How the Six Pillars Got formed (BJEP026)

 How the Six Pillars of Jesus Youth Lifestyle Took Shape

(By Dr. Edward Edezhath - the article published in Kairos Magazine in 2016)

I must have been in my mid-twenties the first time I saw the diagram. Someone drew it on a blackboard during one of the early Life in the Spirit Seminars — a simple wheel with the Chi-Rho symbol at its hub and four spokes radiating outward. At the center: Christ. Along the outer rim: Daily Christian Life. And the four spokes connecting them: prayer, study, fellowship, and service. It was one of those images that fix themselves in your mind immediately, and I remember thinking: yes, this is what it looks like. This is what holds together.

That diagram had roots in Acts 2:42 — the early community in Jerusalem devoted to the apostles' teaching, to fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to prayer. The Life in the Spirit Seminar's sixth week would take those ingredients and ask: what does a consistent, daily Christian life actually look like? What are the things that should always be present, regardless of how life changes around them?

It was a question worth asking. And over the next thirty years, the Jesus Youth movement would return to it again and again, gradually arriving at the answer we now call the Six Pillars.

Fr. Gino and the Language of Constants

In the early 1980s, Fr. Gino Hendricks took over the national leadership of the Renewal — and with him came a particular gift for giving ideas their clearest possible shape. I always appreciated his mind. He had the ability to take something that a group was already vaguely living and make it visible and nameable.

His contribution in this area came through a mathematical analogy. In mathematics, he would explain, there are constants and variables. Constants are fixed. Variables shift and change. Our daily lives contain both — things that may legitimately change from season to season, and things that should not change at all. These unchanging things, he argued, deserve a name and a discipline.

The list he taught during that period contained eight: ongoing conversion, daily prayer, a generous life of giving, daily reading of the Word, attendance at the prayer assembly, pastoring, a continuous inner covenant, and a continuing openness to the Baptism in the Spirit. Fasting and a life of witness were sometimes added. What mattered was not the exact number but the insight behind it — that there are ingredients of Christian living that are neither optional nor occasional. They are, as Fr. Gino named them, the constants.

Five, Then Six

About a decade later, the movement began working with a new and slightly simplified list of five stable elements. Three came directly from Acts 2:42: prayer, study of the Word, and fellowship. The fourth item — the breaking of bread — was opened up into two: the sacraments and evangelization. This ordering served the movement for roughly ten to fifteen years. It was simple, teachable, and grounded in scripture. It did its work well.

Then, in 2004, a question arose in the movement's leadership discussions that I remember finding both obvious and overdue. "Service" — or "commitment to the poor" — had been part of the movement's DNA since at least the early 1980s. The 1982 national convention at Thevara, with its theme of Option for the Poor, had made social commitment a living reality in the movement's culture. And yet, for some years, it had not held an explicit place within the formal list of stable elements. The leadership discussed this at various levels. The conclusion was clear. A sixth pillar was added: service to the poor.

That addition was not a cosmetic change. It was a recognition that what the movement had already been trying to live by deserved to be named and held accountable.

From Wheel to Building

The wheel with four spokes has given way, as a symbol, to the image of a building supported by six pillars — and that shift in imagery says something. A wheel moves. A building stands. The pillars are not about motion; they are about stability and support. What rests on them is a life.

Looking back across this history, one reflection seems essential. The number of pillars and their names do matter — but not as much as something else. What matters most is whether the movement itself becomes a school of practice: a community where a consistent way of life is actually learned and lived, not just described. It is possible to know the names of all six pillars and to have none of them genuinely rooted in one's life. It is also possible to be part of a community where, quietly and without drama, these things are practiced — where prayer happens daily, the Word is read, the sacraments are received with real hunger, the poor are sought out, and fellowship is not just a word for the group chat.

Contemplating the unfailing love of God and growing into stability and faithfulness in at least some things that go deeper than experiences and activities — this is part of the Christian calling that does not change. The Jesus Youth movement and each of its communities exist, in part, as a nursery for exactly that kind of rooted, steadfast growth.

And that, I think, is something worth the fifty-year journey to arrive at.

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For further reflection:

1. Fr. Gino's distinction between constants and variables in the Christian life is a clarifying one. Which of the Six Pillars are genuinely constant in your own life right now — and which have become variables?

2. The wheel diagram offered a picture of Christ at the center with the four spokes flowing outward. If you drew that diagram for your own daily life honestly today, what would be at the hub — and what would the spokes look like?

3. The sixth pillar — service to the poor — was added in 2004 partly because something the movement was already living needed to be named and made accountable. Is there a commitment in your life that you know you hold but have never named formally? What would happen if you named it?

4. The shift from a wheel to a building with six pillars changes the metaphor from motion to stability. What does stability in the Christian life look like for you — and what threatens it most?