Mike Wittmer

What I think. What I know. What I think I know.

  • Working for Jesus

    I wrote an essay on work for The High Calling, which you can read here. The High Calling turns out encouraging and theologically informed essays on work every week. I was turned onto it by Bob Robinson, who happens to live in my hometown village of Hartville, Ohio. It’s unusual to find someone who has…

  • just stop it

    Tomorrow night Nik Wallenda is going to do it again. He’s going to walk a tightrope between two skyscrapers in Chicago, and just to make it exciting, he’s going to do it blindfolded. I couldn’t watch last summer when he walked across the Grand Canyon, and I won’t be watching this time. Even if he…

  • ceremony vs. reception

    TIME magazine has an interesting piece on the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission conference in Nashville. This paragraph caught my attention: “Russell Moore, president of the ERLC, offered a nuanced approach to the practical challenges of changing sexual ethics. Moore said he would not attend a gay friend’s wedding ceremony because that would involve participating…

  • gay is the new black

    I saw this telling exchange on Twitter yesterday. Sarah Pulliam Bailey ‏was reporting on the first national conference of the The Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, and she tweeted this:  “Standing ovation for the owner of Washington florist who declined to sell flowers to a gay couple.” Ryan T. Anderson ‏replied, “.@spulliam thats a terribly…

  • Reformation sale!

    Zondervan is putting several of their stellar books on sale for Reformation Day. For a limited time, you can get some ebooks for $2.99, which as Martin Luther would have told Johannes Tetzel, is pretty much $3. This deal includes “Heaven Is a Place on Earth” and “Don’t Stop Believing,” so to quote Luther again,…

  • hope

    I’ve been working on Sunday’s sermon on hope, and last night Calvin’s Institutes sparked an idea. He discusses the connection between faith, hope, and love (3.2.41-43). After sleeping on it, I wrote this for my sermon. There’s still time to change what needs fixing, if you spot something. There’s a reason why 1 Cor. 13:13…

  • coming home

    If you’re able to make it, consider attending the national meeting of The Gospel Coalition next April 13-15 in Orlando. The theme this year is one that strangely warms my heart, and I’m not even Wesleyan. The title is “Coming Home: New Heaven and New Earth.” The phrase “new heaven and new earth” raises an…

  • know your place

    We’re halfway through our Thursday Evening Bible Class on faith and doubt. If you’re free on Thursdays from 7:30 to 8:30, come on out to the seminary for a stimulating and practical discussion about what it means to believe in God. The first four weeks have examined objective doubts—how can I know that God exists,…

  • profane ministry

    This afternoon my Calvin class discussed Calvin’s application of the third command. In the Institutes II.8.22, Calvin says that not taking the Lord’s name in vain means, among other things, “we should not rashly or perversely abuse his Holy Word and worshipful mysteries either for the sake of our own ambition, or greed, or amusement….”…

  • rethinking hell

    I prepped for today’s class discussion on hell by reading a new book, Rethinking Hell, which I kindly received from one of the editors. The book is a collection of evangelical authors arguing for conditional immortality—often referred to as annihilationism—which says that the damned in hell do not suffer forever but mercifully die and go…