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 ✦ 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 ✦ There is a phenomenon that happens in churches when an entire congregation — across all ages, across all small groups, across the whole range of life stages and backgrounds that make up a healthy church community — reads the same book in the same week. I've seen it described different ways by different pastors. Some call it a sense of common language. Others call it a shared emotional temperature. One pastor I know described it as

MarkTheHerald.com ✦ The Herald Dispatch ✦ Here is something I've observed across decades of ministry experience, working in and alongside churches of all sizes and denominations: The Advent sermon series that lands hardest every year is almost never the most theologically sophisticated one. It's the one where the congregation feels, from the very first Sunday, that they are all inside the same story together. Theological depth matters enormously. I'm not suggesting otherw