Advent–Stories of the Promise–Introduction
An Advent Tea or Advent by Candlelight is a wonderful opportunity for women of all ages to set aside the frenzy of the Christmas season. They can sit quietly to meditate upon the words and promises of God through the Advent and Christmas seasons.
At Epiphany Lutheran Church in Racine, WI where I serve, we are using a series entitled Stories of the Promise created by Pastor Marques and Corissa Nelson for our midweek Advent worship.
In this Stories of the Promise series, we focus on three important women of the Old Testament that God graciously included in his promise of the Savior. In Advent, we prepare ourselves as we connect our stories of faith to the stories of these three women.
To connect our congregation’s Advent worship with our Advent Tea, I have written letters from these three women of the Promise – Sarah, Rahab and Ruth.
The concept is to hear from the women’s point of view during the Advent Tea and from God’s point of view from the pastor in his midweek sermon.
These three women of the Promise are important. But these three women also have their own unique issues – Sarah is a childless senior citizen; Rahab is a prostitute from the heathen nation of Canaan, and Ruth is a young widow from the heathen nation of Moab. Yet all three ladies are drawn into God’s family of forgiveness. The Seed of the Savior comes from their family tree.
Each of these women has written a fictional letter to present-day women. Within these letters are woven the Holy Spirit’s scriptural narrative of these Women of the Promise.
Listen to the stories from the lips of these women and the words from the Holy Spirit. Meditate this Advent season on their stories of laughter, judgment, and redemption.
I asked Corissa Nelson about her, her ministry and the artwork that we are using for this series.
Who are you?
I’m Corissa. I’m a designer and am married to Marques Nelson. He’s a pastor at St. Paul’s in North Mankato, MN and the Beacon Campus Ministry on the MSU campus. I work for myself as a freelancer with illustration, branding for churches, and worship art. (corissanelsonart.com). My education and early professional work were in architecture. I did both my undergraduate and graduate work at UW-Milwaukee’s School of Architecture and Urban Planning. Through professional experience in architecture firms and also teaching architecture studio, I’ve found a niche with design theory, composition, and visual communication of ideas. I also love context studies and research. Now I take a lot of those underlying design principles and apply them to church. Marques communicates with words, I communicate with pictures, we put that together and then share.
What is your inspiration for doing this ministry?
Marques and I have a shared love of learning and ideas. We have a philosophy of trying to do more with less. Also related: keep it simple, do things well, work smarter, and sometimes you need to just state the obvious. This summer at the Hearts and Hands workshop, we found common ground with the other WELS creatives on this concept of doing more with less. Consider teaching one idea in several ways rather than lots of ideas at once. Too much at once often seems random and confusing. One idea taught in several ways is intentional and often engaging. Our pericope-based sermon series and art packs come out of that approach. We feel it helps members learn and share what’s going on at church with their own families and neighbors. Which really comes out of the Great Commission, right? Teach all of God’s Word, Go share it. (More here on our philosophy.)
Why did you choose this specific series for Advent?
This series actually builds on an Old Testament narrative series we did at St. Paul’s through the summer, called Bible Stories. We spent the summer learning about God’s promises to his old testament people and what that has to do with us today. We have a vacancy right now, so enjoyed several preachers telling us these old Sunday school stories, all working together to teach these concepts through the season. Additional content for home family devotions was emailed out each week. It was lovely. Marques ran across the Advent Women series ideas in this book from NPH and thought this would tie things together well. Our same preacher team will be doing the advent series, both on Sunday and Wednesday.
More of Marques’ thoughts on the Advent series here…
Also his thoughts on the Bible stories series here.
(Side note: relevant points by Pres. Wendland at Reformation Lectures recently.)
Examples from the summer Bible Stories Series:
Jonah (sermon by Pastor Tom Westendorf, art here),
Jericho (art here),
Joseph (sermon by Prof. Nicolas Schmoller, art here),
Abraham (The tent: sermon by Prof. Andy Schmidt with art here, The stars: another sermon by Prof. Andy Schmidt, art here), etc.
We saw God promise a Savior to his people time and time again throughout our summer journey. Now as we approach the birth of that Savior in the church year, we are circling back around to the old testament for review. Promises made and promises fulfilled. God is faithful. You can see visual reminders of what we learned through some of the art versions in the Advent Women series pack. That’s why this pack has extra variations. Some of us are having a bit of review. Tents and shofars will hopefully jog our memories a bit as we study how the stories connect, see the bigger picture they fit within. The bigger picture we fit within.
Watch for upcoming posts about Sarah – A Story of Laughter; Rahab – A Story of Judgment; and Ruth – A Story of Redemption.
Michael Zarling
For the first 8 years of my ministry, I served at Faith Lutheran Church, an exploratory congregation in Radcliff, KY. I presently serve at Epiphany Lutheran Church and Wisconsin Lutheran School (WLS) in Racine, WI. I am also very involved with our youth as the WLS head soccer coach and the head counselor for WELS Training Camp, a youth camp for 3rd – 9th graders. I have been married to Shelley for 20 years. Together we have 4 beautiful daughters – Abigail, Miriam, Lydia and Gabrielle. We also have 2 dogs – Messi and Mia – named after Lionel Messi and Mia Hamm (the Zarling family really likes soccer!)
