In honor of one of my favorite people on earth, I give this Tuesday's list to Eric Clapton.

Julie and I actually saw him in concert in Madison Square Garden back in 1986.  In other words, shortly after the extinction of the dinosaurs and before the invention of the iPod.

The list comes primarily from his post-Yardbirds, post-Cream years.

5.  Tangled In Love.  A gentle track from a gentle album, 1986's Behind The Sun.  If you know anything about Clapton's love life, he knows what he's singing about here.



4.  Promises.  Can you believe a girl used this to break up with me when I was 17?  "I don't love you and you don't love me . . . we made a promise we'd always be friends."  Friends?!  No thanks. The next song in that relational melodrama?  "My Best Friend's Girl (And She Used To Be Mine)"  by The Cars.


3.  Bell Bottom Blues.  I don't like the blues.  Except these.



2.  The Core.  By virtue of its length, its horns, and its insistent riff, this one always reminds me of the Stone's Can't You Hear Me Knockin.'  Both tunes are terrific and terrifically under-rated.



1.  Layla.  Could #1 have been anything else?

Here's the video John Pavlovitz used to wind up his message yesterday.

The story actually began a month before the video was shot, when our Student Ministry went to Eastern North Carolina on its U-Haullelujah mission trip.

While ministering in the hamlet of Cameron, NC, Lauren Roberts, one of our student leaders, had a moving encounter with a woman whose life has been controlled by a fear of germs. 

So this is the story of their first meeting and a picture of their subsequent reunion.

In the summer of 1983, just before my senior year in college, I taught tennis at a place called Camp Of The Woods in Speculator, New York.

Two of us were hired for the tennis program that summer; my partner was a Hong Kong-born, pre-med student and varsity player at Wheaton College in northern Illinois.

So almost 30 years ago, a native of Texas attending college in New Jersey taught tennis in New York alongside a native of Hong Kong studying in Illinois.

Well, yesterday I accompanied my father-in-law to Presbyterian Hospital in Charlotte where my mother-in-law had a surgical procedure. 

When complications arose during that procedure and a second surgical team was called in, who led that second, almost heroic, team?

My Wheaton-educated tennis teaching partner from 1983.

He and his team performed superbly until late in the night and as of this morning my mother-in-law is doing well.

We've traveled different routes since a summer in the Adirnondacks but have landed in the same place: Charlotte, North Carolina.

Big God but small world.

During each session of our First Step Membership Exploration class, I conduct an experiment.

And while the people in the class change, the results of the experiment never do.

Here it is.  At the beginning of our third evening together, I ask the group, "what do Methodists believe?"

The answers are always some variation of the following:

They move their pastors a lot.

They have a method to their worship services.

I have no idea.

The churches pay money into a common pool.

They help people in need.

And they move their pastors a lot.

Do you notice the pattern?  The question asks what Methodists believe and the answers revolve around what Methodists do. 

So to the extent we are known, we are known more for our polity than for our doctrine.

What a shame. 

It's a shame because our polity is mostly a relic from mid-20th century organizational thinking with its high value on centralized authority and institutional preservation. 

It's a time bound system whose time has largely passed.

Our doctrine, however, is timeless.  And I would add, glorious. 

As Methodist Christians, we believe that . . .

• God gives people free will and genuinely wants all of us to come into a relationship with him.  As I Timothy 2:3-4 words it:  This is good and pleases God our Savior who wants all men to be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth.
• God pursues us long before we are aware of it.  When we show little or no interest in him, he shows unending interest in us.  That's why he puts people, situations, and events in our path, all designed to draw us back home to him.  We call it prevenient grace and we read about it in Luke 15.
• Once we come to faith, God grants us the assurance that salvation is indeed ours.  That's why Methodist believers can know that nothing in this life can diminish the joy that awaits them on the other side of death.  The doctrine of assurance balances the good word of I John 5:13 -- I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God that you may know you have eternal life -- with the warnings against "falling away" found throughout the book of Hebrews.
• God saves us not only from the penalty of sin in the next life (hell), but from the power of sin in this life.  In other words, Methodists thankfully believe that salvation is not merely a matter of getting our heavenly ticket punched; it is instead entering into a living relationship with Jesus Christ in which He makes us more like Himself during our remaining days on earth.  We are the original holiness denomination.

Perhaps if we keep teaching these truths at Good Shepherd, then one day the results of my Methodist experiment will surprise me.