CHECK YOUR OWN BUCKETS
In the last couple of weeks, an open letter went up online addressed to Adam Hamilton. By Friday it had more than 500 signatures from pastors and church leaders. It called him to repent.
Hamilton is the founding pastor of the Church of the Resurrection in Leawood, Kansas, the largest United Methodist congregation in the country. He’s written more than 30 books. He’s in the headlines right now because he’s running for the U.S. Senate.
So let me be clear up front. This post isn’t about that race. We don’t endorse or oppose candidates, and we’re not going to tell you how to vote. This is about something that will outlast any election: what a shepherd has taught his sheep about Jesus, about the Bible, and about the people God made. He preached those things long before he ever ran for office. They’d be just as wrong if he never had.
WHAT He’s Taught
You deserve facts, not a hit piece. So here they are.
On salvation. In a January 2022 sermon titled “Who Goes to Heaven? Who Goes to Hell?”, Hamilton told his church he believes God can apply the saving work of Jesus to people who never put their faith in Him, based on what God sees in their hearts. About people of other religions, he said, “I don’t fear that those folks will spend eternity in Hell.”
On the Bible. In his 2014 book Making Sense of the Bible, he sorted Scripture into “buckets.” Some passages reflect God’s timeless will. Some only reflect the culture they were written in. A few, he argued, never reflected God’s heart at all. He put the passages on same-sex relationships in the cultural bucket, saying they don’t describe God’s timeless will for humanity.
On marriage and life. He celebrated when the United Methodist Church removed language calling homosexual practice incompatible with Christian teaching. And he has publicly supported legal access to abortion.
Credit where it’s due. In that same sermon, Hamilton told Christians to love their Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, atheist and agnostic neighbors. He’s right. Jesus commands it. But love that won’t tell a man the truth about where he’s headed isn’t love. It’s just being polite on the way to the cliff.
What SCRIPTURE SAYS
Hamilton built his case on 1 Timothy 2, where Paul writes that God “desires all people to be saved.” That’s true, and it’s beautiful. But finish the sentence: God wants all people to be saved “and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” Then read the very next verse: “For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Timothy 2:5).
The verse he used to open the door wider than Jesus did points straight back to Jesus.
And Jesus didn’t leave this one up for debate:
“I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
Here’s the hard part. That verse was read aloud in the very same worship service, before that sermon was preached.
Then there are the buckets. The problem with buckets is that somebody has to decide what goes in which one. And somehow, the passages that land in the “doesn’t apply anymore” bucket are always the ones our culture already threw out. That isn’t interpretation. That’s editing.
Paul didn’t give us that option:
“All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness...”
All of it. Not just the parts that poll well. When Jesus was asked about marriage, He didn’t reach for a bucket. He went back to Genesis: male and female, one man holding fast to one wife (Matthew 19:4–6).
Proverbs says, “Do not move the ancient landmark that your fathers have set” (Proverbs 22:28). In Israel, moving a boundary stone was how you stole your neighbor’s land while he slept. Moving the boundaries of God’s Word steals something worse. It robs the people who trusted you to tell them where the edge was.
The BUCKETS WE KEEP
Now the uncomfortable part.
It’s easy to read this, shake your head at a pastor in Kansas, and feel pretty good about yourself. Don’t.
Most of us would never write a book saying parts of the Bible don’t apply. We just live like it. We’ve got our own buckets:
The verse about lust goes in “nobody’s perfect.”
The one about anger goes in “that’s just how I’m wired.”
Loving your wife the way Christ loved the church goes in “she doesn’t make it easy.”
Generosity goes in “when things settle down.”
Church goes in “I can worship God on the lake.”
Same move. Smaller stage.
His buckets cost him in front of thousands. Ours cost us at the kitchen table, in front of the people watching us closest. Your kids are learning which parts of the Bible their dad actually believes. They don’t learn it from what you say. They learn it from which parts you obey.
Here’s the good news. The cross covers bucket-builders too. The way back isn’t trying harder. It’s repentance: agreeing with God about what He already said, and dragging it back into the light.
And pray for Adam Hamilton. I mean that, and not as a jab. Ask God to do for him what He’s done for you: open his eyes to the whole of His Word. Nobody is past the reach of that.
FIELD WORK
Find the one passage you’ve been keeping in a bucket. You already know which one. Read it out loud, once a day, every day this week. Then text one brother: “This is the verse I’ve been dodging.” Give him permission to ask you about it on Sunday.
If you’re not sure your own church teaches the whole counsel of God, start with our Near You map. Every church on it has been personally vetted, and they preach Scripture, not opinion.
Stand firm. Not alone.
— Brian