Two clergy in the Great Plains Conference have had Advent studies recently published.
Rev. Kara Eidson, pastor of McLouth-Oskaloosa UMCs in the East Central Kansas District, has published her second Advent study, “The Advent Tree: Meeting Jesus in God’s Big Story.”
And Rev. Scott Chrostek, executive director of ministries and programs at Resurrection, a United Methodist Church, has his first seasonal study, “Advent: A Season of Surprises.”
Eidson based “Advent Tree” on the tradition of the Jesse Tree.
“It's based off of the tradition of looking through Jesus', kind of, family tree in the Scriptures of the Old Testament,” she said. “I say it's based off of that, because not everything in the text are direct linkages to Jesus' family line. It's more a matter of leading into Jesus' story. I'm less concerned with bloodlines and more concerned with storytelling and understanding how we get to Jesus in the manger and the incarnation.”
Eidson’s parents took part in a devotion on Jesse’s Tree when she was young, and she said it’s where her love of Scripture and deep interest in the text began.
“It was a family tradition that only lasted for three or four years, but it made a huge, huge impact on me,” she said.
Decades later, Eidson translated it into coloring pages for both children and adults in her congregations to help them better understand the story.
“What I had created initially as just a study for my folks kind of spoke to me that there may be some potential here to broaden the audience for this study,” she said.
Her previous study, “Stay Awhile: Advent Lessons in Divine Hospitality,” was published in 2022.
Eidson’s sister coordinated the drawings, one for every day of the season, that are a part of the physical book and can be downloaded for those who choose the e-book. Aspiring artists can choose the children’s version or the more complex older material.
There are also 12 days of family devotions for the Lenten season.
“Advent Tree” is published by Westminster John Knox Press, part of the Presbyterian Publishing Corp., which also published her earlier study, as well as “A Time to Grow: Lenton Lessons from the Garden to the Table,” also in 2022, and whose editor asked if she had any follow-ups. Watch her video introduction here.
“I don't think either of us anticipated quite how intense the journey of writing this book was going to be, just because there's a devotion for every day from the first day in Advent through the Day of Epiphany, plus the 12 family devotionals, plus worship resources that churches can use if they use this as a worship series, and so there's all the liturgy, children's time, all those things,” Eidson said. “It was definitely a labor of love, in a way. It was significantly more work than the other two books had been.”
Writing gave Eidson the chance to get in depth with the text, she said.
“I delve even more in depth than I might in just a 15-minute sermon, which is really a fun, really nerdy, geeky thing I love to do, and so sometimes I'll be in the process of working on a particular section, and I'll have five books from my seminary days spread out across the table, kind of analyzing one particular passage and looking at it from different angles and different perspectives,” she said. “While I definitely do that for sermons, it’s not nearly the in-depth dive that I get a chance to do when I'm writing the books.”
In his 16 years at Resurrection, Chrostek has written four books — all of which have coincided with the church’s four capital campaigns during that time.
He uses his proceeds as a sacrificial gift to the campaigns.
“It emerged as a season where I wanted to say yes, because it gave me an opportunity to give everything back to the church,” he said.
Chrostek said he was inspired by a secular Christmas story, “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” particularly how its creator, a Chicago advertising executive whose wife was dying of cancer, was charged with creating a campaign to bring people back into Montgomery Ward stores, and his inspiration came from a red flashing light in the fog over Lake Michigan.
“I started thinking about that kind of surprise, and the story of abandoned misfits like Rudolph or Hermie the Elf,” he said. “They find each other, and they gain strength. That’s kind of like Mary and Elizabeth.
“They both were unlikely women who were carrying this child from God. Elizabeth’s husband is not talking to her because he’s suffering this penance of being unable to speak, and she’s isolated, and Mary is finding herself on this island,” Chrostek added. “And when they find each other, they start singing, and they have this trajectory shift from that point forward.”
That, he said, inspired him to find surprises in the Christmas story.
“Each one of these vignettes in this book point to that unlikely, surprising twist of a tale that points to something so familiar that it’s almost missing surprises,” he said. “The people journeying through Advent know the story — we’ve been there, we know the songs, all the things — but really, it’s a story of surprises if you dig down into it.”
Chrostek has already written books on “The Misfit Mission,” about Resurrection’s Downtown Kansas City campus, where he was pastor from 2009 to 2024; “Pursuit: Living Fully in God’s Presence,” about personal spiritual formation; and “The Kaleidoscope Effect,” about engaging millennials.
He wrote his Advent study during the Lenten season, he said, and will be writing a Lenten study during the Advent season. He and his wife, Rev. Wendy Lyons Chrostek, location pastor at Resurrection Brookside in downtown KC, are also at work on a book about marriage and relationships.
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