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unSeminary Podcast
The Art of Preaching: Balancing Depth and Accessibility in a Secular World with Mark Clark
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- [00:04]
A
Welcome to Unseminary's 2025 unpredictions. As we look ahead, it's easy to get swept up in what's new. But the real challenge for church leaders like you and me lies in staying focused on what endures. Hey, friends. Rich Burch here and I'm honored that you're joining us for this special series. We're diving into seven timeless topics that will shape and keep shaping church leadership in 2025 and beyond. Each episode brings expert insights to help you stay grounded in the principles that trul even as everything around us changes, get ready to forge the future by focusing on what lasts. Let's jump in. 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 continue 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 multi site church with locations across cities in Canada. But now s serves as the global senior pastor at a fantastic church, Bayside Church, a multi site church in California. Has authored several, several books, hosts a great podcast. Bayside was founded by Ray Johnson 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.
- [01:22]
B
Thank you, sir. Appreciate it. Always good to hang out with a fellow Canadian talking church stuff.
- [01:27]
A
Yeah, it's so good to connect. So we're today we're going to talk about 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.
- [01:39]
B
Yeah, so like you said, you know, founded a church in Vancouver in 2010. So I grew up in Toronto and then moved across to Vancouver to do studies. Actually I was, I was going to be a youth pastor. I went to a school up in Toronto near you, did a bachelor's degree and then was going to be a youth pastor. And then God threw a whole bunch of crazy circumstances, got my heart 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 very internationally renowned school. You know, J.I. packer was there. You know, 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 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, you know, teach, teach snotty nose students in college or something.
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A
Yes.
- [02:42]
B
And so, so that was the plan and I moved to Vancouver. I did my thesis on Romans 9 to 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, do a PhD and plant a church, start a church, reach people for Jesus, teach the Bible. And so that's what we did to that 2010. We gathered about 16 people in my house. My church blessed us, gave us about 35 more people and said we, 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, models of preaching where I could just do topicals every four weeks or six weeks or eight weeks and turn things around and, or being an expositor, I can try to fuse both those worlds together. Every week, you know, Keller talks about the idea of preaching to the older brother and the younger brother in the prodigal son parable every week 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 they're both lost in different ways and you need, they need to come to repentance. So I put that filter on my preaching every week. 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, and did a lot of, you know, 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 skeptic. 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 fantastic. So I did that for 12 years and a half years or so and then felt God calling me and my family down here to California for a new adventure. And so we've been here for two and a half years and having a blast down here. So, yes.
- [04:42]
A
So good friends, you should be following. You should be following Mark, you should be following Bayside. 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, you know, a friend of mine said, you know, that when you look at the book of Acts, the, 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 accessible and relevant to understand these life changing truths, apply them to our lives. 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. 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.
- [05:41]
B
That's great. Yeah, great question. And how to have a better marriage will grow your church as well. I remember actually we did a. So our philosophy was I would do like Bible stuff for, you know, so. So I remember the story, the story I tell at conferences in order to help people feel, feel, you know, 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 sure you only do topical and yada, yada, yada. So we started our church and, and I did a sermon series on the Gospel of Matthew. And it took us three and a half years to preach to the Gospel of Math.
- [06:18]
A
Quick series on Matthews on Matthew.
- [06:20]
B
And amazingly, the series was called are you ready for this? The Gospel of Matthew. Yeah.
- [06:28]
A
In secular Vancouver.
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B
Yeah, exactly. It was like, yeah, we didn't need any creative titles. We weren't juggling balls, you know, it was like, here's what we're gonna do. Secular Vancouver, three and a half years. The Church grew during that time by, you know, whatever, 2, 000 people and 700, actually more importantly, because you can get 700 people got baptized during that three and a half years. So, so, and I say all that just to say to your point, you don't have to choose. You could grow a church by preaching the Bible. Right. And that's what our foundation was. It was like, so we did three and a half years in Matthew, we did a year and a half in, in First Corinthians, probably nine months in Philippians, you know, so, 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 know, there's calendars, rhythms. Don't fight them, 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, New Year, and in Canada, first week of September down here, first two weeks of August, the fall comeback, people come back in vacation. Yep. Do the hand. 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 going to talk. So we used to do skeptic stuff. So we did a series where we would answer. And this is where my first book grew out of preaching the series, where it was like, hey, all the big skeptical questions, science, the Bible, hell, hypocrisy in the church, you know, all that evil and suffering. Hey, we're going to 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 going to be the biggest we ever grow in one weekend, which is crazy. Then we did a marriage one the next year. And I think we grew by 1200 people in a weekend. And the crazy thing is is then they stayed, right?
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A
Yeah, they didn't leave.
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B
So it wasn't like we had this incremental growth where we grew by 1400 that year. We, we grew by it in one week. And then they just. That was the church now, which was obviously, that's crazy. It's not normal. So don't, like, beat yourself up if that's not your experience. But. So those topical moments are important. Of course. Right. 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.
- [09:15]
A
Yes.
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B
And you know those preachers, right? Yeah.
- [09:17]
A
Read through the concordance and be fine, you know.
- [09:20]
B
Exactly. Yeah. I'm just gonna preach Isaiah. Mark told me I could preach Isaiah for three years and my church will grow and not give any cultural commentary or illustrations or stories or be fun or whatever. It's like. No, no, that's not what I'm saying. Yeah. I'm saying you gotta. It's a sin to make the Bible boring. You gotta take the Bible and now you gotta go. You got to work hard to create those cultural connections to be, as Keller would say, winsome and persuasive. You got to constantly be engaging your audience now with a very low attention span. 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 engage with, you know, coming back to the skeptical hermeneutic of, like, 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 in Christianity and thinks all of this is a joke, and every sermon, I put that filter on. And I said, if I'm going to preach this text, how do I explain everything I'm saying to them? Right. In a winsome and persuasive way that will keep them engaged, get them to 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.
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A
Yes.
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B
I will start with a story, and now I will just be boring for 35 minutes. You know, it's like, no, no, no, it doesn't work. That's not what we're talking about. Right? Yeah. You got to come in and out. You know, that's good.
- [10:53]
A
So, 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 realize, oh, I've been around for a while, and there has been, 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.
- [11:16]
B
Yeah.
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A
And, you know, we used to joke, 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 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, you know, can you please just entertain me for the next hour? They're. They're coming with, like, some pressing questions. You mentioned there this idea of working hard, that you got to work hard. 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 know, prep a 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?
- [12:02]
B
Yeah, that's great. Question. So when I get to meet with preachers and talk to them, one of the things that. That historically, when I've. 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 thanks for coming to the seminar, but 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. Because what it takes is sacrifice. Yep. What it takes is for you, there's this great episode, you know, that coffee and cars with comedians or whatever. Yes.
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A
Yeah, yeah. With Seinfeld.
- [12:56]
B
Yeah, yeah. In season. I think it's season one, he. He goes out for coffee with Kramer, you know, Michael Richards. 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, because we watch Seinfeld we think Kramer's just sliding in the door and making it up. Right. But there's a very technical thing 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. And Michael says, oh, really? You saw me doing that? That's really weird. And then he says, the one regret. Michael says, the one regret I have is that I feel like I didn't enjoy the 90s because I was in a room just, like, slaving away at this process. And this character. And Jerry looks at him and just, like, in a moment of inspiration says, no, no, no. It wasn't your job to enjoy it. Your job was to do the sacrifice. So the audience enjoyed it. Wow. For me, that's the message to preachers. It's like, bro, if. Or, 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. So usually for me, I'll do for a sermon in particular, a series of a different. Because we work with, you know, groups of people and say, what should we preach? And come up with a series and design and production also. But for. 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 after, 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 comment, my lap at 9pm with a pen and a coffee, you know, whatever, right? So it's all just part of life. 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.
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A
And are you gathering those somehow in a system? Are you like, do you write those out or notes on your phone?
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B
I'll throw it on a phone. If I think, oh, I'm gonna forget this, you know, I'll just put it on my apple. I'll just be like, you know, you know, plane ride, flight attendant. Yeah, funny thing or whatever. They're just, okay, I know what the story is. And. But. But you're constantly. And you got to be. You got to 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.
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A
Make the connection.
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B
Yeah, and make a funny moment here or make a profound moment here with the most mundane situation that happened in my life. That's good. So, so for instance, this past weekend I Did you know Hebrews. So, okay, great example. So Hebrews 12, verse 1 and 2 for, for the joy set before him, he endured the cross. Okay, so we could just say that 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 that is providing salvation for us. We in life can 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. 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. One's puking and there's a flight attendant telling us this, you know, and I just kind of tell this funny story for two minutes or three and it's all these like, you know, all these comedy of errors that are terrible. It's awful. 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. So I could endure all this nonsense because of what? Anyway, point being, you're looking for these mundane things in life to become great illustrations.
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A
Yeah, for sure.
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B
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, right. Don't tell a joke. A joke, yes, yes, it's gonna be rough, but tell stories that are funny and be very self deprecating. You know, don't make yourself that he the hero of the story. You know, always beat up on yourself a little bit and play the fool a little bit because people can do that. So anyway, all that to say Thursday commentaries, Friday commentaries. I'm writing it out and usually what I do is by the end of Friday I have a page now it's a Google Doc. 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 where I've just like written sentences, paragraphs out, illustrations out to some degree so I can remember them bolded through the manuscript. And then by Saturday, now it's Saturday morning. It used to be Saturday night because I. Now I preach Saturday night. So. 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, Right. Because those are workdays. Yeah. So 9:00am, 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, you always do you.
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A
Have the best intentions. 35 minutes, best intentions.
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B
And you guys, you know, Jeff, your pastor puts me on the clock too, and I'm like, oh, my gosh, you got this big clock ticking. Then I'm like, I can't do that. So. 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, so back when I had Sunday services, that was all Saturday. I would say goodbye to my family at 5pm and that's the discipline. My family knew I was not around after 5pm that means I'm not going to any friends, birthday parties. My life. That is my life. 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. 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. Yeah. And I'm preaching it out loud. 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's. And wake up at 5am, go out to a parking lot, preach it again out loud. Wow. For an hour with. So I'm getting it all in my brain now. This we're talking about. I'm doing this when I had 150 people at my church. Yes, yes, thousands. Yes, 150. That's. That's the sacrifice. Right.
- [19:56]
A
That's what I want. People to pick up on, though. I. Because I think there are folks like, I have just such a high value on this part of what we do as a church. I'm not. 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, I. For years, I had a lead pastor I worked for, and he would say, like, hey, what can I work on this week? 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.
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B
They.
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A
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. People.
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B
Yeah, right.
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A
I think that happens.
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B
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, and most of the room just sits there and goes, shoot. Now that you've explained it, you're right. Yes. You know, and part of that came from. I was doing this in my mid-20s, and then all the way through my 30s, and there was a. And there still is an obsessive, and it really is an obsession. It has to be. Right now. It helps that I actually have a mental disorder called OCD and Tourette's that actually my brain does.
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A
Superpower.
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B
Yeah, exactly. I literally obsess about every turn of phrase 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. But I think a little bit more obsession, to your point, would be helpful if we realize that this 40 minutes of, as Carrie, our colleague, has pointed out many times, that, you know, 80% of people go to a church because of the preaching. And 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. 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 fire in my bones 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, they're all dead and they're all going to 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.
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A
Yes.
- [22:34]
B
And every Bible text is the most important Bible. If you walked in and I was preaching Zephaniah 3, you would think I thought this was the most important Bible verse.
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A
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, you know, it's like the table is between me and our. And our audience, you know, which I loved. It was, come, let me at you. Let me at you. It was like the table was the only thing that was holding you back, which I think is great. 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. Oh, thanks. 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. That lots of people are. They're working hard. But, like, you seem to continue to polish to. And so 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. Because I think it gets harder over time. As an observer on the outside, I think the second decade and the third decade are much harder than the first. And like, I think they get progressively harder.
- [24:01]
B
That's a great point because, like, with anything naturally, psychologically, when you're not doing something fresh, it gets stale. And so how do you.
- [24:10]
A
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 punchline. People know what you're going to talk about.
- [24:36]
B
Great.
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A
So how are you keeping it fresh?
- [24:38]
B
Yeah, great, Great question. So I. This past Christmas Eve is interesting. So we had 12 services, and Ray's like, how many do you want to do? And I was like, well, I'll do nine, eight. Give somebody else some reps in front of a Christmas Eve audience, which down here is crazy. Like, literally probably 35,000 people just at this campus alone through those places, and they come, jacked up. They come, they bring their friends. Like, it's. I mean, Canada has a little bit of this, but definitely more in America 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? Like, this is Christmas Eve. This is the super bowl of preaching. And Ray's point backstage after he heard my first sermon, and you're always tweaking. You got nine chances at it, so you're going to mess around with a. He's just like. 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. So. But that, to your point, takes a lot of hard work. I can tell you. I felt the pressure, and I feel the pressure of the Christmas Eve service maybe more than any sermon all year. It's just such a staple here. They put in so much time and energy and effort, right? And they do this, 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, I would constantly give people an opportunity to come to Christ. But baptism was almost seen philosophically, methodologically, as, like, this is the raising of the hand. It's like, hey, if you come to Christ, every two months, we're going to 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 going to give you an opportunity. Raise your hand. And I just don't have a ton of experience in it. So I work 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 crazy. We pray for them. 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. 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. Right, right. This is.
- [27:02]
A
I don't want to.
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B
Constantly in the background weekend. This is so good. I'm gonna.
- [27:05]
A
Wait. I'm keeping that bullet in the holster. We're not firing that one.
- [27:09]
B
No one's gonna hear this story until. Until Christmas Eve. And so, yeah, pile a bunch of those up. And then, you know, you're. You know, 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. Find the Christmas Eve sermon I preached at Bayside this past weekend, because we'll do that. 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 sp. There was no right lull. Like, there's constant. You're just boom, boom, boom. 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. Have you ever seen Deadpool and Wolverine? That movie. Well, you don't have to admit this, but anyways, there's a. There's a. There's a movie hypothetically called. Yes, hypothetically, that is. It's very dirty and there's a lot of f bombs or whatever. But the thing about it is, when I watched it with the crowd, there's a laugh and something's happening right where you're reacting. Like every 30 seconds.
- [28:13]
A
Yeah.
- [28:14]
B
There's like a boom and then a boom and then a boom. And then it was like. It's just two straight hours of every 30 seconds of something.
- [28:21]
A
Yes.
- [28:21]
B
And any Christmas Eve service feel.
- [28:24]
A
Felt like had that feel to it.
- [28:25]
B
Yeah. So anyway, so. But to your point, that Takes a.
- [28:27]
A
Lot less F bombs.
- [28:28]
B
Hopefully a few less F bombs. Yes. 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 it's a good. I actually ran it through with my wife. I didn't preach it to her, but I went, I'm gonna do this, then I'm gonna do this, then I'm gonna do this, then I'm gonna. What do you think? How should I move that around? And I was doing that right up until the final sermon, you know, the ninth one, I was still fiddling with order 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, 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 counting, like what I'm helping mentor people. I'm like, listen, you need more illustrations in this sermon. It doesn't mean they need to be 18 minutes long. Right. That's not what I mean. Right.
- [29:28]
A
And I don't do three minutes on this. Move on two. Three minutes on that.
- [29:31]
B
Yeah. Or even 30 seconds. Right. 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. Yeah. Let it naturally flow out of the text and, and not it be like as some communicate. It's like, what is he telling this story for? I don't.
- [29:54]
A
Right.
- [29:54]
B
What is it with anything?
- [29:56]
A
Yeah, yeah. It's a long story to get to a short point.
- [29:58]
B
Right.
- [29:58]
A
Like it's.
- [29:59]
B
Yeah. Which I've been guilty of as well.
- [30:01]
A
Yeah.
- [30:02]
B
It's like make your, make your points come out of the text, make them pointed, make them fun. But, but you can either. You can do a bunch of 20, 30 seconds illustration.
- [30:11]
A
Sprinkle those in.
- [30:12]
B
You don't need to feel like I'm going back to the classic like in World War II. General Pat Right, right, right. Make it come out of your own life too.
- [30:21]
A
Yeah, that's good. So kind of one other area 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 do your thing? Well, how can we. 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%, you know, so we've got to do what we can to try to create space for that. What would your advice be? What would you say to try to help encourage. What could we do to support teaching, guys?
- [31:31]
B
Well, yeah, that's a great, great question. It's. It's really hard because what I. What I want to say is making sure that you're giving honest feedback about the quality, because obviously quality is, is. Is key. Content is number one. But content needs to be heard. So quality is how content is heard. 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. Right. 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. Nobody. 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? Right. 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. 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 about what you should do, like an idea, hey, should we do this? Should we do that? The problem is. What did he call it? He called it, like the HP Something is basically the dynamic of the highest perfect paid person. HPP or something. Is this a normal, you know, hpp?
- [32:56]
A
No, no, he. This is. He has talked about this. Yeah.
- [32:58]
B
Okay.
- [32:59]
A
Just remembering their opinion matters the most.
- [33:01]
B
On whatever person in the room always sways. Yep. But. And, and that's just a normal sociological dynamic. Yes. Question is, is that actually the best play 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. 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 could 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. Right. To them. That's good. It might not be in a. It shouldn't probably be in a room full of people.
- [33:56]
A
Yeah, exactly. Because around the water cooler when everybody's listening in, probably not.
- [34:01]
B
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 because they might be feeling stuck. 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, you know, whatever. So that would be super helpful 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?
- [34:36]
A
Free up?
- [34:36]
B
Yeah, yeah. To almost justify their time on it. Like you said, like, telling them. Because sometimes they feel bad. Sometimes they feel like, oh, I shouldn't be sitting here for 15 hours working on a sermon in the office or whatever. And it's like, no, no. Yeah. That's literally what we pay you to do.
- [34:51]
A
Yeah.
- [34:52]
B
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 hours. We don't.
- [35:03]
A
Yeah, that, that's been my experience. More that. More. Lots of communicators, they under, they ironically undervalue what they do in their mind. More. More than they should. Like, I'm like, no, no, it's like critically important. Like, it's not. 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 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.
- [35:38]
B
Yeah.
- [35:38]
A
So that you could knock it out of the part every single week. Because it's critically important. Like, I think that's. It's not, it's not like a secondary piece of the puzzle. Well, 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.
- [36:01]
B
Yeah, so it's called the Mark Clark Podcast. Again, very, very creative. Come up with that. 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 enough. So what we came up with was, well, let's take certain. I mean, you're preaching every week anyway. You have this 10 years of sermons that are online probably. 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. 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.
- [37:17]
A
So, 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, this 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. Also. You. You've written, which we haven't even really got into. You've written a number of just really compelling books that I found, you know, personally so helpful 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?
- [37:53]
B
Yeah, so. So a couple years ago, I wrote, as I mentioned, Problem of God, which was like a skeptics 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. And, you know, the Gospels and all this stuff. And now the Problem of Life kind of rounds off the children. You know, this is great. There's this great quote by opening, you know, Calvin's Institutes, one of the great, you know, they say maybe the greatest treatise on theology ever written. And the opening line is, basically, we need to find two things. We need to find the knowledge of God and the knowledge of ourselves. So the way 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? What is it? What is. What is this longing in us 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 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 everything about the human experience from, from life to death, the question of eternity, the question of soul, question of suffering, purpose, meaning, all this stuff. So it comes out February 18th and people can pre order it right now on Amazon. Really excited about it. So love it.
- [39:28]
A
Yeah, that's great. 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. 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 highly recommend that you, you check that out again. That's the problem of life. And it comes out here in a couple 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. If people want to track with you or with the church, where do we want to send them online?
- [39:56]
B
Probably Instagram. MarkClark is where I post most things and then obviously Facebook and then Bayside Church, the podcast, the podcast, the sermon, the YouTube. It's a great church doing a lot of great things and 2025 is going to be awesome. So we got a lot of cool, creative stuff coming down the pike.
- [40:14]
A
So thanks, Mark. Appreciate you, brother. Have a good day.
- [40:17]
B
Thank you for what you do too. Thanks.
- [40:20]
A
Thanks for joining us on this journey through Unseminary's 2025 unpredictions. Stay grounded in what matters and let's keep forging the future of the church together. For show notes, more insights, resources to help support you all year, head over to unseminary.com and sign up for our email list. See you next time. Thanks, friends.
- [40:57]
B
Sa.