So what’s up with the Three Pillars?
“So,” some of you may be asking “what’s up with these Three Pillars?” “What are they?” “Where did they come from?” Well, let’s see if I can give you a quick and dirty overview. The Three Pillars, essentially come out of the Isaiah Vision. Of course, he doesn’t refer to them as such, and his approach to the topic is “evangelism” focused and far more cooperate. Nonetheless, the idea is a very basic one: Faithful, maturing Christians have some kind of growth and development going on in each of these three areas.
The presumption is that that each individual’s particular engagement of each pillar is going to be different and that it’s going to change over time and situation, but nonetheless, something has to be going on in each of the three areas or it’s a pretty sure sign of a stagnant or nonexistent (facade, fake, etc.) faith.
The concept was developed for a simple reason: It’s difficult for a consistory to effectively evaluate the faith and development of the people in their congregation without certain criteria. Typically, in our tradition, those criteria quickly become legalistic and rule-based. I desperately wanted to prevent the rule-based approach but still have something that was clear and concise enough that the consistory could use it cooperatly to evaluate our congregational health and individuals could use it to evaluate their own spiritual growth and development.
The Three Pillars are:
- Devotion & Discipleship
- Ministry & Justice
- Worship & Honor
Again, the idea is simple. Healthy and maturing individuals have some kind of growth and development going on in each of the three areas.
Sometimes that growth and development is predictably traditional. For example, under Pillar Number One (Devotion & Discipleship), the Bible and the long history of the church have made it clear that God expects us to spend some kind of time in the scriptures and in prayer. That may look differently from person to person, but there is nonetheless an expectation that faithful, maturing Christians will somehow spend time in the scriptures and in prayer.
It’s a little less predictable in other pillars. For example, one’s engagement of Pillar Number Two (Ministry & Justice) is going to be directly related to their own particular skills, talents, gifts, abilities and resources. Similarly, what someone does under Pillar Number Two is going to depend on their own sphere of influence and the needs they have a particular heart for.
Again, this is not a legalistic or law-based approach to faith. This approach says: God is gracious to us. We ought to respond by being faithful. There are certain traits that we’ve seen in the scriptures and over the past several thousand years are consistent with spiritual health and development. Here are three basic arenas within which those traits tend to fall.
It’s not accidental that we see these three pillars, in one way or another, engaged by the faithful throughout both the Old and New Testaments. Indeed, it could be argued that these aren’t even Christian pillars at all. Certainly they’re consistent to the big three (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam), but they’re also consistent with other world-religions. That’s the point. This isn’t intended to be unique or even all that creative. It’s intended to be clear and simple. When someone asks what it means to be faithful. This is an answer - a simple, flexible answer that can be engaged by a thousand people in a thousand different ways.
As a side note, it’s worth noting that I’m strongly emphasizing the concept of grace. Our engagement of the Three Pillars is a response to God’s grace extended freely to us. Not a way of manipulating God into extending grace toward us; not a way of paying for grace, and certainly not a way of earning it. This is how we respond to what God has already done. It’s also not something we beat ourselves up over. Be faithful… and when you biff something (and you will… we all do) get over it. Don’t beat yourself up over your foibles and failures. Make a mistake? Get up. Dust yourself off. Get back on the wagon. Get over it. Everyone makes them. It’s not a big deal. Even huge mistakes with huge repercussions require the same response: get up; dust yourself off; get back on the wagon; get over it. So you biffed something. So what?! 
So that’s the three pillars. Simple. Straight forward. Easy to for both personal and cooperate evaluation.
What do you think?
Grace and Peace,
`tim
4 Responses to “So what’s up with the Three Pillars?”
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October 2nd, 2007 at 1:00 pm
I am fascinated with this! Do you have materials you’ve developed as you’ve taught/preached this at your church?
If you have, are you willing to share? I think it’s really good stuff.
October 3rd, 2007 at 3:52 pm
I have a short article written up about it if you’re interested, let me know and I’ll post it. The third Pillar is still a little rusty since I haven’t preached on it yet
I don’t know if my sermons would be of any help or not, but drop me an e-mail if you’d like me to send you some.
Grace and Peace,
`tim
October 3rd, 2007 at 6:53 pm
Yes, post the article is you will Tim.
October 4th, 2007 at 11:58 pm
I agree! Post the article. Or (on reflection . . . I’m a bit rusty, having been out of the reply game) maybe you should wait, preach the third pillar, and revise. Just a thought.
This would be a great thing to post . . . I mean publish . . . in the Church Herald, if it’s still in business by the time you get the preaching done.