Have you ever had a family member or close friend come to you repeatedly needing just one more, “temporary loan”? It seems that almost every family has a brother, daughter, cousin or someone who always seems to be "a little short." I’m not talking about a generally responsible person who’s fallen on some hard times due to a job loss, divorce, long term illness or underwater mortgage. That can happen to anyone. I’m talking about a generally irresponsible, lazy or simply foolish relative who...

The Importance Of The First Few Exploratory Meetings Set some dates for the first few meetings and make it clear that at this stage no one is agreeing to be an accountability partner yet, but you want to meet for a few weeks to get to know each other better and discuss everyone's expectations. Unless everyone knows each other well, I'd suggest everyone take 15-30 minutes to give the group a brief summary about themselves including the type of family they grew up in, education, hobbies,...

Last week my blog encouraged you to write a Personal Mission Statement. Have you ever attended a weekend seminar that was really helpful, took tons of notes but come Monday morning life got crazy and almost all the good intentions you had are forgotten in the rush of life? Why is that? Because you're not actually accountable to anyone so the "tyranny of the urgent" often robs us of our good intentions. To whom you are accountable spiritually? Have you ever really thought about that? Of course...