Author Archives: salooper57

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About salooper57

Husband, father, pastor, follower. I am a disciple of Jesus, learning how to do life from him. I read, write, walk, play a little guitar, enjoy my family.

Faith, and the Complexities of Being Human

Posted on January 21, 2017 by salooper57

According to the Pew Research Center, while “the vast majority of Americans still believe in God … there are strong signs that many are less certain about this belief than in years past.” Pew’s research is dependent upon what is … Continue reading →

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The Gap Between the Self We Imagine and the Self We Are

Posted on January 19, 2017 by salooper57

There is more to any person than he or she realizes. As C. S. Lewis put it in the sermon he titled, “The Weight of Glory”: “You have never talked to a mere mortal…it is immortals whom we joke with, … Continue reading →

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Holy Communion

Posted on January 10, 2017 by salooper57

What happens at the Communion Table is rich and full of mystery. As people try to sort through the various explanations – Transubstantiation, Consubstantiation, Real Presence, Zwingli Memorialism, and more – they sometimes miss a simple but powerful truth: the … Continue reading →

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Life Is the Result of a Long Choosing

Posted on January 7, 2017 by salooper57

It used to be common to hear a new convert described as someone who had “got religion.” Occasionally one hears that phrase still. It makes religion sound like a disease. One gets religion like one gets a cold or a … Continue reading →

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Is it Time for a New Morality?

Posted on December 31, 2016 by salooper57

Attitudes about the morality or immorality of various lifestyle choices are in constant flux. It may be that opinions about what is morally acceptable have always been fluid, but the current of change is moving faster today than ever before. … Continue reading →

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The Day That Christmas Died

Posted on December 24, 2016 by salooper57

The so-called “War on Christmas” has been prosecuted for the past few years around the United States. It started with community leaders removing nativity scenes from town squares because of complaints from non-Christians, mostly atheists. Then came Walmart’s notorious instruction … Continue reading →

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Need Help Getting Ready for Christmas?

Posted on December 21, 2016 by salooper57

If you’re been wrapping presents but haven’t really wrapped your head around Christmas yet, you might want to listen to the Christmas sermons from Decembers 4 (The Story Behind the Story), December 11 (The Man from Heaven) and December 18 … Continue reading →

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A Christmas Case of Mistaken Identity

Posted on December 17, 2016 by salooper57

You either love Christmas or you hate it, or you do both at different times. The playwright George Bernard Shaw clearly hated it. He wrote, “Christmas is forced upon a reluctant and disgusted nation by the shopkeepers and the press; … Continue reading →

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“Red Letter Christianity” and the Bible

Posted on December 10, 2016 by salooper57

Tony Campolo and Shane Claiborne recently published an op-ed piece in the New York Times titled, “The Evangelicalism of Old White Men Is Dead.” They write that evangelicalism (or at least its reputation) is a “casualty” of the recent presidential … Continue reading →

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An American Brand of DIY Spirituality

Posted on December 3, 2016 by salooper57

For decades pollsters consistently reported that 40 percent of Americans were in church on any given Sunday. But a long-term count of actual attendance in real churches suggests that good Christian people weren’t telling pollsters the truth, and actual church … Continue reading →

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