Synopsis: Although one often hears of the need to preach "the whole counsel of God," few resources have seriously and specifically attempted to assist the preacher and planner of worship to do just that--until now. Year D makes the case for the need and promise of supplementing the Revised Common Lectionary with a fourth year of lections and arranges many previously excluded biblical texts in an orderly, one-year preaching plan. It fills a need widely voiced by preachers that the lectionary effectively limits and censors the functional canon of Scripture. Destined to serve as a staple source of significant revitalization in mainline preaching and worship, Year D banks on the agency of Word and Spirit to renew the church as few practical proposals have done in the last twenty years, lending new focus and impetus for exploring the Bible's forgotten riches. A timely and urgently needed "return to the sources," Year D represents a fresh appropriation of neglected and marginalized texts for preaching, worship, education, and devotion, and thus constitutes a substantive, scriptural attempt to address what Walter Brueggemann has called "the current preaching emergency." Endorsements: "Slemmons, a creative and careful scholar, spent years researching, drawing up, collegially testing, and critically assessing Year D, an every fourth-year supplement to the Revised Common Lectionary that encourages preachers to seek for themselves and their congregants the 'whole counsel of God.' Well written and theologically perspicacious, Year D is a superb practical achievement." --Charles Louis Bartow, Egner Professor Emeritus of Speech Communication in Ministry, Princeton Theological Seminary "Slemmons urges preachers to break out of the lectionary and bring to the pulpit difficult texts the Revised Common Lectionary studiously muffles--texts of judgment and penitence, Gospel conflict stories, apocalyptic material, and household codes. Further, with a disciplined Reformed vision and a pastor's longing for the church's renewal, Slemmons engages readers in a stimulating project of rethinking preaching and liturgy as both judgment and grace." --Sally A. Brown, Elizabeth M. Engle Associate Professor of Preaching and Worship, Princeton Theological Seminary "One does not have to agree that 'the primary and most valid objection to the RCL . . . is] its incompleteness, ' to yet assert that Slemmons's Year D is a remarkable piece of work . . . Slemmons's work with untapped psalms is particularly helpful, and his demand that we hear the prophets is crucial. This document feels like a lifetime commitment. Year D will stimulate a pastor's work and deepen its result." --Eugene Lowry, William K. McElvaney Professor Emeritus of Preaching, Saint Paul School of Theology Author Biography: Timothy Matthew Slemmons is Assistant Professor of Homiletics and Worship at the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary. He is author of Groans of the Spirit: Homiletical Dialectics in an Age of Confusion (2010).

What has faith to do with esthetics? What role has poetry in devotion and worship? These poems, or devotional responses to the Scriptures (lectionary passages) that inspired them, represent one preacher's oblation, an artless offering of adoration, confession, wonderment, and praise. Neither esthetic creation nor ecclesial proclamation, at times homely, at others sublime, these poems sojourn in hope toward "a better country, that is, a heavenly one."

About the Contributor(s): Timothy Matthew Slemmons is Assistant Professor of Homiletics and Worship at the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary. He is the author of Groans of the Spirit: Homiletical Dialectics in an Age of Confusion (2010) and Year D: A Quadrennial Supplement to the Revised Common Lectionary (2012).

About the Contributor(s): Timothy Matthew Slemmons is Assistant Professor of Homiletics and Worship at the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary. He is the author of Groans of the Spirit: Homiletical Dialectics in an Age of Confusion (2010) and Year D: A Quadrennial Supplement to the Revised Common Lectionary (2012).

A pensive pastor finds his trip to the zoo transformed at Christmas when the inspired wisdom of the animals is revealed, and an ancient promise of God is fulfilled, in a tale told by one phenomenal llama. What did the llamas have to do with the first Christmas? Of all the animals, theirs was the most important, and the most mysterious, role of all

Description: Liturgical Elements for Reformed Worship is a series of four liturgical resources: three consisting of liturgical elements for Years A, B, and C of the Revised Common Lectionary, and a fourth, the rst such resource to support the implementation of Year D: A Quadrennial Supplement to the Revised Common Lectionary (Cascade Books). Each volume consists of a Call to Worship, Opening Prayer, Call to Confession, Prayer of Confession, and Declaration of Forgiveness, with Years A-C including additional elements (A Prayer in Preparation for Worship, The Offering, Prayer of Dedication, and a Blessing) suitable for Presbyterian, Reformed, and other Protestant worship. Each of these practical volumes is intended for use by pastors, liturgists, and other planners and leaders of worship. Endorsements: ""Timothy Slemmons has done us all a great favor with these winsome and moving resources for every Sunday of Year B. Every prayer and response grows from his own close and reverent meditation on the varied texts of the lectionary. Whether used as is or adapted to local contexts, they will push us all to a richer life of public worship."" --Gary Neal Hansen, Associate Professor of Church History, University of Dubuque Theological Seminary ""How wonderful that God's people should have words by which to hear and respond to the living Word. Fresh, varied, rich in imagery, the liturgy offered here is also deeply familiar as it articulates truth in the relationship between God and his people. Timothy Slemmons has loosened our tongues with honest, biblical, joyful language with which to worship the Lord. Our worshiping community will be eager to find their voice in this liturgy."" --Beth McCaw, Pastor to Students, University of Dubuque Theological Seminary ""Pastors looking to shape all the elements of worship into one, integrated whole need to look no further than Slemmons's creative and utterly faithful volume. Written with beauty, yet also with an informality suitable as a guide for contemporary worship, this is a great resource for anyone approaching the relentless task and terrific privilege of planning weekly worship."" --Charles B. Hardwick, Director of Theology, Worship, and Education, Presbyterian Church (USA) About the Contributor(s): Timothy Matthew Slemmons is Assistant Professor of Homiletics and Worship at the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary. He is author of Groans of the Spirit: Homiletical Dialectics in an Age of Confusion (2010).

Description: Groans of the Spirit constitutes a rousing challenge to mainline churches and their practice of preaching. In this inventive work, Timothy Slemmons calls preachers beyond the formalism of the New Homiletic, and beyond the ethical proposals that have arisen in the frustrated struggle to transcend it, and toward what the author calls a ""penitential"" (reformed) homiletic. This new homiletical proposal is distinctive in that it faithfully adheres to the Christological content of preaching, finds its inspiration in the promise of the real presence of Christ, and trusts in the ministry of the Holy Spirit, from whom alone the power for the renewal of the mainline church shall come. This book includes a thorough reconsideration of the ""infinite qualitative difference"" between God and humanity in Barth's thought, an important critique of Gadamer's reception of Kierkegaard's concept of contemporaneity, an undelivered lecture on the content of preaching, and two sermons that illustrate Slemmons's important proposals. Groans of the Spirit is a long-considered, calculated, and overdue break with conventional hermeneutics that proposes a vital homiletical pneumatology, which draws the art of the sermon out of the ghetto of mere rhetoric and presents it as it truly is: as theological reflection of the first order, the church's primary language of faith. Endorsements: ""Tim Slemmons has written a 'thick, ' passionate study of the fruitful grounding for preaching. His advocacy pivots on the verdict of Isaiah that 'my ways are not our ways.' With appeal to Barth and Kierkegaard (and a glance at Gadamer), he lines out the radical, defining 'infinite qualitative difference between the divine and the human, between eternity and temporality' that permits the good news from 'there' to 'here.' Before he finishes, Slemmons offers two sermons exemplifying his bold theology in bold practice. Readers will, as a result of reading, preach differently and/or listen differently."" --Walter Brueggemann Columbia Theological Seminary ""Tim Slemmons argues passionately that the most important issues in preaching are theological. What is the significance for preaching of Isaiah's claim that God's ways are not our ways or of the New Testament's claim that Jesus Christ draws all people to himself but is also a narrow gate? Not just preachers, but all those concerned about faithful preaching will find much to ponder in these splendid essays."" --George W. Stroup Columbia Theological Seminary About the Contributor(s): Timothy Matthew Slemmons is Assistant Professor of Homiletics and Worship at the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary. His sermons, essays, and poems have appeared in various publications.