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CSS Publishing Company is a Christian publisher headquartered at 5450 North Dixie Highway, Lima, Ohio, that publishes liturgical and non-liturgical Sermon Books, Exegetical Resources, resources on the art of preaching, Worship Resources, Worship Preparation Tools, Pastoral Resources, Lectionary Resources, Advent and Christmas material, Lent and Easter resources, Christian Education Resources, Church Supplies and many other worship resources and Christian resources. CSS publishes Children’s Sermon Service Plus, Emphasis: A Preaching Journal For The Parish Pastor, and Gospel Grams (children’s activity bulletin). CSS also publishes a line of materials that follow the Lectionary, which is an agreement between many churches of the United Methodist Church (UMC), the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA), the Presbyterian Church, the United Church of Christ and many other mainline denominations, to split the entire Bible into a three-year cycle. A major resource used by many of these denominations is Lectionary Worship Aids. The current president of CSS Publishing Company is David Runk.

History

In October of 1968 the Children's Sermon Service was launched by a team of two Lutheran pastors (Wesley Runk and Tom Lentz) and a Christian education director who took care of mailing lists and performed office duties.

In January of 1970 CSS Publishing Company was officially founded. It's product line quickly expanded beyond children's sermons to many other offerings, yet the company retained the initials CSS from Children's Sermon Service as a nod to its heritage.

Today, CSS has a backlist of more than 1.000 titles. In addition to producing many new titles per year, CSS Publishing Company continues to provide the subscription resources for clergy that it started over 40 years ago, including Children’s Sermon Service Plus, Emphasis: A Preaching Journal For The Parish Pastor, and Gospel Grams (children’s activity bulletin), all in an online format.

In 1973 CSS began to publish lectionary-based sermons and worship resources. Programs in stewardship, evangelism, drama, youth ministry, and Christian education were added to the children's lessons, sermons, and worship resources.

The company built its own in-house printing operation, and became fully self-sufficient with the capability to handle diverse book projects from start to finish.

Fairway Press was created as a division of CSS in 1977 for self-publishing.

Academic Renewal Press was founded in 2001 with the purpose of reviving out-of-print works of religion, especially from the academic community.

In 2002, CSS launched it's online service, SermonSuite, a website designed to help pastors with sermon writing and worship preparation.

In 2008, CSS acquired FaithWalk Publishing.

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