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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...

How can anything be ordinary if we find the glory of God there?

Whatever might be said of life's most thrilling or transformative moments, most of our time is spent in ordinary things. We spend a third of our lives sleeping. In our adult lives, perhaps a quarter to a third of each week is spent at work. And then there's more of the common stuff: eating, waiting in line, bathing, getting dressed, and watching TV. So it is that our seventy, eighty, or ninety years go by in common ways, and we have no idea where they've gone.

Is there glory in any of this? Where is the...

In this eight-week study, homiletics professor and pastor J. Ellsworth Kalas approaches Genesis as a very personal and almost intimate book. Instead of viewing it as an academic study or as a puzzle to be solved, the author reads Genesis in a very personal, up-close way. Easy-to-follow, step-by-step suggestions for leading a group are provided, as well as questions to facilitate class discussion.

Immersion, inspired by a fresh translation--the Common English...

Using his method of approaching Bible passages from an unusual angle or a unique starting point, J. Ellsworth Kalas presents new insight into the beatitudes, Jesus' blessings from the Sermon on the Mount.

When we start examining the beatitudes we realize that in Jesus' view, happiness is not something we get by pursuing it; indeed, almost the contrary. We are told that we will be happy--or blessed, if you prefer--in what appears to be the near antithesis of happiness. If we choose to live by the beatitudes, we make a declaration of dependence. We put ourselves into...

In this book popular author J. Ellsworth Kalas reflects on the tenth year of his life, and how that one special year shaped him and his Christian faith in so many important ways. He shares stories about what it was like growing up in Iowa during the days of the Great Depression, and he remembers the people, places, and events of those times that continue to have an impact on his life to this day.

The author invites readers to think about their own life journeys and faith stories at the same time, and he explores several key...

Author J. Ellsworth Kalas believes there is much we can learn about our own walk with God from the people in the Bible. In this inspiring book he gives us meditations about sixteen men from Scripture, some of them well known, others not even named. Each of them, he tells us, can teach us something about ourselves and our relationship with God, "not only through their wisdom but sometimes through their errors and obvious humanness."

Study the whole Bible in a year with J. Ellsworth Kalas.

The Grand Sweep: 365 Days from Genesis through Revelation guides adults to read through the Bible in a year, reading three to four chapters daily. The Psalms and Proverbs are scattered throughout the reading as devotional elements. Because the plan moves through the Bible in biblical sequence, readers grasp the grand weep of the Scriptures--something missed in most Bible studies that take up only a certain book or section of the Bible. Also, daily readings are manageable; someone who is just beginning a serious...

For over 2,000 years, the church has looked to the apostle Paul and his letters in order to understand and follow the Christian life. Paul had his own compelling way of sharing Jesus' message with others, through the use of the metaphor--a brief, imaginative word picture that shows the same truth as a longer story.

From casting himself in the role of a slave, to presenting the Christian as a soldier or an actor, or even showing how we are vessels in the King's house, Paul's gallery of enriching, life-changing story pictures paints for us an indelible picture of the Christian...

J. Ellsworth Kalas, adapted from chapter 1:

There's an old hymn you may be familiar with that contains these words: -This is my Father's world, / And to my listening ears, / All nature sings, and round me rings / The music of the spheres. / This is my Father's world, / He shines in all that's fair; / In the rustling grass, I hear him pass, / He speaks to me everywhere- (Maltbie D. Babcock, -This Is My Father's World-; 1901). It is true still today that -all nature sings, - but it is increasingly difficult to catch the melody. Almost anywhere we go, nature's voice is now muted by...

Kalas highlights the wonders of the Bible for readers both familiar and unfamiliar with them, and shows how the Bible isn't just a collection of stories of the past, but rather it is our own continuing story of God and God's...

At the very beginning of our faith, the Christian population numbered a few thousand, measuring only one percent of the world population. Today a single mega-church can boast a comparable number, and together, Christians now number more than two billion people.

It all began with this little body of believers who knew a secret that needed to be shared. How did they do it? And what can we learn from them?

Join best-selling author and beloved pastor, J. Ellsworth Kalas, as he explores the book of Acts to uncover the ministry motivations of the first followers--ordinary people who...

In this follow-up to his book The Thirteen Apostles, popular author J. Ellsworth Kalas focuses on several women of great faith who were crucial, in ways both obvious and understated, to the story of the New Testament. Kalas looks into the life and times of eleven different women. With his signature style, Kalas examines the Scriptures to see what we can learn about these women and what we can learn from them, and how each woman fit into as well as shaped the New Testament story.

Chapters include:

• -Elizabeth: A Friend in Need-
• -Anna: She...