A pastor-created and field-tested, easily adaptable method for planning a comprehensive preaching ministry.

Pastors face a perennial challenge in deciding how to treat special days in the calendar. For days marked in the church year, the challenge is how to speak a fresh word about a familiar theme or story. For days marked in the civil calendar, the challenge is to discern within secular celebrations appropriate connections with the Christian gospel. In Preaching the Calendar, masterful preacher J. Ellsworth Kalas discusses the importance of embracing holidays and special days as occasions when sermons can enlarge and deepen spiritual yearnings. His words of wisdom demonstrate how this type of preaching can be done well and serve as valuable sources of stories and sermon illustrations for pastors eager to help people find new and renewed relationships with God.

"How do I know that God is real? Is the Bible really the Word of God, or is it just an ancient book? Why are Christians so exclusive? Is there really only one way to heaven? All of these are tough questions, but in The God Questions, they are addressed head on with hard-hitting facts that tell the truth. The God Questions gives brief, simple, and easy to understand answers to the eight key questions everyone asks about Christianity. Divided in 40 short, readable chapters, this book will help you understand God and the universe He created.'"--Book cover

Planning and text selection are important ingredients in a preacher's work. "Saturday night specials" - sermons out of a frantic search for a scripture passage and possible message - are all to familiar with many. Lack of a systematic approach will exhaust the preacher and weaken one's pulpit ministry. This book can be a help to those who want to be faithful preachers rightly handling the word of God.

What’s a preacher to do with holidays? Some seem to almost preach themselves, especially those in the church calendar. Others are more secular or may seem to conflict with the church calendar. Some are even controversial and require a gentle, but firm touch of the preacher’s art. William Powell Tuck is a master preacher and in this book he demonstrates his sensitivity to the issues raised by some of the holidays and special days of the year along with his grounding in biblical studies, theology, and homiletics. You can read these sermons as essays if you want, but they are not light devotionals. They are serious efforts to grapple honestly with issues and to guide a church community in learning and growing as they celebrate their lives, their families, and their communities. For the preacher, these sermons can serve as models for how to approach these days, as well as providing insight into the various issues involved.