Thank you for a wonderful year of Theology

Merry Christmas, and a blessed and happy New Year!

1/ The Word with Us | John 1:14

And the Word became flesh
   and dwelt among us,
      and we have seen his glory,
   glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. 

2/ A Bible Reading Plan

When I was a teenager I made something like a vow to read at least one word of the Bible every day. I’m sure there have been days when I have failed, but this effort has been a real blessing. It keeps my Bible open.

A few years ago I put together a simple Bible reading plan. It consists of three chapters a day: one from the Old Testament, one Psalm, and one chapter from the New Testament. The Old Testament books are reordered to put the prophets close to the appropriate history books, and the New Testament is reordered: Gospel, Paul, General Epistles. If you are thinking of adding a Bible reading/study plan in the New Year, this might be one to consider.

Click Here for the Bible Reading Plan

3/ What have been your Wednesday What-Not highlights?

I’d love to know what has been most helpful to you this year: links, articles, websites, videos, etc? Let me know in the comments.

4/ 2021 Year-in-review

God be praised for another year of the Lord’s mercy!

Thank you for being along for the ride, and for all the kind words, emails, notes, comments, and suggestions. And thank you for the generous support as well!

My goal is always to teach clearly and courageously the Scriptures and Lutheran teaching, to bring forth the joy in these truths, and to encourage you all toward (1) faithful participation in your local altar and (2) reading old theology books. What fun!

To that end, here is what this year has looked like:

Worldwide Bible Study

• We spent 22 weeks studying the person and work of the Holy Spirit.

• Recently we began studying the Life of Jacob with Martin Luther.

• Thanks to everyone who has joined us live. We always have a great conversation when the recording is finished. Visit www.wolfmueller.co/bible for all the old episodes, and the very simple link to join us live on Wednesday mornings.

YouTube

• We started a series of videos called Conversations, long-format videos offering a deep dive into various theological topics. I’ve interviewed John Kleinig, Jeff Schwartz, John Pless, and had a number of fantastic conversations with Dr. Gregory Schulz, including:

  • The Limits of Science

  • Science and Sacred Texts

  • Humans are Sufferer (or: Our Failure to Lament)

  • Architects of the Culture of Death

  • Is the world falling apart because the church forgot to lament?

  • Suffering toward God

  • Success vs Suffering, QnA with Dr. Schulz

  • Science ought not see the person

  • If you haven’t listened to any of these conversations, you should give them a try. I’ve had a lot of great feedback on these.

• We published 134 videos this year, and had 765.3K views, 125.2K watch hours, and 5.8K YouTube theologians subscribed to the channel. Cool!

Podcasting/Radio

• Table Talk Radio, somehow, made it another year!

• Issues, Etc. We had a lot of great conversations on Issues, Etc., including a series on “What I wish my non-Lutheran family knew about…” (We heard a lot of good feedback on the Lord’s Supper, Closed Communion, and Worship.)

  • We started a new monthly series with Pr. Kachelmeier answering listener questions about the Bible.

  • It was great to speak about hope at the Issues conference this summer, and I’m looking forward to presenting about peace at next year’s conference.

• What-Not, the Podcast started this year as a place to answer some of the theology questions you send to me. I’ll occasionally add a sermon, or some audio from YouTube, etc. If you like podcasts, you might want to subscribe. I hope to do a bit more with this podcast this year.

Conferences/Trips/Etc.

• We had to cancel a number of things this year, including trips to Germany and Chile, but I was able to get to the International Lutheran Deaf Association conference in Chicago, a Doxology Respite Retreat in Missouri, and a handful of other conferences.

• Higher Things came to Austin. I made a few video shorts on the parable for Higher Things, and wrote a chapter for a forth-coming book (on the Lutheran view of the last things).

• We had a young adult retreat in October (and I put together a few lectures on being Culturally Woke vs. Biblically Enlightened). This was our second annual conference, and we’re looking forward to next October…

• St Paul hosted a continuing education class in August. Pr Pless was teaching on Martin Luther’s Letters of Spiritual Care. We hope this will be an annual conference as well.

Writing

• “For the Dead” was an article in the Lutheran Witness.

• I also contributed a chapter for a Higher Things book for men considering the holy ministry and an essay for the upcoming Annotated Large Catechism.

• I’m itching to do a little more writing this next year, Lord willing.

2022

Lord willing, there are a lot of wonderful things planned for this next year.

We will host a conference January 21-22 for the March for Life here in Austin. Ya’ll come. We’ll have a continuing Education Class this summer, and a Young Adult/Campus retreat in October. I’m hoping to visit Denmark in February for the Luther Study Days, and Italy and Germany this Summer for the Passion Play.

I’m really excited to keep the Worldwide Bible Class going, and hope to experiment with a few other forms of video and podcast teaching. I’ve also got this wild idea about publishing some essays from Luther with visual footnotes (Grappling with the Text style). We’ll see how that goes.

When you are in Austin, please be sure to visit St Paul Lutheran Church.

Thanks for all the support. (You can click here to help support all the different projects.)

Keep in touch, and may the Lord grant us all a year rejoicing in His joy and peace.

Merry Christmas!

Pastor Wolfmueller