An Overview of the Tectonic School Devotional Plan
A toolkit and a blueprint to fix, maintain and improve the world we live in.
God is first revealed to us in the role of creator - even before the Bible, deep thinkers have always realized that everything that exists must come from a creator. The wonderful thing we learn from the Bible is that the God who created everything, created us in His image and likeness.
To be like a creator, means that we must create.
Creation is learned by observing, planning, and then doing. Let’s imagine that you encounter a house. You can observe it, walk around it, inside it, and take notes. Then try to draw a picture of the house. Using your picture as a guide, go to a new place and build your own house. What you build will not be the same. But if you go back to the first house again, you will now observe a whole host of details that you didn’t notice before. Your drawings will improve, and so will your next houses.
But imagine instead that you observe the house that is built, and at the same time you receive a detailed set of plans. You can tell that there is a correlation between the two, but they are not identical. How do you know which is right? Put them to the test. See where the problems occur. Is it where the house and the plans match? Or is it in the places where they differ?
For over 2,000 years, people have been running this test between the world that we see, and the way that the Bible says it should be. So far, it seems that the problem is not with the plans, but with the world itself. Fortunately, the plans anticipate this, spell it out clearly, and provide a solution. The task we are unable to complete is completed by God Himself. He fixes what we break.
With this in mind, we can approach the Bible with confidence - we can’t break it. But figuring out how to use it is no easy task either. That is why we start from the ground up, just like building a house.
The Bible actually holds a remarkable amount of content on the subject of building. There are big sections about major building projects, both good and bad. - Noah’s ark, the Tower of Babel, the Tabernacle, the Temple, the rebuilding of Jerusalem’s wall - as well as wisdom literature and parables devoted to the subject of building.
Beyond these big projects, there are many more small acts of creation - the making of food and clothing, the crafting of tools, weapons and instruments, and the use of these various items. God speaks to us through the act of creation.
The goal of these devotionals will be to give a macro view of these different subjects, and then go over them again in more detail. So while we first look at the tabernacle, we will not cover it exhaustively; we are looking to capture the gist of what God is doing. We will take what we learn, and apply it to the ark, the temple, and the tower. Then we will go back and examine the tabernacle once again.
Sometimes we will look at the whole story, and other times focus on what we can learn from a single verse - or even a single word. This will not be exhaustive; the point is to give you a tool kit, and a blueprint. With these things in hand, the rest of the scripture will be able to speak to you more clearly and profitably.
The final piece is not included in the devotionals themselves - that is what comes from discussing these texts with others. Each of us will notice and perceive things different from another, but when we discuss them, we all learn to see them. So take notice of what stands out, because it could be that God intends to speak to someone else, through your words and thoughts.
This content is just the tip of the iceberg. It requires your effort and participation to become what it can. But hopefully, it will become a puzzle to explore, a project to develop, and not a chore to endure. So take the plans, take your tools, and see what you can create. Not just on the jobsite, but in every corner of your life.