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.
J. Ellsworth Kalas is the former president and a current professor of Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Kentucky. He served as pastor for many years in the Wisconsin and Ohio Conferences of the United Methodist Church and has published more than thirty-five books, including Grace in a Tree Stump: Old Testament Stories of God’s Love, published by Westminster John Knox Press.
