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MarkTheHerald.com ✦ The Herald Dispatch ✦ Here's a gift-giving challenge that doesn't get talked about enough: What do you give the person whose entire professional and personal life is oriented around the sacred? Whose bookshelves are already full? Who has heard every sermon illustration, read every devotional, and processed the Christmas story through more lenses than most people encounter in a lifetime? What do you give your pastor for Christmas? I've thought about thi

MarkTheHerald.com ✦ The Herald Dispatch ✦ Every Christmas, somewhere between the first week of December and the final chord of a Christmas Eve service, most of us sing "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing" without thinking too hard about where it came from. We know it's old. We know it's a classic. We know it involves angels, a newborn King, and a melody that manages to feel simultaneously triumphant and tender. What most of us don't know is that the carol we sing today has been

MarkTheHerald.com ✦ The Herald Dispatch ✦ I'm going to tell you something about Advent that took me a long time to admit out loud: Most Advent devotionals are designed to be abandoned by December 7th. Not intentionally. The authors mean well. But there's a structural problem baked into most Advent resources: they ask you to do something every single day for 24 or 25 days straight. In December. That month when your calendar is simultaneously overflowing with school program

MarkTheHerald.com ✦ The Herald Dispatch ✦ Let me tell you what I've heard from pastors who've used MARK! The Herald Angel with their congregations. I've heard from a pastor in the Midwest who built his four-week Advent sermon series around the four themes of the book — Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love — and used Mark's journey as the narrative thread connecting each message. He told me that by Christmas Eve, his congregation felt like they knew Mark personally, which meant the

MarkTheHerald.com ✦ The Herald Dispatch ✦ The first time I used the phrase "fair dinkum" in a piece of writing, I paused and asked myself if I was really doing this. I'm a guy from the Midwest. Lawrence, Kansas, to be exact. Not exactly the outback. My exposure to Australian slang is limited to exactly what you'd expect: a handful of films, a few conversations, and an inexplicable fondness for a turn of phrase that has absolutely no business being in a Christmas story set

MarkTheHerald.com ✦ The Herald Dispatch ✦ Let me tell you about the Christmas traditions in my family that have actually stuck — and the ones that didn't. The ones that didn't stick: the elaborate coordinated Christmas Eve dinner I attempted exactly once before accepting that takeout pizza is also a form of grace. The advent calendar I bought with great intention on December 1st and forgot to fill past December 8th. The ones that stuck: reading a Christmas story aloud o

MarkTheHerald.com ✦ The Herald Dispatch ✦ There is a moment on Christmas Eve — usually somewhere between the wrapping paper anticipation and the late-night church service — when the house gets quiet enough to gather everyone together. If you're anything like my family, that moment is sacred. My wife Amy and I have four kids. And from the time they were small enough to sit still in pajamas with damp hair from the bath, reading Christmas stories aloud together has been one

MarkTheHerald.com ✦ The Herald Dispatch ✦ I have a confession to make. I've been singing "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing" since I was old enough to stand in a church pew and hold a hymnal with both hands. I sang it in children's programs, in Christmas Eve services, in shopping malls when Muzak was still a thing. I've sung it probably hundreds of times over the course of my life. And it took me until my forties to stop at the second word. Herald. Not heavenly. Not happy. Not

MarkTheHerald.com ✦ The Herald Dispatch ✦ When I was in the final stages of writing MARK! The Herald Angel — when the story was essentially done and I was reading it through for the last time before releasing it to the first readers — I asked myself a question that I think every writer should ask before they let a manuscript go: What do I want the person who finishes this book to feel? Not think. Not know. Feel. Because thinking and knowing are good and important, but the

MarkTheHerald.com ✦ The Herald Dispatch ✦ I want to talk about something that most authors know and very few say plainly, because it feels a little awkward to say it plainly. Amazon reviews are the single most important factor in whether a book reaches readers who don't already know the author. Not the writing quality. Not the cover design. Not the marketing budget or the social media presence or the press coverage or even the word-of-mouth recommendation — though all of

MarkTheHerald.com ✦ The Herald Dispatch ✦ I want to talk directly to the pastors and church leaders reading this, because this is a message that has a very specific and limited window of usefulness. The churches that have the most meaningful, most unified, most well-executed Advent seasons are the ones that made their key decisions in August. Not October. Not November. August. I know this because I've been in and around church ministry for decades, and the pattern is cons

MarkTheHerald.com ✦ The Herald Dispatch ✦ A couple years ago, I handed something I'd spent years making to the first readers who weren't my family. I remember the specific feeling of that. The slight nausea. The particular vulnerability of having worked on something long enough and carefully enough that it had become genuinely personal — and then releasing it into the world where other people would have opinions about it. Looking back, I want to share what I've learned in

MarkTheHerald.com ✦ The Herald Dispatch ✦ There is a pastoral challenge that almost nobody talks about directly, but that almost every pastor faces in December: The people in your congregation — the ones who have been coming to Christmas Eve services for thirty years, the ones who can recite Luke 2 from memory, the ones who have heard the nativity preached from every angle available to a human preacher — have developed a kind of protective familiarity with the story. They

MarkTheHerald.com ✦ The Herald Dispatch ✦ Let me make the case that you should read a Christmas book this summer. I know how that sounds. I am aware that the Christmas music doesn't start until at least November 1st and that the retail decorations, while arriving earlier every year, have not quite crept all the way back to July. I am not suggesting you put up a tree or start wrapping gifts or do anything that would alarm your neighbors. I am suggesting that July, specific

MarkTheHerald.com ✦ The Herald Dispatch ✦ I spent years in the world of animated children's content, and it taught me something that I find myself returning to constantly as I think about the future of MARK! The Herald Angel: the difference between content that families watch once and content that families return to every year for the rest of their lives. That difference is not production quality. It's not budget. It's not even the sophistication of the animation. It's wh

MarkTheHerald.com ✦ The Herald Dispatch ✦ I want to tell you about the Christmas I almost ruined by trying too hard. It was a few years into having four kids, which means it was the season when I was theoretically most experienced at Christmas parenting and practically most in danger of overcomplicating it. I had ideas. I had a list. I had ambitious plans for traditions and experiences and meaningful moments that would be remembered forever. By December 20th, I was exhaus

MarkTheHerald.com ✦ The Herald Dispatch ✦ Mark the Herald Angel does not want to go to Earth. He makes this abundantly clear on the bus ride home from the Eternal Herald, after his editor dismisses his story and hands him an itinerary with a single word on it: Earth. He mutters about it. He slumps in his seat. He crosses his little arms. He is, in every particular, a being who has been asked to do something he did not sign up for and does not want to do. He is, in other w

MarkTheHerald.com ✦ The Herald Dispatch ✦ I've been on both sides of this conversation — the ministry leader trying to build a meaningful Advent event, and the author being invited to be part of one. Both perspectives have taught me things that I think are worth sharing. The good news first: booking a Christian author for your church Advent event is more accessible than most ministry leaders assume. Most Christian authors in the independent and mid-list space are actively

MarkTheHerald.com ✦ The Herald Dispatch ✦ I know what you're thinking. It's June. The Christmas music isn't even in the stores yet. The last thing you want to do is think about December. And you're right — mostly. I'm not here to suggest you start shopping or decorating or planning your Christmas Eve menu. That would be absurd, and I have more respect for your summer than that. But here's something I've observed in years of ministry and family life: the families who have

MarkTheHerald.com ✦ The Herald Dispatch ✦ Before MARK! The Herald Angel, I spent years working in animated children's content. Specifically, I was part of the writing and development team for Auto-B-Good — a series that went on to win five Emmy Awards and find its way into the homes and hearts of families across the country. It was, in many ways, the best education in family storytelling I could have received. Not a formal education — though I respect those tremendously —