Mike Wittmer

Category: Theology

  • mile high

    I’m in Denver for the Gospel Rescue Missions national conference, and last night I missed the first half of the free-throw shooting contest in Orlando to attend the plenary talk by Shane Claiborne.  Shane was in the Christian news last year when my alma mater disinvited him (not his fault), so I was interested to…

  • trick or tweet

    That last post was what I would have tweeted if I had a Twitter account, but I don’t and so it’s not.  But in this issue of Time magazine there is an article about churches that encourage their members to tweet during the service (p. 51-52).  It may also be available on-line, but with my…

  • how it ends

    Here is a book review of A Case for Historic Premillennialism which I just finished for Calvin Seminary’s journal.  My review won’t be published until November or next April, so it looks like new media triumphs once again.  I teach at a premillennial, pretribulational seminary (we’re mostly progressive dispensationalists) and I wrote this review on non-dispensational…

  • adoption option

    Last weekend I watched Slumdog Millionaire on Saturday, learned about my church’s new ministry to orphans on Sunday, and began reading Russell Moore’s new book, Adopted for Life, on Monday.  So I’ve been thinking a lot about adoption this week.  Should Christian families seek to adopt a child?  Are we being selfish if we don’t?…

  • all in the family

    I did manage to take a break from grading exams last week to join Christians in Traverse City for the National Day of Prayer.  I had a wonderful time with the good people there, and visiting Traverse City in May reminded me just how beautiful Michigan is in the summer.  We easily have the best beaches and…

  • my favorite worship song

    Many of you know that the church needs new music that is theologically sound (i.e., non-Platonic) and musically interesting.  I first sang this song at Tullian Tchividian’s church’s men’s retreat last September.  I loved it then, and was reminded of it when we sang it again at the women’s retreat last week.  And now that…

  • not everything must change

    Last week I received a mass email from Brian McLaren regarding his “Everything Must Change” tour, in which he lamented that “many if not most Christians in the US remain focused on” their “intramural religious debates” rather than the global crises confronting our world.  He wrote:  “In one Q & A session after another since…

  • an interesting analogy

    Julie and I have spent the last four days in South Florida, speaking on Christian worldview at a women’s retreat (thanks, Tullian!), collecting sea shells on Sanibal Island, and watching drunk old people dance in the streets of Naples (are you sure this is the greatest generation?).  The weird part is that I haven’t missed any of…

  • my centered-bounded set

    I ran into it again last week, and I’m hearing it often enough now that I think it deserves a response.  Many leaders are claiming that we who believe in the importance of the inerrancy of Scripture, the virgin birth, and the need to believe in Jesus are suffering from bounded set thinking.  Our problem…

  • Machen on faith and knowledge

    This morning I was reading J. Gresham Machen’s book, What Is Faith? (1925), and I found his remarks on our need to know in order to believe especially relevant to a recurring discussion on this blog.  The fact that Machen’s old words could be addressed to any number of emergent leaders reminds me that our…