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’