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Jimmy Dodd and Renaut van der Riet: What Will Keep a Pastor From Moral Failure? Not Accountability

“You have to be able to have those friends that can ask you some questions about your back stage, which means they’re asking you about your marriage, about your fantasy life, about your habits and addictions. They’re asking you about everything in your life. And it’s the most freeing thing in the world as a leader to not carry secrets.”

“I have dealt with pastor after pastor who has lied. It’s just pretty simple. They lie.”

“It’s got to be intimate. It’s got to be real, it’s got to be extremely forthcoming and it’s challenging. But I think that our lives depend on it, not just our ministry depends on it. I think our lives depend upon it.”

“There’s absolutely a risk in this. There’s absolutely a risk. But I think it’s a risk that you have to take because I hear, ‘It’s not wise to have friends in the church.’ Most pastors I hear that from don’t have friends anywhere…they’re completely isolated.”

Key Quotes From Renaut van der Riet

“What happens often is young guys come out of seminary into church planting. The church’s mature, they grow. Things happen, and we are so busy leading that we’re not busy growing. So what ends up happening is the organization catches up with our competencies.”

“For me, for example, where I couldn’t lead well, I just talked well and so I used communication to compensate for leadership deficits. Well, that can only last so long before it starts crumbling.”

“Accountability falls flat because of when the pastor lies, and we’re all capable of lying. So accountability requires the desire of the person who’s being held accountable to want to be truthful. And so that’s where accountability fails.”

“My best friends are all within the church I pastor. And with those friends, they are a small pocket. There is a level of transparency and vulnerability that is extremely high. And I would say to you, those friends know everything about me.”

“We are so afraid of the consequences of having close friends in the church. But what we’re not afraid of is the consequences of isolation. And we ought to be. We ought to be far more afraid of isolation than we are of the consequences of having friends.