Sin is a heart issue that often manifests itself in external behaviors. To kill sin we must get to the heart of the matter. I have found it helpful to ask personalized gospel-centered questions to uncover the deep-rooted idolatries of my heart. Because we encounter temptation and sin in different ways, personalized questions can be very helpful in leading us to repentance and faith in Jesus.

How can we formulate these questions? Here are a few things to consider when probing the heart:

Personality Type

Are you naturally an introvert or extrovert? Do you get angry easily? Are you a Type “A” individual, constantly focused on completing your to-do list? Are you passive or shy? Knowing a person’s personality will help you penetrate their heart.

Consider someone who is a naturally strong-willed achiever. They might have the tendency to treat their spirituality in the same way. It becomes more about what they can do for Jesus than what He has already done for them.

Ask questions that are specific to their personality:

• Are you trusting in your own strength or in the strength of Jesus?
• Are you striving for God or resting in God?
• Are you fighting well against finding your worth in your work to finding your worth in Jesus?

Reccurring Outside Influences

What are the reccurring situations and circumstances that offer the most temptation? Are there people who you struggle to love? Are there times when you work late or are alone for extended periods of time?

Consider the person who has an unruly neighbor. One who is constantly nagging or creating trouble for the family. Ask questions in light of the situation:

• How are you loving “Bob” well?
• Do you see “Bob” as a problem or a person made in the image of God?
• Are you asking Jesus to grant you patience and genuine love?
• Do you know where Bob could use prayer? Have you offered to pray for him?

Tendencies Toward Sin

Where have you struggled in the past? What are the areas of habitual sin? We all have vices. Sin that gets the best of us is the sin we must fight hardest against.

Consider the man who is gluttonous. He might be fighting well, but still has a strong temptation to find fulfillment by indulging in too much food and drink.

Ask sin-specific questions that do not promote legalism:

• Are you being intoxicated with grace or with alcohol?
• Are you being satisfied with Christ or with food this week?
• What is consuming your thoughts: Food or Christ?

These questions evolve with our relationships. The more you know the men or women in your Fight Club the easier it is to prod at the heart and uncover the sin beneath the sin. Make a habit of asking one another personalized, gospel-centered questions. As you do, you will cut sin off at the root and turn to see Christ in the height of his glory!

It is important to note that just asking questions isn’t enough. Our questions must turn the corner and point others to the truth of the gospel. Only surfacing sin without bringing the hope of the Gospel produces wounded Christians. It is necessary to know your sin but only so that you can fight your sin and trust and enjoy your Savior.

From JT Caldwell at GospelCenteredDiscipleship.com

Rehearse the Gospel Regularly
Ask your Fight Club partners or missional community to regularly restate the elements of the Gospel out loud together to see how well they’re getting it. You may have to lay it out for them a couple of times until they begin to remember it.

Here are four questions I ask to help people remember…

Who is Jesus?

• He is the perfect man who lived a perfect life fully submitted to God the Father in all things.
• He is the God-Man who is God in the flesh so that we could know what God is like and God would be near us.
• He is the Messiah sent by God to save us from our sin, death and destruction.

What Did Jesus Do?

• On the cross, he exchanged his perfect obedience (His righteousness) for our sin so that those who have faith in Jesus get Jesus’ righteousness credited to their account and their sin credited to His account.
• When he died on the cross, not only were my sins removed, but they were paid for (atoned for).
• He rose from the dead to show his power over sin and death (the wages of sin is death so Jesus’ resurrection shows the debt is paid in full).
• He ascended to the right hand of God the Father from where he sent his Spirit to bring faith and new life to us, empowering us to live lives of obedience.

What Must We Do?

• Repent — Have a change of mind about who God is around here.
• Believe — By faith, put our trust in Who Jesus Is and What He Has Done, believing it was accomplished for us.
• Be Baptized — Publicly express our faith that our lives are now united and identified with God in Christ.

What Happens to Us?

• We are forgiven and cleansed of our sins.
• We receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
• We are included in the forever Family of God.
• We are commissioned to Make Disciples of Jesus.

From JT Caldwell at GospelCenteredDiscipleship.com

1. Strengths for Success
   • Make your fight clubs relationally driven not programmatic.
   • Reinforce the necessity of gospel-centered DNA as many ways as possible (sermons, articles, blogs, www.gospelcentereddiscipleship.com, tweets, trainings).
   • Groups that meet regularly experience much deeper gospel change (At least every other week is key)  .
   • Address fight club pitfalls regularly from pulpit/seminars. They can turn into gossip clubs, cheap grace clubs, legalism clubs, non-existent clubs. Show how and why the gospel leads to different, better groups.
   • Talk about fight clubs as an integral part of your church, i.e. Our church is about Sundays, City Groups, and Fight Clubs.
   • Do Fight Club stories from the front, where people share how the gospel has shaped them in community.
2. Challenges We Face
   • Default mode of the heart (legalism and license). Pastor, teach, pray, equip for gospel-centered living. Never weary of it. It is your life calling.
   • It gets messy when people are getting that deep and close. Be prepared for a spike in counseling support.
   • People tend to slip off from making Text-Theology-Life central in FC meetings, which is how you keep the gospel central. Otherwise, you end up relying on second-hand gospel sayings and old Bible verses, not fresh words from the Spirit and promises from God. When this happens, the gospel loses its center of gravity and discipleship its joy. When people start, not with how the Spirit is changing them through the Word, but how they are struggling in life, they inevitably begin to leave the gospel to end, displacing it from the center. Start with the Word, keep it central, and allow it to shape your time, not your life experience to shape your time.
   • Infrequency of meeting lead to loss of value, gospel-centrality, and godly discipleship.
3. Indefinite Duration of Groups
   • Indefinite because they are based on friendships not community. They are selective relationships of trust, gathered around Jesus that should endure.
   • If a group must break apart, honesty, confession, repentance, and encouragement should all inform that process, those relationships. Running away from people who are different is running towards convenience not Christ.

From Justin at GopspelCenteredDiscipleship.com

First 9Marks gave us the Do-It-Yourself Marriage Retreat, which was great for Julie and I. Now, they’ve given us the Man-Treat “Diagnostic Weekend”. I’ve always struggled with having close male friendships and keeping in regular communication.  The Man-Treat would be amazing to do regularly with some brothers-in-Christ as a way to reconnect, encourage, and challenge each other.

The idea of this document is to guide your morning quiet time and reflection and to foster your evening conversations.  The goal is to scan your life, talk thoughtfully with other brothers who love you and know you well and to emerge with a practical plan for a) playing offense (e.g. what do I need to start doing to grow in my faith and to exercise faithfulness in the spheres of responsibilities you’ve been given) and b) playing defense (e.g. in what areas is sin creeping in and you need to aggressively fight it).

Pray before and during your time – so that a spirit of grace, charity, encouragement and trust in God’s faithfulness permeates your time.

Highlights of your past year

• Remember the past year.  Note any highlights (chronological and social), including highpoints and low points.
• Our God is a God of providence (Gen 50: 19; Rom 8:28), who brings all things into our life for our good. Reflect on what the events of the past year have taught you about God, yourself, your spouse, etc.
• Reflect on and list at least three ways you can give thanks to God for blessings of the past year.

Sphere 1: Personal Discipleship

• In general, how are you doing spiritually?  How has your love for God grown?  Has your love for others grown? If so, how?
• How is your devotional time going? (Specifically Scripture study & prayer) What are you reading and learning in your quiet times right now? What do you want to accomplish in QTs in this upcoming year?
• Has your life been governed increasingly by God’s Word?  Is there another spiritual discipline that you would like to develop? (fasting, scripture memorization, etc.)
• Do you still grieve over sin? (Whitney)
• Name one sin that you continue to struggle with.  What could I do to help you with this struggle?
• How are you growing in the characteristics of being a godly man (I Tim 3:1-7)
  • above reproach
  • temperate
  • self-controlled
  • respectable
  • hospitable
  • able to teach
  • not given to drunkenness
  • not violent but gentle
  • not quarrelsome
  • not a lover of money
  • manage his own family well and see that his children obey him with proper respect
  • good reputation with outsiders
• How are you doing managing your health and eating?
• How are you doing managing your finances?  Are you tithing?  Do you have debt?  What are you doing to eliminate it?

Sphere 2: Husbanding

• How is your marriage going?
• Name 3 things that bring you joy about your wife?
• What are you tempted to struggle with about your wife and your marriage?
• Are you getting home at a consistent time?  Are you prioritizing date nights?
• How can you improve in your communication with your wife?
• Are you fostering romance, intimacy and sex?
• How can you improve as a leader in your marriage?

Sphere 3: Parenting

• Name one thing about each of your children that brings you great joy.  What are each of your kids struggling with? What can you do to shepherd them through these struggles?
• Are you spending quality time with each of your children?  What makes it difficult to do this?
• Do you spend time in family worship?  What could you do to make this a more consistent part of your family diet?
• In general, how are you doing raising your children? What can you do to improve your parenting? – What do you want to keep the same and what do you want to change in order to shepherd your kids well spiritually?

Sphere 4: Church/Ministry

• What ministries did you participate in this past year?
• Who are you discipling? And, who is your accountability partner?
• What should be your ministry goals for this upcoming year (i.e., Bible study, hospitality and fellowship, charity work/support)?
• Do you delight in being involved in church? If so, name one thing about our church that currently brings you great joy.  Name one thing that would increase your joy in church?
• How can you be an encouragement to the elders and staff at our church?
• How can you foster greater unity in our church?

Sphere 5: Vocation/Work

• How is your current work situation?
• Are you working too many hours?  Are you traveling too much?  Are you working smart and/or wasting time during your workday with personal distractions?
• Are you having any work conflicts?  How can you see your pride, arrogance and ego contributing to these?
• Are you being faithful in your workplace?  How do you see that you are working to “the glory of God”?
• What opportunities do you have for advancement?  What toll might these new responsibilities place on your life, family and ministry?   How are you applying biblical wisdom to these decisions?
• Are you in a place that you can see as your long-term calling?

Where do you see yourself in 5 years?  10 years?

1. view themselves as fellow and equal journiers longing to know God really and are committed to building a micro-Christian community together
2. will utilize the spiritual gifts, learned abilities, and resources they have been given on behalf of one another
3. are committed to the weekly small group meeting where we learn from one another, pray for one another, and see God work miracles when “two or three are gathered.” (Matt. 18:20)
4. will hold them accountable to do the spiritual disciplines as they birth spiritual maturity in us
5. purposefully and passionately direct one another to God and His Words found in the Bible when concluding how to deal with a difficult life issue, make a major decision, or determine the rightness or wrongness of a moral dilemma

One of the criticisms of the role of Senior Pastor is the lack of accountability. I think that’s why God intended the church to be lead by a plurality of elders, so that they can each be accountable to each other. Here is how the elders at Capital Hill Baptist do accountability as a team of elders:

One of the practices that our elder board has adopted is accountability with the entire elder board.  Once a month, one of the elders will be examined by the entire board and asked a variety of questions about his spiritual state, family life, work priorities, evangelism, etc.  We hope that by giving time to examining each other, we are looking out for one another.  We do this with only the most loving of intentions.

A few other notes:

• This practice should never preclude an elder from seeking 1 on 1 accountability with others.  We encourage all of the elders to be regularly seeking 1 on1 accountability relationships with elders or other brothers!
• We don’t allow visitors to watch this because of the very personal nature of the questions.
• We limit the time to about 25 minutes and then take a few minutes to pray for the life and ministry of the elder who has been examined.
• There is a high level of respect and trust among our elders for each other.  This type of examination is done in a very gracious and loving way.  It is never intended to allow for anger, fighting, disdain, shaming or revenge among our elders.

If there is no accountability among your elders, you might consider encouraging your elders to pursue 1 on 1 accountability and also accountability with entire elder board.