The Three Buckets

The effectiveness of missionary witnessing involves a vast number of critical issues. One of them is what I call, The Three-Bucket concept.

On a worldview level, every person has a vertical row of three buckets—one on top, one in the middle, and one on the bottom. The top bucket contains all the thoughts, behaviors, and beliefs the person considers mandatory for salvation. The bucket on the bottom contains all the thoughts and behaviors that are prohibited, or what is considered sin. If these things are done, they could cause you to be lost. The bucket in the middle contains everything else—the thoughts and behaviors that are inconsequential, and up to each individual's choice.

For example, let's say chicken is served. For those who believe in reincarnation, eating chicken might be a prohibited, bottom-bucket activity. For an animist at a feast honoring their ancestors, partaking might be required—a top-bucket activity. For vegetarians, eating chicken might be a middle-bucket thing. While they personally don't prefer to eat it, neither do they condemn those who do. However, if the vegetarians give health principles top-bucket priority, they might condemn those with greasy fingers. How you sort your buckets makes a major impact on your ability to find neutral territory in which to build redemptive relationships with nonbelievers.

Every person and every culture has these same three buckets, but we don't all arrange their contents in the same way. For example, Christians may place the worship of God, the belief in Jesus, and the paying of tithe, as essential things for the upper bucket. Stealing, lying, and cheating, go into the lower bucket. Swimming, going for walks, and eating sandwiches, are all in the middle bucket.

Missionaries and gospel workers seeking to share the Gospel with those from a different background or culture, often find that their own bucket arrangement is quite different from that of their target culture. Behavior they believe God requires, their target culture may prohibit. Or behavior they believe God prohibits, their target culture may require.

Perhaps the target culture may forbid people to gather for worship, sing praises to God, or to baptize believers. It might require attendance at pagan festivals, or making offerings at shrines. In such cases, missionary behavior might be so offensive to the target culture that people will never get close enough to hear what they have to say.

Even fellow workers often find their own bucket arrangements differ. I recently asked a group of student-missionaries to take a list of behaviors and sort them into the appropriate buckets. When they were done, we found they agreed on only twelve percent of the list. What some of them thought were required or prohibited behaviors, the others considered simply matters of choice. Place these missionaries on an outreach project together, and they would constantly be raising their eyebrows at each other, or more unfortunately perhaps, their relationship could deteriorate to the point of anger and disunity. The pictures of Christianity they portray to a target culture would look very different. How many Seventh-day Adventist churches have split over the contents of these three buckets?

Two Extremes

In the Western world, many people are infatuated with exercising their rights, and have lost sight of the classic standards of responsible adult behavior. Many violate middle-bucket guidelines just because they can. They live by law, rather than by principle, and they feel free to do anything not expressly forbidden. They exercise no wisdom in their middle-bucket behaviors.

Even many Christians avoid mature, responsible application of biblical principles. They focus on the bare-minimum requirements for salvation, and never grow beyond them. A few years ago, I met a gentleman who told me that since he was saved by grace, he no longer had any obligation to do good. He felt that to do good, was to deny the grace that saved him. His top bucket held only one thing—belief in Jesus. If he could get to heaven simply by saying he believed, then that was all he planned to do.

Other Christians take everything out of their middle buckets and move them to their top or bottom buckets. By doing so, they create new demands for behavior beyond people's maturity, relevance to their context, or capacity to perform. This is the premise of legalism.

So there are two extremes—legalism and grace without works. The first has lots of rules and a strong sense of purpose, but little assurance of salvation. Because the middle bucket is nearly empty, there is no neutral ground on which to build relationships with unbelievers. The second rejects all rules, and has a false sense of security regarding salvation. The top and bottom buckets are empty, and the overflowing middle bucket is guided neither by principle nor by maturity. While this person might form many relationships with unbelievers, they are seldom redemptive.

There are some interesting commonalities between the two extremes. Neither is clear on the basis of salvation, and neither is clear on what salvation is for. Both neglect responsible management of middle bucket issues. Post-modern Americans have a middle bucket that is almost completely full, and next to nothing in the top and bottom buckets. Anything is fair game. "If it feels good, do it." By contrast, conservative Christians often have top and bottom buckets more full than the middle one. When I was a young man, I was told that everything I did either moved God's work forward, or held it back. This belief sent me rummaging through my middle bucket, evaluating each item based on whether or not it advanced God's cause, and moving it into my top or bottom bucket. This included every item of food and drink, every item of clothing, every hairstyle, and every form of entertainment and recreation.

Unfortunately, I misinterpreted advancing God's cause to mean salvation—my own salvation. I began to worry about what I ate, wore, and said, lest some small thing rob me of my salvation. And if it would mean my own salvation, wouldn't it mean others salvation as well? When I left the United States to plant the church among the Dowa of Papua New Guinea, my middle bucket didn't have much in it. But by the time I returned to the States almost twelve years later, my middle bucket was piled high. What happened?

When the apostle Paul met Jesus on the way to Damascus, his middle bucket was probably empty. He called himself a Pharisee of the Pharisees. To him, salvation meant rules—lots of them. Life was a maze. Every new experience meant more sorting and placing of ideas and truths into the top and bottom buckets.

Life for the disciples wasn't really much different. But notice what happened when they got into a cross-cultural situation—Paul with the gentiles, or Peter with Cornelius. They had to ask some hard questions. Was what they believed, truly absolute in more than their personal cultural context?

For centuries, the Jews considered gentiles untouchable. Then Peter had the dream as recorded in Acts chapter 10 and 11. The questions came up: Could one eat with a gentile? Could gentiles be saved? The disciples eventually agreed that God was showing them that gentiles could indeed be saved. Millions of souls came out of the bottom bucket. So did eating with them, worshiping with them, and visiting in their homes.

Upon his conversion, Paul was commissioned to evangelize the gentiles. This eventually shook up his bucket arrangement down to the very last marble. The book of Acts and Paul's epistles bear a fascinating story of this process.

First, if gentiles could be saved, did they need to be circumcised? Many early Christians believed they did. Circumcision was in the upper bucket—definitely a salvation issue. After some heated debate, and some confused gentile churches, it was eventually brought to the Jerusalem council, where—wonder of wonders—circumcision was moved out of the top bucket! Perhaps even more amazing, from some of what Paul wrote, (for example, see Galatians 5:2-4), it seems he put circumcision into his bottom bucket. It went from being required, to being prohibited. But then came the day when Paul was with Timothy and they were working with Jews. Circumcision then came back out of his bottom bucket and into the middle one. It was optional. In a specific context, if it overcame a barrier to working with Jews, circumcision was okay.

The Jerusalem council also determined that eating meat offered to idols was in the bottom bucket. It was banned, and Paul seemed to agree with this. But notice in 1Corinthians 10 where Paul discusses the issue, he actually has meat offered to idols in two different buckets. When he is with people who have never offered meat to idols, and don't believe differently when they eat meat that has or hasn't been offered to them, then he has it in his middle bucket. But when he is with those who have offered meat to idols, and for whom eating such meat is an act of devil worship, he has it in his lower bucket of banned items.

In all of this, identity is critical. Jews saw circumcision, laws, and ceremonial cleanliness as part of their God-given identity. Unfortunately, they were so preoccupied with earning their salvation, that they piled up a huge list of man-made rules to help them evaluate their performance. This focus on personal performance ended up confusing people, and chasing them away from God.

Paul fought to replace this performance-based identity, with an identity based on God's grace provided through Christ's sacrifice. This allowed for a major shift in focus from his personal salvation, to that of others. This led him to make some profound statements such as, "Do not destroy the work of God for the sake of food," (Rom. 14:20); "If food makes my brother stumble, I will never again eat meat," (1 Cor. 8:13); and the statement recorded in 1 Cor. 9:20-22, "To the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might win Jews; to those who are under the law, as under the law, that I might win those who are under the law . . . to the weak I became as weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all men that I might by all means save some."

We cannot assume from this statement that Paul no longer stood for anything or he no longer had any values. In the same letter to the Corinthians, he also warned gospel workers to lay a strong foundation for their work, or it would be destroyed, (Ch. 3). He warned them against taking each other to court, against committing adultery, and against improperly partaking of the Lord's Supper. He talked about unity, love, and the abuse of spiritual gifts. Some of his last words were, "stand fast in the faith," (1Cor. 16:13). There had to have been a commonly understood faith for him to have said that.

What we see Paul doing here is truly amazing. He recognized that salvation was given to him freely by a crucified Redeemer, and he accepted it. He no longer needed to arrange his buckets to earn his own salvation, so he arranged them for maximum impact in bringing salvation to others. He wanted to get close enough to people to give Jesus' offer of salvation to them with the least offense, the greatest clarity, and the most appeal possible. It's no wonder Satan hated him, and persecuted him everywhere he went!

A year ago, a group of Adventist Frontier Missions student missionaries left their home countries to enter the mission fields. We did our best to prepare them to demonstrate their Christianity when they got there. We told them that Christianity in another context might not look exactly as it does here.

Most of them recently returned from their year in the field, I talked to them about the three buckets. We chatted for a few moments about the various arrangements of different cultures and spiritual orientations. I then asked how many had rearranged their personal buckets during the past year in the field. The room exploded with laughter as they all admitted to repeatedly engaging in that challenging discipline, in order to build redemptive friendships without denying their faith.

The early church had its struggles. In the context of cross-cultural challenges and subsequent analysis of beliefs, they developed a new understanding of the gospel message, and how to share it. Like the early church, until we are sure of our own faith, we risk chasing people away from the only source of salvation while we focus on securing our own.

Rules versus Principles

While the divine standard generates the contents of the top and bottom buckets, people should apply principles to organize the contents of their middle buckets. However, depending on circumstances, application of the same principle might lead to different behaviors. For instance, a general health principle may state that one should eat the best food available within his community that is affordable and practical. In New York City, that may be fresh fruits, grains and vegetables. In an impoverished Mexican semi-desert community, that may mean rice, beans, goat meat, milk, and cheese. Same principle — different result.

So what happens when people with strong beliefs take the health principle and apply it to their lives in New York City? After a while, their vegan diet may rise into their top buckets, and meat eating may sink into their bottom buckets. Once this happens, principles no longer guide their diet—rules do. Any deviation must now bring repercussions. New rules that take the place of principles are easily passed on to the next generation. The reasons why an individual chooses not to eat certain foods can turn into the reasons why no one should eat them. And the reasons why an individual chooses to eat certain foods soon become the reasons why everyone must eat them.

Once this shift has taken place in people's worldview, their consciences takes over. Anytime they deviate from the rule, guilt kicks in. Place such people in an environment where a vegan diet is totally impractical, and a crisis emerges. The health principle can be applied beneficially in any context; the health laws cannot. In a new context, a health law may actually compromise the very health it was designed to protect.

Middle bucket issues are by no means restricted to health. Missionaries and those who witness may become confused over middle-bucket issues which can easily misrepresent God and the whole plan of salvation. Their picture of Christianity can seem painfully irrelevant to the people they try to reach. The picture they paint of God's character may be tainted.

Legalism can be found in all religions. Hindus may feel guilty when they don't follow Hindu tradition. So may Buddhists, when they deviate from their traditions. The same is true of confused Christians. Because of this, Christ could prophesy that the day would come when men would kill His faithful servants and think they were serving God, (John 16:1-3). A confused conscience can lead us astray.

Does this mean we should throw away all of our standards for fear of making a mistake? No. But we do need to be careful not to take biblical principles intended to help us grow to maturity over the course of a lifetime, and turn them into laws intended to "shape people up" right now.

The middle bucket is a classroom of grace, allowing people the time and space they need to learn how to make good choices, in a variety of circumstances. By inappropriately turning its principles into laws, we deny people opportunities to develop spiritual maturity.

There is a second dangerous twist to the bucket-shifting trap. People in many of the world's religions have highly developed top and bottom buckets overflowing with requirements and restrictions. Salvation for them is based on works. If they don't have much in their middle buckets, when the missionary shares the plan of salvation, they are likely to interpret and apply Christianity in the same legalistic way. Because of this, well-meaning churches have been known to discipline or censure leaders for singing one too many songs during song service, forgetting to pray at the right time during communion, or telling two nature stories instead of one, like the church's youth manual suggests. With an empty middle bucket, any deviation from the outlined order of service becomes a sin. The result is a system of Christianity based entirely on works and rituals.

The opposite can happen when the prevailing culture has nearly nothing in the top and bottom buckets. New believers may focus on grace to the point that they feel no motivation to mature spiritually. Their behavior is not motivated by their knowledge of God.

What people need is a relationship with God that is based on the plan of salvation. Once they understand the truly non-negotiable areas of God's will, they can appropriately apply middle-bucket principles without turning them into laws.

While gospel workers need to introduce new believers to the purpose and content of all three buckets, they also need to be aware of the influence of new believer's former bucket arrangements, and the power of a world view to falsify the voice of the Holy Spirit.

So to summarize, a critical goal for missionaries and gospel workers should be to organize our buckets in such a way that our relationship with God is never compromised, and yet we, like Paul, can become all things to all people, in order to bring salvation to as many as possible, (1 Cor. 9:19-23).

A second goal, no less important than the first, should be to understand the bucket hierarchy of other people and cultures, and to know how to appropriately present the non-negotiable salvation issues that God has stipulated should belong in the top or bottom buckets. These are eternal and do not change with culture or circumstance.

Finally, gospel workers need to know what to do with the contents of the middle bucket. Because it contains things that are neither prohibited nor required, one might think the middle bucket needs no further thought. I disagree. Although the middle bucket is not ruled by law, it should be guided by principle. Our expectations of middle-bucket behavior should be governed by maturity, physical and mental capacity, context, and knowledge.

Three buckets. Something to think about.

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Dale Goodson has worked a cross-cultural missionary, and as a missionary and gospel worker trainer for many years. He currently teaches in the training department of Adventist Frontier Missions. This article is composed of two shorter articles that appeared in Adventist Frontiers magazine. This article is composed of two shorter articles which first appeared in Adventist Frontiers magazine