The Art of Preaching: Balancing Depth and Accessibility in a Secular World with Mark Clark

Welcome to the unSeminary podcast. This month we’re focusing on key “Unpredictions”—timeless truths that church leaders need to be focusing on in 2025 and beyond. In this episode, we’re learning from Mark Clark, the founder of Village Church, a multi-site church with locations in multiple cities across Canada and online around the world. He is now one of the Senior Lead Pastors at Bayside Church in California. In today’s podcast we’re discussing how the Bible will need explanation.

Every week, the pulpit provides a unique opportunity to connect God’s Word with the questions and struggles of a modern, often skeptical world. But how do we preach with both theological depth and cultural accessibility? Tune in as Mark offers valuable insights into effective sermon preparation and how to communicate in a way that’s accessible to both skeptics and believers.

• Engage religious and secular audiences. // During his time at Village Church, Mark balanced seeker-sensitive models of preaching with expository preaching. He emphasizes the importance of teaching the Bible while addressing both religious and secular audiences, using Tim Keller’s example of the Prodigal Son parable. Engage both the “older brother” (religious) and the “younger brother” (secular) in every sermon, ensuring that the gospel is presented in a way that resonates with all listeners.
• The art of preaching. // Regardless of a preacher’s experience communicating from the pulpit, they constantly need to refine their craft, preparing thoroughly to ensure that their sermons are both biblically sound and culturally relevant. Dedicate specific times during the week for sermon preparation, ensuring ample time to study, reflect, and refine the message. Rehearse the sermon multiple times to become comfortable with the content and delivery, allowing for a more natural and engaging presentation. Finally, incorporating stories and examples from everyday life to make biblical truths more relatable and understandable for the congregation.
• Keep things fresh. // Preachers face a real challenge to keep things fresh over time, particularly after years of preaching on the same content or passages. The pressure to deliver high-quality sermons is particularly intense during big days on the church calendar, such as Christmas or Easter. To stay fresh and keep sermons engaging, Mark is constantly collecting illustrations and practicing his delivery. He emphasizes the need for preachers to work hard, dedicate time, and ensure their messages are winsome and persuasive.
• Offer honest feedback. // Preaching plays a critical role in church growth. Church staff and executive pastors can support their lead pastors by creating space for them to focus on sermon preparation. If you’re a trusted voice in your lead pastor’s life, provide them with honest feedback and practical help in order to improve the overall quality of preaching.
• Preaching resources. // In addition to his preaching, Mark hosts The Mark Clark Podcast, where he shares his sermons, often accompanied by a brief introduction. This format not only provides biblical content but also offers insights into the mechanics of effective preaching. Mark also has an upcoming book, The Problem of Life, which addresses fundamental questions about the human experience, such as the search for meaning, the nature of suffering, and the quest for joy in a seemingly disenchanted world. Find these resources and more on his website at www.pastormarkclark.com.

Visit Bayside Church to see what they are doing and listen to examples of Mark’s preaching. Plus, follow him on Instagram @mark_clark. And don’t forget to download the unPredictions Team Playbook for this podcast episode.

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Episode Transcript

Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Super glad that you’ve decided to tune in today. You’re reaching us at the end of our month of Unpredictions. All month long, we’ve been talking about things that were true last year, will be true this year, and are continuing to be true next year. Super excited to have Mark Clark with us. He’s the founder of a church in my home and native land, Village Church, a multisite church with locations across cities in Canada, but now serves as the global senior pastor at a fantastic church, Bayside Church, a multisite church in California. Has authored several several books, hosted a great podcast. Bayside was founded by Ray Johnston and has grown to over 20,000 people a week, which is amazing. They have eight locations in California. Mark, welcome to the show. So glad you’re here.

Mark Clark — Thanks. Thank you, sir. Appreciate it. Always good to hang out with a fellow Canadian talking church stuff. It’s good.

Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so good to connect. So we’re today we’re going to talk about ah the Bible and and helping people understand the Bible before we get there. Kind of fill in the Mark picture for folks that don’t know you. Tell us a little bit about you. Tell us a little bit about the church.

Mark Clark — Yeah. Um, so like you said, uh, you know, founded a church in Vancouver in 2010. So I grew up in Toronto, um, and then moved across to Vancouver to do, uh, studies, actually. I was, I was going to be a youth pastor. I went to a school up in Toronto, uh, near you, did a bachelor’s degree, and then was going to be a youth pastor. And then God through a whole bunch of crazy circumstances got my heart, uh, jacked about like academics and and scholarship. And so I wanted to be a professor really. So I moved across to Vancouver to go to Regent College, which, you know, it’s a very internationally renowned school.

Rich Birch — That’s cool.

Mark Clark — You know, um J.I. Packer was there, you know ah Eugene Peterson taught there, Gordon Fee, all these great scholars. So I went over there and I and I said, I’m going to be here for two years and and then I’m going to go overseas, hopefully to Oxford or one of those schools, because they have connections with Regent. And I’m going to do a master’s thesis at Regent in Vancouver and then go overseas and do a PhD and become a professor and read footnotes for the rest of my life and it’ll be great to you know teach teach snotty nose students in college or something.

Rich Birch — Yes. Yes.

Mark Clark — And so on so that was the plan. And I moved to Vancouver I did my thesis on Romans 9-11 and spent you know a few years doing that and then God called me to stay in Vancouver, don’t go overseas don’t go to do a PhD and plant a church, start a church, reach people for Jesus, teach the Bible. And so that’s what we did. In 2010, we gathered about 16 people in my house. My church ah blessed us, gave us about 35 more people and said, and we moved 30 minutes away from the church that we were serving at at the time. And we planted our church and and and really, I mean, to the point of what you’re what we’re talking about today, really had this conviction that I didn’t need to choose between kind of seeker, you know…

Rich Birch — So true.

Mark Clark — …models of preaching where I could just do topicals every four weeks or six weeks or eight weeks and turn things around and, and… Or being an expositor, I could try to fuse both those worlds together every week.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Mark Clark — And, so you know, Keller talks about the idea of um ah preaching to the older brother and the younger brother in the prodigal son parable every week.

Rich Birch — That’s good. Yep.

Mark Clark — You have the religious religious older brother who actually needs to hear the gospel and you have the secular, irreligious, progressive brother who needs to hear the gospel and ever and they’re both lost in different ways and you need they need to come to repentance.

Rich Birch — Right.

Mark Clark — So I put that filter on my preaching every week.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Mark Clark — And I grew up as a skeptic, didn’t grow up as a Christian at all. I became a Christian when I was about 18 and did a lot of, you know, ah study – science, philosophy, psychology, history, literature. And so that drove a bunch of my preaching. So I almost started a church to go, yes, of course I’m going to preach the Bible, but I’m also going to constantly, and I guess we’ll get into this, constantly be talking to the skeptics.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Mark Clark — So anyway, started our church. did that and God just blessed it. And a ton of people got saved and we got to plant the campuses and all that. And it was is fantastic.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Mark Clark — So I did that for 12 years, 12 and a half years or so, and then felt God calling me and my family down here to California ah for a new adventure. And so we’ve been here for two and a half years and having a blast down here.

Rich Birch — Yeah, so good. Friends, you should be following you should be following Mark. You should be following Bayside. ah So much good here. So the thing we’re talking about today is the thing that will not change this year is that the Bible will continue to need explanation. It needs preaching. You know It needs people to ah you know um a a friend of mine said you know that when you look at the book of Acts, the clearest point of life change is a preacher and a crowd. It’s someone standing in front of people explaining. You know, the majority of the 181 million people in the country who owned and opened a Bible last year find it confusing. Churches need to double down on making scripture scripture accessible and relevant to understand this life-changing truths that apply into our lives.

Rich Birch — I really want to dig into that with you today. And we could pick up right where you said there. I think there’s a false dichotomy out there that like grow, and this is true – we see this all the time. People think oh growing churches they’re watering down the bible.

Mark Clark — Sure.

Rich Birch — It’s all like you know it’s all just like how to have a better marriage kind of stuff. Talk to us about that your experience around those issues.

Mark Clark — That’s great. Yeah. Great question. And how to have a better marriage will grow your church as well.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Mark Clark — I remember actually we did a, uh, so what our philosophy was I would do like Bible stuff for, you know, so so I remember the story, the story, uh, I tell it conferences in order to help people feel, feel, uh, you know, like they can do this too – is when we started our church, everyone’s like, well, no one in Canada is going to want to hear a bunch of Bible preaching, whatever. And so make make sure you only do topical and yada, yada, yada.

Mark Clark — So we started our church and ah and I did a sermon series on the gospel of Matthew. And it took us three and a half years to preach through the gospel of Matthew.

Rich Birch — A quick series on Matthews, on Matthew.

Mark Clark — And amazingly, that series was called—are you ready for this? The gospel of Matthew.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Mark Clark — Oh, the creative…

Rich Birch — In secular Vancouver. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mark Clark — Yeah, exactly. It was like, yeah, we didn’t need any creative titles. We weren’t juggling balls and dee-dee-dee.

Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mark Clark — You know, we weren’t, it was like, here’s what we’re going to do. Secular Vancouver, three and a half years. The church grew during that time by, you know, whatever 2000 people and 700, actually more importantly, because you can get 700 people got baptized during that three and a half years.

Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s amazing.

Mark Clark — So, so, and I say all that just to say, to your point, you don’t have to choose, you can grow a church by preaching the Bible.

Rich Birch — Right.

Mark Clark — And that’s what our foundation was. It was like, so we did a ah three and a half years of Matthew. We did a year and a half in, in 1 Corinthians, uh, probably nine months in Philippians. Um, you know, so, wait so basically if you just go to the website, you can just scroll down and look at, we did Ecclesiastes. It was basically just Bible books. But then of course. We would stop every once in a while and do like a topical, you know, a marriage series, I remember one fall. And we would leverage the fall. And I think that’s important. You know, you you know, there’s calendars, rhythms, don’t fight them…

Rich Birch — Yep. Yep.

Mark Clark — …you know, roll with them. So everyone’s away in the summer. Don’t pull out your best stuff. But, you know, so we used to leverage, you know, after Easter and new year and and in Canada, ah first week of September down here, ah first two weeks of August, um the fall comeback, people come back to vacation.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Mark Clark — Do the handouts do the…

Rich Birch — It’s like a reset. Yeah.

Mark Clark — Yeah. Do the door knockers, give your people invite cards to a series that is felt needs enough that it’s like hey we’re gonna talk. So we used to do ah skeptic stuff. So we did a series um Where we would answer and this is what my first book grew out of preaching the series where it was like hey all the big skeptical questions: science, the Bible, hell…

Rich Birch — Right.

Mark Clark — …hypocrisy in the church – you know all that – evil and suffering. Hey, we’re gonna preach these. Here’s the weeks. Bring your friends if they have these questions and then it’ll launch into it. So we used to grow. You know I remember when we did a skeptic series, we grew one year by 900 people in one weekend. And I thought, well, that’s gonna be the biggest we ever grow in one weekend, which is crazy.

Rich Birch — Right. Yeah.

Mark Clark — Then we did a marriage one the next year. And I think we grew by 1200 people in a weekend.

Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.

Mark Clark — And the crazy thing is, is then they stayed.

Rich Birch — Right. Right. Yeah, they didn’t leave.

Mark Clark — So so it was like, so so it wasn’t like we had this incremental growth where we grew by 1400 that year.

Rich Birch — Right.

Mark Clark — We grew by it in one week. And then they just, that was the church now…

Rich Birch — Right. Yes.

Mark Clark — …which was, which obviously that’s that’s crazy. It’s not normal.

Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s wild.

Mark Clark — So don’t like beat yourself up if that’s not your experience.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Mark Clark — But um so those topical moments are important, of course.

Rich Birch — Right.

Mark Clark — But then you come out of them and I would say 75 to 80% of our stuff was you know expository stuff, but with a caveat. Because some people hear that and they go, oh good, I can just get up and give my boring Bible sermons. And you know…

Rich Birch — Yes.

Mark Clark — …and you and you know those preachers, right?

Rich Birch — Right. Yeah. Read read through the concordance and you’ll be fine, you know, kind of thing.

Mark Clark — Exactly, yeah, I’m just gonna preach Isaiah. Mark told me I could preach Isaiah for three years and my church will grow…

Rich Birch — Right.

Mark Clark — …and not give any cultural commentary or illustrations or stories or be fun or whatever. It’s like, no, no, no, that’s not what I’m saying.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Mark Clark — I’m saying you got to tell, it’s a sin to make the Bible boring.

Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good.

Mark Clark — You gotta take the Bible and now you gotta go, you gotta work hard to create those cultural connections to be…

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.

Mark Clark — …to be as Keller would say, winsome and persuasive. You gotta constantly be engaging your audience now with a very low attention span.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Mark Clark — So the way I would do it is, you know, read a verse or two and then riff of how that verse connects to culture and gauge with, um you know, coming back to the skeptical hermeneutic of like…

Rich Birch — Yep. Yep.

Mark Clark — …if I put the filter of a random guy who lives on my street or gal who lives on my street, who’s somewhat educated, who has a job, who didn’t grow up with Christianity and thinks all of this is a joke. And every sermon I put that filter on.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Mark Clark — And I said, if I’m going to preach this text, how do I explain everything I’m saying to them…

Rich Birch — Right.

Mark Clark — …in a winsome and persuasive way that will keep them engaged, get them laugh a little bit, have them understand what this means culturally. You got to be doing that every every three minutes, you got to be hitting something like that. You can’t just, well, I have my one illustration.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Mark Clark — I will start with a story and now I will just be boring for 35 minutes. You know, it’s like, no, no, no.

Rich Birch — That doesn’t work.

Mark Clark — That’s not what we’re talking about, right? Yeah. You got to come in and out, you know, of the tech.

Rich Birch — Right. Yeah, that’s good.

Mark Clark — Yeah. So.

Rich Birch — Yeah. I think, you know, I think a part of this has been, you know, I, unfortunately, I’m at that age in my ministry career where you you realize, Oh, I’ve been around for a while. And there has been a shift, I think in the people we’re reaching where I do think there was a time 30 years ago that, you know, there was like a general understanding of, of the Bible. There was more kind of understanding of the things we were talking about.

Mark Clark — Yeah.

Rich Birch — And, you know, we used to joke, um, ah we ain’t your mama’s church. We used to make that joke. That was the thing. Like we would actually say that, Hey, we ain’t your mama’s church. But the reality of it is like mom didn’t go to church. Grandma didn’t go to church now.

Mark Clark — Right.

Rich Birch — People are arriving at church with questions. They’re not, that’s been my experience that the people that are coming now that don’t normally attend church that show up, they’re coming with questions. They’re not saying, Hey, like, um, you know, can you please just entertain me for the next hour? They’re, they’re coming with like some pressing questions. You, you mentioned there this idea of working hard, that you got to work hard.

Rich Birch — I’d love to kind of peel the veil back a little bit and hear about your process. What’s that look like? How do you, you you know, prep a ah series, you know, individual message? How do you talk about that? If you’re sitting across from somebody who wants to improve what they do on that front?

Mark Clark — Yeah, great question. Yeah it’s great question. So when I get to meet with preachers and talk to them, one of the things that that historically when up when I’ve done seminars or whatever that really connects with people is I just kind of call out the fact that some of you, the reason you’re not… So so it’s good to great, right? Jim Collins. Most of you are going to settle to be good preachers versus great ones. The country of Canada needs great preachers. The country of America needs great preachers, not just good ones. And the only way to get there is through hard work. And most of you are not willing to do the work it’s going to take to become great. And usually that…

Rich Birch — Thanks for coming to the seminar.

Mark Clark — You know, exactly. But they they kind of laugh at themselves and then almost to the person they go, Man, you’re reading my mail bro. Like you are totally right.

Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.

Mark Clark — Because what it takes is sacrifice.

Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, that’s good.

Mark Clark — What it takes is for you, there’s this great um episode, you know, that coffee in cars with comedians or whatever that.

Rich Birch — Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. With Seinfeld. Yep.

Mark Clark — Yeah, in season, I think it’s season one, he he goes out for coffee with Kramer, you know, Michael Richards, the guy that played Kramer. And there’s this great little interaction that they have where Kramer, he’s talking about, hey, Kramer, I used to go into your, you know, cause we watched Seinfeld, we think Kramer’s just sliding in the door and making it up, right? But there’s a very technical thing that he was doing. And what he would do is he would sit in his dressing room like two inches from the wall, and he would practice all his lines all day. And Jerry says to him as they’re having coffee, he’s like, hey, I used to accidentally come into your room once in a while, and I would see you doing that.

Mark Clark — And and Michael says, oh really, ah you saw me doing that? That’s really weird. And then he says, the one regret, at Michael says, the one regret I have is that I feel like I didn’t enjoy the nineties because I was in a room just like slaving away at this process and this character.

Rich Birch — Right.

Mark Clark — And Jerry looks at him and just like in a moment of inspiration, he says, no, no, no, it wasn’t your job to enjoy it. Your job was to do the sacrifice so the audience enjoyed it.

Rich Birch — Wow. Wow.

Mark Clark — And for me, that’s the message to preachers.

Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good.

Mark Clark — It’s like, bro, if you’re, you know, if you’re 45 years old, here’s the sacrifice. You got a family, you got a life. So my process, to go to your question, um so usually for me, um I’ll do, for for a sermon in particular, a series is a bit different because we work with you know groups of people and say…

Rich Birch — Yeah, right.

Mark Clark — …what should we preach and come up with a series and design and production also. But for ah for a sermon in particular, I would go, let’s say the text is, you know, whatever, John 1, 1 to 3, right? So I would, I would sit with my, probably Thursday, sit with all my commentaries Thursday afternoon, you know meetings all week, and then Thursday afternoon, get some commentary reading. And usually look, I’m at home. My kids are running around. We’re talking. I got a commentary open on my lap at 9 PM with a pen and in a coffee, you know, whatever. Right. Um, so it’s all just part of life.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Mark Clark — Um, I’m constantly thinking of illustrations every moment of my life, every line I’m in, every car ride, every thing in life is an illustration.

Rich Birch — And are you gathering those somehow in a system? Are you like, do you write those out or notes on your phone?

Mark Clark — Just mostly in my head, but then I’ll throw it on a phone if I think, oh, I’m going to forget this. You know, I’ll just put it on my Apple.

Rich Birch — Right.

Mark Clark — I’ll just be like, you know, you know, plane ride, flight attendant, book or whatever.

Rich Birch — Yeah, funny thing or whatever. Yeah. Yeah.

Mark Clark — It’s just, okay, I know I know what the story is.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Mark Clark — And, um but, ah but you’re constantly, and you gotta be, you gotta be liberal with this. You have to be like, I know this event happened and it doesn’t directly connect to this, but I think with one or two sentences, I can make this connection.

Rich Birch —Make the connection. Yep. Yep. Yep.

Mark Clark — And make a funny moment here or make a profound moment here with the most mundane situation that happened in my life.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.

Mark Clark — so So for instance, this past weekend, I did Hebrews. Okay, great example. So Hebrews 12 verse one and two, for for the joy set before him, he endured the cross.

Mark Clark — Okay, so we can just say that.

Rich Birch — Right.

Mark Clark — And just move on. But it’s like, okay, what is that? What do you mean? So so here’s a principle for Jesus. He can endure the cross because of the joy that was on the other side of the cross, i.e. providing salvation for us. We in life, can ah endure almost anything if there’s joy on the other side of it. Joy is one of the great drivers and motivating factors of our life.

Mark Clark — Okay, great, I can say that, but now I illustrated it in a story. I talked about getting up at three in the morning, taking my family on this thing, and and we exchanged, and we lost bags, and we the one’s puking, and there’s a flight attendant telling us, this there’s there’s just you know and I just kind of tell this funny story for two minutes…

Rich Birch — Yep.

Mark Clark — …or three. um And it’s all these like, ah you know, all these a comedy of errors that are terrible. It’s awful.

Rich Birch — Right.

Mark Clark — There’s suffering, there’s pain, but we could do it because we knew that once that flight landed, we were going to have nice sunshine for a week and we were going to spend time as a family.

Rich Birch — Right.

Mark Clark — So I could endure all this nonsense because of what, way anyway, point being, you’re looking for these mundane, things in life to become great illustrations…

Rich Birch — Yeah, for sure.

Mark Clark — …for your people and have fun along the way. So one of the principles I say is, look, if you’re not a comedian, don’t tell jokes. Tell stories that are funny. Right?

Rich Birch — It’s true.

Mark Clark — Don’t like, right? Don’t tell a joke. A joke is, you know, it can be rough.

Rich Birch — Yes. Yes. Yes. Yep.

Mark Clark — But tell stories that are funny and be very self-deprecating. Don’t make yourself the but the hero of the story. You know, always beat up on yourself a little bit and and play the fool a little bit because people connect to that. So anyway, all that to say, um, Thursday commentaries, Friday commentaries, I’m writing it out. And usually what I do is by the end of Friday, I have a page uh, now it’s a Google doc.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Mark Clark — It used to be a word doc, but a Google doc. So I can sit on my phone anywhere or whatever. And I got a Google doc that probably equals, you know, eight, nine pages of, of words…

Rich Birch — Right.

Mark Clark — …where I’ve just like written sentences, paragraphs out, illustrations out, to some degree. So I can remember them, um, bolded through the manuscript. And then by Saturday, now it’s Saturday morning, it used to be Saturday night because ah now I preach Saturday night.

Rich Birch — Right.

Mark Clark — So Saturday morning, go out to my office and my family knows, man, we don’t see our dad all day Saturday and all day Sunday, right?

Rich Birch — Right. Those are work days. Yeah.

Mark Clark — Because Saturday, yeah, those are work days. So 9 a.m., I’m out in the office and I’m getting this nine pages down to four or five. I know every page is about 10 minutes. And I’m supposed to preach 35 minutes here, so it’s always stressful. But Saturday night…

Rich Birch — You always do. You have the best intentions.

Mark Clark — Exactly. Exactly. Yes.

Rich Birch — 35 minutes, best intentions.

Mark Clark — And you guys, you know, yeah Jeff, your pastor puts me on the clock too. And I’m like, Oh my gosh, I got this big clock ticking. And I’m like, I can’t do this. So, ah so I try to get that down to four or five pages. And then I will say for about 15 years of my life, I would, you know, would so back when I had Sunday services, that was all Saturday, I would say goodbye to my family at 5 p.m. And that’s the discipline.

Rich Birch — Right. Right.

Mark Clark — My family knew I was not around after 5 p.m. That means I’m not going to any ah friends birthday parties. My life, that is my life.

Rich Birch — Right.

Mark Clark — And then I would preach it out loud back then. I don’t do this now, but more pay attention to what I did do. I would preach out loud for three, four hours over and over.

Rich Birch — Wow. Wow.

Mark Clark — Every story, every turn of phrase, every sentence right in front of me and i’m memorizing it in my brain. So I don’t have to look at my notes. And i’m preaching it out loud.

Rich Birch — Wow. Yeah.

Mark Clark — So I’m hearing it and i’m hearing whether it’s interesting whether it’s not interesting. So I would do that till about midnight every Saturday night. Then I would sit in my bed and on my iPad and look at the notes with my pencil and color code it. Then wake up at 5 AM, go out to a parking lot, preach it again out loud for an hour with…

Rich Birch — Wow.

Mark Clark — …so I’m getting it all in my brain. Now this, now Rich we’re talking about, I’m doing this when I had 150 people at my church, not thousands, just 150.

Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yes, yep.

Mark Clark — That’s, that’s the sacrifice, right?

Rich Birch — Yeah, but that that’s what I want people to pick up on though. Because I think there are folks, um like I have just such a high value on this part of what we do as a church. I’m not a I’m not a preacher, I’m not a communicator, but as a person in the seat that I sit in, the kind of executive pastor type seat, for years I I had a lead pastor I worked for, and he would say like, hey, what can I work on this week?

Rich Birch — And I would literally always say, I would be like, your message, like the thing that you can take time on. Then the rest of us will take care of everything else, but you’re the only person that’s going to be up there for those 40 minutes. And yet the picture of you preaching that out, that’s that’s that’s humbling. Because I don’t think lots of people do that kind of thing. they you know There’s a lot of phoning it in, we’re doing the first part, and then we’re just kind of winging it at the first service and punishing all those people.

Mark Clark — Yeah, it’s true.

Rich Birch — Right? I think that happens, unfortunately.

Mark Clark — And that, and that’s why, and that’s why I go back to what I say at the beginning. Most of you aren’t willing to do what I’m about to explain.

Rich Birch — Right, right.

Mark Clark — And most of the room just sits there and goes, shoot, now that you’ve explained it, you’re right.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Mark Clark — Um, you know, and part of that came from, I was doing this in my mid twenties and then all the way through my thirties.

Rich Birch — Yep. Yep.

Mark Clark — And there was a, and there still is an obsessive, um, and it really is an obsession. It has to be, right?

Rich Birch — Right.

Mark Clark — Now it helps that I actually have a mental disorder called the OCD and Tourette’s that actually my brain does obsess.

Rich Birch — It’s your superpower.

Mark Clark — Yeah, exactly. literally obsess about every turn of phrase…

Rich Birch — Right.

Mark Clark — …and every every joke and every exegetical point and every illustration and everything is obsessed about, so that I can make as much eye contact as possible, so I can be as culturally connected and biblically sound as possible. All the things, um but I think a little bit more obsession to your point.

Rich Birch — Right, right.

Mark Clark — …would be helpful if we realized that this 40 minutes of, as Carey, our colleague has pointed out many times that, you know, 80% of people go to a church because of the preaching. And um it’s like this 80 minutes, but but even more than that, I was watching, excuse me, I was watching someone preach the other day and what struck me, this really important was this was like, there was no urgency. in their preaching.

Rich Birch — Oh wow. What a crime.

Mark Clark — They were checking a box. And I guess this might come from someone who grew up outside of a church. When I preach, I have like a a fire in my bones…

Rich Birch — Yes.

Mark Clark — …that like this will be the last sermon every person in this room ever hears before they all die in a car accident between this Sunday and next Sunday.

Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah.

Mark Clark — They’re all dead and they’re all gonna face eternity. And I have to plead with them for 40 minutes at the at the tip of my toes with absolute urgency that they would come to Christ, they would treasure Christ above everything.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Mark Clark — And every Bible text is the most important Bible text. If you walked in and I was preaching Zephaniah 3, you would think I thought this was the most important Bible verse ever.

Rich Birch — Right. Right. Well, it’s funny you say that because recently you did a series, graciously did a series for our church and you were preaching at a table. They had you sitting at a table for this series and you had your Bible open in front of you. And I was making the joke behind your back. I’m like, it looks like he’s going to flip that table, like you are like you’re kind of you know it’s like the table is between me and our and our audience you know, which which loved.

Mark Clark — I want to get out. Yeah. Yeah.

Rich Birch — It was come let me at you, let me at you. It like it was like the table was the only thing that was holding you back…

Mark Clark — That’s funny. That’s funny. Yeah.

Rich Birch — …which i think is great so you know speaking to that one of the things I want to say this publicly, mark, I’ve watched you for years preach, and you continue to step up your game. Like I…

Mark Clark — Oh, thanks man.

Rich Birch — …there’s not a sense of like, Oh, here’s a guy who’s kind of hit his stride and he’s just like… I think very few people obviously at your level are phoning it in. That’s not true. Lots of people are they’re working hard, but like you seem to continue to polish too. And so what what has happened over the last, I don’t know, say five, 10 years in this kind of the most recent you know that you continue to kind of improve the process, what are you doing to kind of stay fresh and stay stay…

Mark Clark — Yeah, that’s great.

Rich Birch — Because i think it gets harder over time.

Mark Clark — Sure.

Rich Birch — As an observer on the outside I think the second decade and the third decade are much harder than the first, and the yeah like i think they get progressively harder to stay fresh.

Mark Clark — Yeah, that’s, good that’s a great point. Because like with anything, naturally, psychologically, when you’re not doing something fresh, uh, it gets stale. And so how do you keep [inaudible]?

Rich Birch — Right. Well, and we teach, we teach to a fixed text. Like we don’t want you to be creative. Like we, you, you, you’ve got to preach to the Bible. And so a guy like you every time, like you’ve taught it, you’ve taught on lots of scripture. And so it’s like, how do we keep that fresh? How do we have one more Christmas Eve message? Gosh, like how many times can we preach Easter? We love preaching Easter. Obviously this is insider. Obviously it’s the death and resurrection of Jesus, but like people know the punch line. People know what you’re going to talk about.

Mark Clark — Great, great point.

Rich Birch —And so how how are you keeping it fresh?

Mark Clark — Yeah. Great, great question. So I, um, this past Christmas Eve it’s interesting. Um, so we had 12 services and, and Ray’s like, like, how many do you want to do? And I was like, well, I’ll do nine, give somebody else some reps in front of a Christmas Eve audience, which down here is crazy. Uh, like literally probably 35,000 people just at this campus alone through those 12 services.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great.

Mark Clark — And they come jacked up. They come, they bring their friends. Like it’s a I mean, Canada has a little bit of this, but definitely more in America…

Rich Birch — Sure.

Mark Clark — …with the whole Christmas Eve, Easter, everyone shows up and brings everybody. So so there’s like this, to your point, I’ve I’ve now done Christmas Eve for 20 years of my life, literally. And down here, done it three years in a row. And it’s seen as like a really big deal, right?

Rich Birch — Right.

Mark Clark — Like this is Christmas Eve, this is a super bowl of of preaching.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Mark Clark — and Ray’s point backstage after he heard my first ah sermon. And you’re always tweaking, you got nine chances at it, so you’re gonna mess them around with it. He’s just like, what what’s really encouraging is like, this is your third year here, and everything you said was super fresh, and like, there was no going back to the barrel or whatever.

Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s fantastic.

Mark Clark — So but that, to your point, takes a lot of hard work.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Mark Clark — I can tell you, I felt the pressure, and feel I feel the pressure of the Christmas Eve service, maybe more than any sermon all year. It’s just such a staple here.

Rich Birch — Right.

Mark Clark — They put in so much time and energy and effort.

Rich Birch — Right.

Mark Clark — And they do this, ah which we didn’t do. I mean, this is very interesting. We didn’t do a lot of raise your hand to come to Christ at Village. Our our thing was like, hey, we I would constantly give people an opportunity to come to Christ. But um baptism was almost seen philosophically, methodologically as like, this is the raising of the hand. It’s like, hey, if you’ve come to Christ every two months, we’re gonna do a baptism. And if you’re a Christian, this is your public, you know thing. But here, they do a lot of like, hey, I’m gonna give you an opportunity to raise your hand. And I just don’t have a ton of experience in it. So I work really hard at like trying to figure out the mechanics of that and all that. But every Christmas Eve service, you get people to raise their hand, to accept Christ, we pray for them.

Rich Birch — It’s amazing.

Mark Clark — And it’s beautiful. And all these hands go up and then all these candles. It’s a really powerful thing. But again anyway, to your point, I got um I start writing I start taking notes for a Christmas Eve sermon, Rich, probably I remember I think there’s probably a Google doc where I started taking illustrations in August.

Rich Birch — Right. Right. Yeah. It’s kind of constantly in the background.

I was like I was like oh this is I don’t want to waste this for a normal weekend. This is so good, I’m gonna wait.

Rich Birch — Yes. I’m keeping that bullet in the holster.

Mark Clark — Yes.

Rich Birch — We’re not firing that one. Yeah.

Mark Clark — No one’s going to hear this story until until Christmas Eve.

Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah, that’s good.

Mark Clark — And so you pile a bunch of those up and then, you know, you’re you know um one of the things your audience could do if they want is they could go find the Christmas Eve maybe in your show notes or whatever.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Mark Clark — Find the Christmas Eve sermon I preached at Bayside this past weekend…

Rich Birch — We’ll do that. We’ll link to that.

Mark Clark — …because you’ll see a lot of the mechanics of like I’m not letting as, as Ray kind of says, he goes, you know, in most communicators, there’s like dead space. And then there’s live space. And he’s like, that was just 30 minutes of live space.

Rich Birch — Right.

Mark Clark — There was no lull, like there’s constant, you’re just boom, boom, boom.

Rich Birch — Yes, yes.

Mark Clark — Every, every 30 seconds, there’s a thing. There’s a it’s almost like, this is probably a bad illustration. I just thought of it. So you can delete this. It’s almost like when you watch, um, Have you ever seen Deadpool and Wolverine in that movie? Well, you don’t have to admit this, but anyways, there’s there’s ah there’s a movie hypothetically called Deadpool and Wolverine.

Rich Birch — Yes, hypothetically.

Mark Clark — That is, it’s very dirty and there’s a lot of, f-bombs, but the the thing about it is when I watched it with a crowd, there’s a laugh and something’s happening where you’re reacting like every 30 seconds.

Rich Birch — Right, yes. Yes.

Mark Clark — There’s like a boom and then a boom and then a boom.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Mark Clark — It was like, it’s just two straight hours of every 30 seconds of something.

Rich Birch — Yes, yes.

Mark Clark — And anyway, Christmas Eve service feel felt like that.

Rich Birch — Had that feel to it, yeah.

Mark Clark — Yeah. So anyway, so, but to your point, that takes a lot of work.

Rich Birch — That’s good. With less f-bombs, hopefully, a few less.

Mark Clark — Less F-bombs. Yes. Yes. Most most it.

Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s good.

Mark Clark — It takes a lot of work, a lot of effort, a lot of practice, a lot of out loud, a lot of, you know, even for that one, which I rarely do anymore, but I would say this is a good, I actually ran it through with my wife. I didn’t preach it to her, but I went, I’m going to do this. Then I’m going to do this. Then I’m going to do this. Then I go, what do you think? How should I move that around? And I was doing that right up until the final sermon.

Rich Birch — Right.

Mark Clark — You know, the, the, the ninth one.

Rich Birch — Right.

Mark Clark — I was still fiddling with order…

Rich Birch — Right.

Mark Clark — …and cut that and move that over there. And that’s boring and you know, whatever. So anyway, all that to say, keeping it lively, keeping the urgency, um, making sure you illustrate, I mean, just, just really quick – making sure you’re illustrating enough. Oftentimes what I find is in a 40 minute sermon, what I would do is add three or four more illustrations to most sermons that I hear, mostly when I’m like what I’m helping mentor people, I’m like, listen, you need more illustrations in this sermon.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.

Mark Clark — It doesn’t mean they need to be 18 minutes long.

Rich Birch — Right.

Mark Clark — That’s not what I mean.

Rich Birch — Right.

Mark Clark — And I don’t mean…

Rich Birch — Two, three minutes on this, move on. Two, three minutes on that, that kind of thing.

Mark Clark — Yeah, or even 30 seconds.

Rich Birch — Right. Right.

Mark Clark — You know, a quick like, hey, this situation happened with my daughter the other day and it’s, and then a boom. This is how it has to do with the gospel and the text that we’re talking about.

Rich Birch — No, that’s good. That’s good.

Mark Clark — You know, just let it, yeah, let it naturally flow out of the text. Um, and, and not it be like, uh, as some communicators, it’s like, what is he telling the story for? I don’t, what does this have to do with anything?

Rich Birch — Right. Yeah, you’re right. Yeah, it’s a long story to get to a short point, right? Like it’s yeah. Yeah.

Mark Clark — Yeah, which I’ve been guilty of as well.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Mark Clark — But it’s like, make your, make your points come out of the text, make them pointed, make them fun. But, but you can you can do a bunch of 20, 30 second illustrations throughout too.

Rich Birch —Sprinkle those in you.

Mark Clark — You don’t need to feel like I’m going back to the classic, like in World War II, General Patton said to the people…

Rich Birch — Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right.

Mark Clark — …you know make come make it come out of your own life too.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. So kind of one other I’d love to explore just as we’re kind of looking to land the plane. But so think of a church of maybe 1500 people. We’ve got a lot of executive pastor types that listen in. And I have said in my coaching, my conversations with those folks, I’ve been like, listen, a part of our job as an executive pastor is to create space in the lead pastor’s life so that they can do that part well. Like they we need to take stuff off their plate. We need to do things so that they’re not you know they’ve got the space to do this. What would your coaching be to the staff teams that are supporting lead pastors or communicators? How can we help you ah do your thing well? How can we…

Mark Clark — Great question.

Rich Birch — You quoted that stat, 83% of the reason why people attend church is because of the preaching. And I’ll say that to staff leaders, I’ll be like, listen, You think what that means. 83% of the reason why people show up is because of those 35, 40 minutes. The rest of us are the other 17%.

Mark Clark — Yeah, that’s great.

Rich Birch — So we’ve got to do what we can to try to create space for that. What would your advice be? What what would you say to try to help encourage? What what what could we do to support teaching guys well?

Mark Clark —Yeah, that’s a great, great question. It’s it’s really hard because what I wanna say is making sure that you’re giving honest feedback ah about the quality. Um, because obviously quality is, is, is key. Content is number one, but content needs to be heard. So quality is how content is heard. um But what’s really hard about it is it’s so personal that it’s really hard for a staff member who in the power dynamic…

Rich Birch — Right.

Mark Clark — …you know, like I always tell lead pastors and senior pastors, I’m like, everyone laughs at your jokes, but it’s because they’re paid to, you know. Nobody…

Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, that’s kind of true.

Mark Clark — …nobody, yeah it’s like, if you think all these staff are your friends, you know they they think you’re the greatest thing. It’s like, dude, they you pay them to to not tell you you’re not funny or whatever, you know.

Rich Birch — Right.

Mark Clark — So there’s a power dynamic that’s really hard when it comes to like… I was actually, Adam Grant, you know, Adam Grant, of course, I saw this great clip from Adam Grant the other day. I don’t know if you’ve heard it, but he talks about, I forget his phrase. It was actually genius. He talks about when you’re in a room and ideas are being thrown around, um, about what you should do. Like, hey should we do this? Should we do that? The problem is, uh, what, did what did he call it? He called it like the HP something. It was basically the dynamic of the highest per paid person, HPP or something.

Rich Birch — Yes. Yes. Yes.

Mark Clark — Is this a normal, you know this?

Rich Birch — Yes. It is HPP. No, no. He, this is, he has talked about this. Yeah.

Mark Clark — Yeah. So HPP, I think. I’m just remembering this.

Rich Birch — Their opinion matters the most on whatever you’re talking about.

Mark Clark — The highest paid person in the room always sways.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Mark Clark — And and that’s just a normal sociological dynamic.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Mark Clark — The question is, is that actually the best play?

Rich Birch — Right. Right.

Mark Clark — Or is it just, well, the highest paid person has said it, so now we’re all just gonna do it, you know? So in that vein, it’s really hard to look at your lead pastor and go, look, bro, or sis, that sermon was like a 5 out of 10. Like you could you could do it better.

Rich Birch — Yeah, you’re phoning it in.

Mark Clark — Or yeah, or phoning it in or, Hey, I know you really gave that thing a shot. That was not great. And I think you have eights and nines in you, but you have constantly been delivering fives and sixes. I think we can grow our church. If you, if the quality got better. I don’t know what kind of relationship you have with your communicator to be able to do that. I think if you can, that would be super helpful to them.

Rich Birch — Right. That’s good.

Mark Clark — Now it might not be in a, it it shouldn’t probably be in a room full of people.

Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Mark Clark — Because a sermon is very…

Rich Birch — Like around the water cooler when everybody’s listening in, probably not the time to do that.

Mark Clark — Yeah, yeah, exactly. It’s like, man, I just been, I’ve been listening. I think you could, you don’t want me to help. You want me to, you know, is is there, a is there a room? Do you want to strike a room to help you with content? Like there might be some private conversations, or cause they might be feeling stuck.

Rich Birch — Right.

Mark Clark — Like, Hey, I’m not passionate about this anymore. I don’t feel like I have great content. Like, I don’t know where to get good. What, you know, whatever. So that would be super helpful. Um, if you think they can do better. But if they’re already killing it and it’s just like, you feel like, you know, that maybe, yeah, just some conversations around, Hey, what can I take off your plate to free up your time?

Rich Birch — Right. Is there more stuff that free up yet? That’s good.

Mark Clark — Yeah, to almost justify their time on it. Like you said, like telling them, cause sometimes they feel bad.

Rich Birch — Right.

Mark Clark — Sometimes they feel like, oh, I shouldn’t be sitting here for 15 hours working on a sermon in the office or whatever.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Mark Clark — And it’s like, no, no, that’s literally what we pay you to do.

Rich Birch — Yes, a hundred percent.

Mark Clark — Like we’re all going to be better paid if you do your job well, we’re going to have more money, more people, more ministry. Do your like, kill it. Go in your office for 15 hours. We don’t care.

Rich Birch — Yeah. A hundred percent. Well, and that, yeah, that that’s been my experience more that more lots of communicators, they under they ironically undervalue what they do in their mind…

Mark Clark — Yes.

Rich Birch — …more than they should. Like I’m like, no, no, it’s like critically important. Like it’s not.

Mark Clark — Yes.

Rich Birch — And and particularly, even if you’ve got some gifting in this, where you can, you know, hey, I can I can pull a two hour prep and get up and and, you know, I can hit a base hit, I can get on second…

Mark Clark — Yeah.

Rich Birch — …kind of thing, then there can be this like, well, I’m just going to keep it, you know, I’m just going to keep hitting base hits. And it’s like, well, what would it take for us to give you more room so that you could knock it out of the part every single week?

Mark Clark — Yes. That’s great.

Rich Birch — Because it’s critically important.

Mark Clark — Love that.

Rich Birch — Like, I think that it’s not like a secondary piece of the puzzle. Well, it just as we’re coming to land. I want to make sure people are tracking with you. So first what I want to do is point them to your podcast. Tell us about the podcast. We’ll link to it. Because I think this would be really practical. I’m sure there’s people that are listening in that are like, Oh, I need to stew on this a little bit more. Tell us a little bit about your podcast.

Mark Clark — Yeah, so it’s called the Mark Clark podcast, again ah very very ah creative, took us a long time to come up with that.

Rich Birch — Creative genius. Yeah.

Mark Clark — Yeah. And basically what it is is it’s my sermons every week. So so I’m I’m you know I’m not like you where I’m I’m a disciplined person that gets to sit down and have a lot of conversations with great people. I just I’m just so all over the place. I can’t get myself disciplined up.

Mark Clark — So and what we came up with was what let’s take certain, I mean you’re preaching every week anyway. You have this 10 years of sermons that are online probably.

Rich Birch — Right. Yep.

Mark Clark — So let’s grab some stuff and start. So what we do is we post a sermon every week. I think it’s Thursday morning with a little intro from me, but it could be a sermon from five years ago. It could be something I preached three weeks ago and it’s, you know, packaged in, in series usually. So it’ll be like, if we did a sermon on the Mount, we did a sermon on the Mount series here at Bayside last summer. And it was probably 20 weeks, but I preached, let’s say six or seven of them at the main campus. We’ll just take that. We’ll say this is Mark’s, you know, Sermon on the Mount series, you know, so six weeks in a row, you’ll get a sermon on the Mount sermon.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.

Mark Clark — So they’re basically, it’s just me preaching sermons on stuff. And you’ll be able to see all what we’re talking about, the mechanics of going from the text to the illustrations and all the stuff we talked about every single week and hopefully be helpful for you with biblical content too.

Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s, it’s, again, I would highly recommend that. I think it’s a great listen. I think it’s great, obviously, on two levels. It’s great teaching. But also, I think for communicators, it’s good to listen in and be like, okay, here’s, here’s a guy who, you know, has a proven track record is making a difference is is just doing all kinds of great stuff. I think that would be helpful for you.

Rich Birch — Also, you’ve you’ve written, which we haven’t even really got into, you’ve written a number of just really compelling books that I found ah you know personally so helpful…

Mark Clark — Oh, thanks.

Rich Birch — …and you know we found so helpful at our church. But you’ve got a book coming out here that’s coming up called “The Problem of Life”. Tell us a little bit about that and where can we send people to make sure they they pick up copies of that.

Mark Clark — Yes, so, um so a couple years ago I wrote, as I mentioned earlier I wrote, “The Problem of God”, which was like a skeptics um book. You know, top 10 questions that skeptics ask about Christianity and the challenges and all that. Then I wrote “The Problem of Jesus”, which is, you know, basically everything I’ve learned about Jesus and discipleship and, you know, the gospels and all this stuff.

Mark Clark — And ah now “The Problem of Life” kind of rounds off the [inaudible]. You know, there’s this great there’s this great quote um by opening, you know, Calvin’s institutes, one of the great, you know, they say maybe the greatest the greatest treatise on theology ever written. And the opening line is basically, we we need to find two things. We need to find the knowledge of God and the knowledge of ourselves. So the way that what this book is, is it’s the second one. It’s like a whole book about ourselves. What does it mean to be a human being?

Rich Birch — Right.

Mark Clark — What does it what what is this longing in us um for something more than the brokenness of our world? How do we deal with suffering? How do we deal with joy? How to find joy, meaning, purpose in a disenchanted world is actually the subtitle.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Mark Clark — And so it’s this this idea that like we need to be fusing our our life can just be normal, mundane, we get up, we have marriage, we raise kids, we go to work, blah. Or we’re part of a big epic story and all of this has meaning and purpose and value. And so it goes through um everything about the the human experience.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Mark Clark — From from life to death, the question of eternity, the question of soul, question of suffering, ah purpose, meaning, all this stuff. So um it comes out ah February 18 and people can pre-order it right now on Amazon. Really excited about it. So.

Rich Birch — Love it. Yeah, that’s great. we’ll like We’ll link to that in the show notes, but I’d strongly encourage, you know, pick up copy. This could be the kind of thing you do with your staff team. Hey, let’s read through this together.

Mark Clark — Yeah.

Rich Birch — Could be a good framing for a series down the road. Maybe you buy a bunch of books and give them away to people, that sort of thing. I would ah highly recommend that you, uh, you check that out again. That’s “The Problem of Life”.

Mark Clark — Yes.

Rich Birch — And it comes out here in a couple of weeks. So we’d love for you to pick up copies of that. Well, Mark, I appreciate you brother. Thank you for being here today.

Mark Clark — Appreciate you. Yeah.

Rich Birch — If people want to track with you or with the church, where do we want to send them online?

Mark Clark — Probably Instagram mark_clark, um, is where I post most things. And then obviously Facebook and then Bayside church, um, the, the podcast, the sermon, the YouTube. It’s, it’s a great church doing a lot of great things and 2025 is going to be awesome. So we’ve got a lot of cool creative stuff coming out of the pike.

Rich Birch — Thanks, Mark. Appreciate your brother. Have a good day.

Mark Clark — Thank you, sir. Thank you for what you do too. Thanks, Rich.

Rich Birch — Take care.