I tend to think I have all the answers, and that’s a really unhealthy mindset for a minister. Would you be willing to hold me accountable on my ego instead of just texting me about porn all the time?”

And he never texted me again. Not once. He even unfriended me on Facebook.

Many months later, I bumped into my accountability partner again in a bookstore. My buddy Steve and I were grabbing some last-minute Christmas gifts when I noticed him across the aisle looking in our direction. I really entertained the notion of reaching over and holding Steve’s hand just to freak the guy out, but I decided to leave it alone— probably the right call.

As I reflect on that whole strange experience, I realize that I wasn’t really looking for accountability; I just wanted to raise my reputation with Evangelicals by having an accountability partner. Then, when I tried to actually get something helpful out of the arrangement, I discovered that he really just wanted to talk about sex. Since the #ThingsOnlyChristianMenHear hashtag went around on Twitter, I’ve started hearing more strange stories like this one. In Evangelical circles, it seems like accountability is really about fetishizing sexual purity instead of building truly supportive relationships.

Since that experience, I’ve met some wonderful ministers, chaplains, and friends who are able to provide real accountability on the issues that trouble me. Rather than having my one oddball accountability partner who obsessed over my sexuality, I now have a whole accountability network, and they’re a thousand times more helpful. This is also something I provide for people in bar settings, but I take a different approach:

“What are you struggling with these days?” is a much better question than “How’s your purity?”
“Hey, here’s my number. Shoot me a text in a few days if you’d like to check in about this again.” is a much healthier dynamic than, “Do you have an accountability partner?”

Evangelical accountability culture is toxic, plain and simple, but there’s the gem of a good idea there. If we strip away the judgment and stop making it all about sex, this could actually help some people. People are complex, and we struggle with a wide range of issues. If we’re willing to listen and just be there for each other, we can make a world of difference in each other’s lives.