Using MARK! The Herald Angel as an Advent Sermon Series Book for Your Church
✦ 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 sermon didn't have to do the work of establishing emotional stakes. It was already there.
I've heard from a children's ministry director who read a chapter aloud at the beginning of each Sunday service in Advent, then let the sermon engage with the same theme from a different angle. The kids were asking about Mark by week two — wanting to know what happened next, in the same way you want to know what's happening to a character in a serialized story.
I've heard from a small church pastor who ordered 50 copies for his congregation of 60 and handed them out on the first Sunday of Advent. He said it was the most unified his community had felt heading into Christmas in years.
Why a Novelette Works as a Sermon Series Anchor
Here's the case I'd make for using a narrative — rather than a traditional devotional or theological text — as the anchor for an Advent series:
Stories do something to people that arguments can't. Arguments inform. Stories transform.
When a congregation spends four weeks inhabiting the same narrative world — following the same character, sharing the same touchstones, laughing at the same moments — the sermons that engage with that narrative world have a resonance they wouldn't otherwise have.
Mark's story is built on the same biblical architecture as the Advent themes your sermons are already exploring. His reluctance to go to Earth mirrors our resistance to God's disrupting assignments. His encounter with Gabriel's reassurance parallels every "Do not be afraid" moment in the nativity. His defamiliarized experience of the birth of Christ is the entry point your congregation needs back into a story they've heard a hundred times.
Practical Implementation Options
Option 1: The Full Congregational Read. Order one copy per family. Distribute on the first Sunday of Advent. Preach from the same four themes with explicit connections to the week's chapters. When everyone in the room has read the same thing this week, the sermon is a conversation rather than a lecture.
Option 2: The Chapter-Per-Sunday Reading. Open each Advent service with a chapter read aloud — roughly ten to fifteen minutes per chapter. Read the chapter. Preach into the theme it surfaces. The story does much of the pastoral preparation work for you.
Option 3: The Christmas Eve Centerpiece. Save the book for Christmas Eve specifically. Reading Chapter 5 aloud from the pulpit — the stable scene, the song, the bowtie, the ornament — lands with enormous power in a candlelit Christmas Eve context.
Option 4: The Small Group Companion. The free Advent Devotional Guide is designed to function as a small group text. Twelve entries, three per week, organized around Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love. A small group working through the guide together is one of the most intimate Advent community experiences I can imagine.
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The Free Congregational Resource
One thing I want every pastor to know: the Advent Devotional Guide is completely free and printable.
Download the PDF at MarkTheHerald.com/advent-devotional and print as many copies as your congregation needs. No licensing fee. No per-copy charge. No strings attached.
If the cost of the book itself is a barrier for your congregation — particularly for smaller churches or those serving economically constrained communities — the devotional guide alone is a complete, rich Advent resource. Use it freely. It's my gift to your community.
For Your Christmas Eve Service Specifically
A note on Christmas Eve:
The final lines of MARK! The Herald Angel describe the front page of the Eternal Herald's morning edition, printed on the first Christmas morning:
"Hark! The herald angel sing — Glory to the newborn King!"
Mark reads it. Smiles. Nods off to sleep.
And the reader — if you've done the preceding 64 pages any justice at all — realizes in that moment that the carol they've been singing their whole life is not just a lovely piece of Christmas music. It's a first-person account. It's a press dispatch from an eyewitness. It's Mark's story, filed at last.
Reading that passage aloud in a Christmas Eve service — with candles lit and the congregation gathered — tends to produce a very particular silence. The kind that happens when something lands in the room that everyone feels at once.
That silence is worth 64 pages of preparation.
✦ For bulk church orders, consignment for your bookstore, author visit inquiries, or to request a pastoral review copy — contact Glenn directly at hello@marktheherald.com or visit MarkTheHerald.com. The free Advent Devotional Guide is available for immediate download at no cost.
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