Mark Kirk is our Senior Pastor. He and his wife Tracy were married in 1991. They now have a family of four daughters. Mark has served in pastoral ministry since 1992 and began Calvary Knoxville in 1997. As the founding and lead pastor, Mark oversees all areas of ministry. His primary focus, however, is our four corporate meeting times, where he teaches our adult congregation systematically through God’s word, equipping us for the work of the ministry. Mark desires that the congregation of Calvary would be the best-fed and most loved people in Knoxville and abroad.
Pastor Mark’s Testimony:
Growing up in the South made it very easy to attend church regularly, mainly because my dad was a pastor. Not only was it easy, but it was expected. I was very religious, but my life was not significantly different from that of my friends, even those who didn’t go to church. The church was boring to me, and I would have rather been doing almost anything else. I only went to do my religious duty to be free to do what I wanted. After all, I was taught and believed everyone was going to heaven anyway, so what I did didn’t matter.
As I got older, I began to find that I could do things I knew were wrong and still go to church without feeling guilty. My heart was growing colder and more challenging as time went by. And since I believed, as I said, that we were all going to heaven anyway, what did it matter? It wasn’t like I was killing anyone. Indeed, God graded me on a curve, and I wasn’t as bad as some.
I eventually graduated high school and left for the University of Tennessee. As I watched how everyone else lived around me, it seemed that worrying about what God thought didn’t matter. No one else seemed to care, and since the church was so dull and the Christianity I knew was so empty, I decided there was no reason to continue going to church at all. At least partying was fun, and I didn’t have to dress up. I left the church entirely then and began to play music professionally in clubs and restaurants. In this environment, I found that women were easy to come by, drinks were accessible to the singer, and people in the audience were more than willing to do drugs with me. They did them with me and gave them to me for free!
At last, I had everything the church couldn’t give me: women, parties, and popularity. But as a few years passed, it all became less exciting, and I wondered if this was all there was to life. I was becoming emptier and emptier as the days drew on. Being popular was nice, but would they still like me if I wasn’t a musician? And my friends in this world seemed as shallow as my life had become. With the drinking and drugs, it took more and more to satisfy me, and the effect was no longer as pleasurable. This drove me west to “find myself,” but I didn’t like what I found. I used to think I was a pretty good person, but now I felt dark, empty, and alone.
Shortly after this, I contacted my childhood sweetheart, who had also moved out west. She invited me to attend a church with her that was meeting at a hotel, which seemed strange for a traditional Southern boy who grew up in stained-glass church buildings. But my life was weird, so what could it hurt? Once I arrived, I immediately noticed this was very different from any church I had ever attended. First of all, they weren’t dressed up. They had blue jeans and even shorts on them! But the most shocking thing to me with my denominational background was that they took their Bibles to church! I had never seen this in the churches I attended, and it baffled me. Maybe they were fanatics. Perhaps it was a cult. But if taking their Bibles wasn’t strange enough, they seemed to believe them! I don’t mean to be sarcastic, but I had always been taught that the Bible had some truth, but it was not the truth itself. Hadn’t they been to college? Didn’t they know science had proven the Bible wrong? Didn’t they know you can’t take the Bible literally? After all, man, not God, wrote it. Right?
It disturbed me so much that I escaped to Phoenix, Arizona. I knew in my heart that if they were right, I was wrong, and my pride would not allow for that. While in Phoenix, my life became even more hollow, shallow, and meaningless. But how could that be? I had everything the world says will make you happy. Every college buddy would seethe with envy to see me now! You’re a walking Budweiser commercial. Fun, fun, fun! But I began to realize that Budweiser and the world had lied to me, and now I was trapped in an inescapable world.
A year and a half went by in my misery, and I finally decided that if I was going to do anything with my life, it had to be in music. I moved to Nashville, Tennessee, to “make it big.” Or so I thought. I played in a couple of places and got a bartending job at Bennigan’s to help cover the bills, but I still felt this hole in my heart. I thought, “Certainly, if I make it in music, I will be happy, won’t I?” Then suddenly, I remembered that group of Christians out west and wondered why they seemed so happy and fulfilled. I understood so much more than they did. Or did I? I decided to pray for real from my heart for the first time. I asked the Lord if I could know Him personally and have my life changed like those people in the “hotel church.” I asked Him to reveal Himself to me like He did to them. Still, deep inside, I knew I couldn’t just leave my current lifestyle. The drugs and alcohol had taken over my life, and I had complete control of it. I knew that without His direct intervention, I could never be free. So, I decided to ask for His help. I said, “Lord, if you want my life to change and if you want me to be set free from drugs and alcohol, You will have to do it, because I can’t. Please, Lord, help me and set me free.”
A week later, I was invited to a gig, a club job, in Murfreesboro, where a friend of mine was playing. I cordially accepted and went. During the evening, I became highly drunk as usual, and my friends begged me to stay the night and not drive. I agreed because they took my keys as best as I can remember, and I had no choice. Somehow, I found my keys and left when my friends weren’t around. When I was about a mile from my apartment, I lost control of my truck, and through the noise of screeching tires and breaking glass, I suddenly stopped in a parking lot. I later learned that I had totaled my truck. During the wreck, although I was intoxicated, I felt two hands on my upper chest holding me in place until I came to a stop. It seemed so surreal that it took me a while to wrap around it. The first thing I saw when I looked up was a church steeple. I had wrecked and totaled my truck in a church parking lot 7 days after I asked God to intervene in my life! The next thing I remember was a pair of blue lights pulling up to my truck. Right across the street, sitting at a 24-hour gas station and market, was a police car with two officers. The officers proceeded to handcuff me and put me in the back of the squad car; then, they briskly took me off to jail for the night under D.U.I. charges.
This may sound strange, but I now know this was one of the best days of my life. Had it not been for this day, I would not have fallen on my knees and asked the Lord to come into my life and rescue me shortly after. The moment I made that decision, I was overwhelmed with the reality that I was saved from sin and judgment and wholly forgiven of everything I had ever done wrong! For the first time, I understood what weeping meant. I felt as if 1000 pounds had fallen off of my back. I finally understood what those people out west meant when they said you could know God personally and not just religiously. I could talk to God, and He talked back! Not in an audible voice but in a voice in my head and heart that was as clear as anything verbal I had ever heard. The Bible made sense for the first time in my life; I understood it! Since then, I have had a burning passion to share what I have found with others, especially those who went to church and were religious but had no real relationship with God.
I eventually left Nashville and moved back west for several years of training at a Calvary Chapel in Santa Fe, New Mexico. While there, I was reunited with my childhood sweetheart, whom I married. Then, after seven years, God sent me and my family to Knoxville to teach His Word here as I had heard it taught out west: line by line and verse by verse through the entire Bible.
We arrived in Knoxville in June of 1997. Although we didn’t know anyone in the area family, we immediately started a Bible study at our apartment complex’s clubhouse. It was an exciting beginning. I had no degree or vocation to pay nearly enough to support a wife and two children. Which quickly became four over the next three years! I went to the only thing I knew I could do: wait tables like I had done years before. Our yearly salary was around $13,000, so all the rest was simply faith. God always showed Himself faithful. Over the first two and a half to three years, we supernaturally received surprise gifts and unexpected letters in the mail that paid the bills, even though we never asked for a penny. We were trusting in God to provide, and He did. It took a while for the study to get off the ground, but God took care of the rest. We put flyers on our apartment billboard and set a starting date for Thursday. We decided to begin with only having a midweek service, avoiding the traditional Wednesday so that we would not interfere with already established churches in our area.
We were shocked that our landlords had double-booked the clubhouse on the first night, and we were the losing party. They let us use it for free, and the others paid to rent it that night. Choosing not to give up, we returned to have a Bible study at the swimming pool. No one was there except my wife, my sister-in-law, her new baby, and myself. Honestly, at the time, I felt that my sister-in-law only came to support us on our first night and may not have even wanted to be there! I was somewhat discouraged sitting by the pool with no one there but family, but after a moment, someone who was swimming came over and joined us. We had four adults and one baby, but we had officially started. From there, people began to trickle in, and it didn’t take long to figure out we also needed a kids’ ministry. The problem was we had no one but my wife to do it. With four children of our own and only one room to meet, our apartment quickly became our kids’ church and nursery, and my wife became our kids’ ministry leader. But that was okay. I was wearing multiple hats as well. I was the greeter, worship leader, pastor, and counselor. We grew tremendously during this time, and so did the study.
After a year, we had grown to about 20 people and had expanded our meeting times to Sunday night, for which we met at a local church that had no evening service. We would either have to recommit to another year at the apartment complex or move on. We knew that if the study kept growing, we might not have enough room for another year in that location, so we prayed for a new place to live and meet. While we were praying, I was looking for a one-size-fits-all building–a place we could meet in but also live in. I pictured a big room with a dividing wall for our living quarters on one side and the church on the other. But as always, God had a bigger and better vision than I did. This is where the story gets interesting.
Not too long after that, we got an unexpected phone call. My sister-in-law knew a couple who needed a house-sitter until their home sold, and they asked if we would consider the job. When I say “job,” I don’t mean it was a paid position but that it required watching over the place. We heard it was nice, so we went to look at it, wondering if it would work as a church and a place to live. To our amazement and shock, we discovered it was a mansion in the wealthiest part of town! It was a four-story, 10,000-square-foot home with a pool and tennis court! What a great church! We took the offer and promptly moved in. We now had a place we could afford–it was free–and we also had plenty of room for the church to meet and grow for a while. We used the top floor for our kids’ ministry, the next floor for our living quarters, and the next for the adult services. We didn’t use the basement as it was not needed. A room on the west wing held 50 chairs, which soon began filling. Others began stepping forward to help with the ministry load, which freed my wife and me up in many areas. We stayed at this location for a year and a half, and by that time, we had close to 90 people coming to the church. We would need to find another location.
I came upon an old shopping center that had burned down, with only the shell having been rebuilt Although there would be lots of work involved, it looked like a perfect place We convinced the landlord to purchase the materials in exchange for us doing all the labor It was a win-win situation After about $70-80,000 dollars and 6 months of work, we were in our new church It was perfect for our needs at the time There was plenty of space for a kids’ church and a large sanctuary that could easily house around 250 adul s. We had grown to around 100 people, and although the building was a little big, it gave us room to grow. We were finally becoming more established. We had a worship team, multiple teachers for our children, and different ministries that were popping up reasonably regularly as God continued to grow us. After the first year, we doubled in size. Then, after 13 years in that location, God gave us 43 acres of land and a new building, our current home.
I don’t know what will come next, but I do know that God has been faithful since the beginning and will continue to be faithful to the end! As it says in Philippians 1:6, “being confident of this very thing, that He Who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Christ Jesus.”
In Him,
Pastor Mark