By Steve Bertel
(Editor’s note: This is the first installment of a two-part article.)
In a world where hulky young men built like refrigerators purposely crash into each other along the scrimmage line many times during a four-hour period … and where anger and frustration and profanity are pretty much the norm … Mark Thornton is a voice of peace and reassurance.
As the volunteer chaplain of the Boise State University football team, many know Mark is a guiding light of sorts for those in the school’s sports program who are not only long-time followers of Jesus, but those who are also new to the faith.
But few know of his dark past.
His father was a pastor. “So I basically grew up in church,” Mark said. However, there was never any indication he was going to follow in his father’s footsteps.
Because Mark had his sights set on playing football.
Graduating from high school in Sacramento and attending junior college in Monterey, he moved to Boise in 1984 and continued his education at Boise State, while his immediate family continued living in California. “I had football in my blood,” he stated. “So I came to Boise State thinking I was going to do big things as far as impacting the sports program. But, back then, I was not living for the Lord. I was living the wild life.” In fact, it wasn’t long before “I got into, well, a bit of legal trouble, and washed out. I didn’t finish my time as a player very well.”
A few years later, more legal trouble – much more – which led to him facing a possible 25-years-to-life prison sentence. At the time, he owned and managed a Boise bar, what he calls a “combination pub and deli.” One day, while dutifully overseeing the business’ routine operations, he facilitated a clandestine cocaine deal out of his back office. Little did he know, the police had used a confidential informant to set it up.
To compound his troubles, he lost two close family members only months apart. In January, 1992, his oldest sister passed away, the first in his immediate family to do so. Because of so many sad memories, “My mother didn’t want to be home for Mother’s Day. So my family – my mother, father, nieces, and nephews – all came up here to Boise,” Mark recalled. But “while my parents and family were here, I was wrestling with not only the loss of my sister, but with this felony drug charge and potential prison sentence. What’s more, I knew I couldn’t let any of my family members know what was going on because they were already grieving the death of my sister.”
On the day his family was leaving to return home to California, Mark took his father on a tour of his business, the “pub and deli.” Afterward, his father looked him straight in the eyes and said, “Son, I’m proud of you.” But it bewildered Mark. “Was he proud of me because I owned a bar? Was he proud because I owned a business? At that time, I wasn’t really tracking with what he meant. So I just let it go.” At the time, Mark didn’t understand that his father’s comments were actually a prophetic blessing. “He knew before I deserved it,” he said.
Later, as the family was driving through Winnemucca on its way back home, his father suffered a sudden heart attack and died. “So I lost my sister in January, got arrested in February, and lost my dad in May,” said Mark.
As for his pending prison sentence, Mark always felt confident he “would get out of it.” But he didn’t. He ended up reaching a plea bargain agreement with prosecutors – pleading guilty to delivery of a controlled substance – which would require he spend from three-and-a-half to ten years behind bars. Not the best deal, but Mark knew it was far better than a life sentence.
He also knew, before he began serving his time at the Idaho State Correctional Institution (the state prison south of Boise), he would have to break the bad news to his still-grieving mother. When he finally did, “She simply told me, ‘You’ve caused me too much grief. I’m washing my hands of you,’” he recalled. “And I understood what she was saying, where she was coming from. I couldn’t have controlled my sister’s death. I couldn’t have controlled my father’s death. But I certainly could have controlled my own actions.”
He found himself alone. Locked away. In prison. With no future to speak of. But, looking back on it today, Mark realizes it was all part of God’s plan “… because, if it had not been for that prison sentence, my life would not have turned around.”
He went on to explain, “There’s a difference between believing in Christ and following Christ. The Bible says demons even believe in Christ, but it doesn’t change their behavior. So for me, I knew I had to become a follower of Christ in order for my behavior to change.” In August, 1992, Mark experienced what he called a “Joseph moment” behind bars and, as a result, decided to really, truly, honestly become a follower of the Lord. “I had given myself to the Lord at a young age. Probably several times. I grew up in church. I knew Scripture. There was never a season in my life when I did not attend church. So, in my prison cell, I just went to God. I told him, ‘I know, in Hebrews 13:5, you said, ‘I will never leave you nor forsake you.’ So I’m asking you to please come into my heart now. For good. And never leave me.’
“I really didn’t have any plans for when I got out of prison, because my whole trajectory had been football,” he continued. “When that didn’t pan out, I became a business owner. And when that didn’t pan out, I didn’t know what I was going to do. But I knew I wasn’t going to turn back. I was determined to follow Jesus.”
So, while still incarcerated, Mark began studying the Bible more, began attending Promise Keepers meetings, and soon became the prison’s chaplain director. “I was going back to what I saw my father do, as far as ministry. So at that point, I was just going to love on the Lord, share my testimony, let people know what God had done in my life … and let Him direct my steps from there,” he said.
Mark was released from prison and placed on parole in October, 1995. “One of the teachers who would come out to the prison attended the Northview Bible Church in west Boise. So that’s where I started going; from watching his life, I knew I wanted to follow him. So I [was comfortable knowing] I had a place to worship,” he recalled. He joined Northview’s music worship team and helped in Bible study groups.
About a year later, while working in the Promise Keepers Idaho office, he began attending what is now Capital Church, on busy Fairview Avenue, between Boise and Meridian.
Then, another life-changing event. “In April of 1997, Pastor Ken Wilde came up to me and said, ‘God told me you are going to be my worship pastor.’
“But I was skeptical. I told Pastor Wilde, ‘Okay, but you don’t know me. You don’t know my story. I’m here to serve, but do you really want to put me on the platform?’”
He did. Later that month, Mark was hired as the one of the church’s worship directors. In fact, he has held several leadership positions at Capital Church over the years; he currently serves as a teaching pastor, the Men’s Ministry Director, and the church’s Community Pastor.
In the latter role, Mark has helped spearhead efforts to not only work with other churches in the area, but to also hold public “Worship in the Park” and “Adopt-a-Block” events. “The heartbeat of the ministry is to get out into the community, and share the gospel and the love of Jesus,” he pointed out. “We felt we didn’t need [internationally-known] Christian speakers like Greg Laurie or Luis Palau; we simply wanted to do this together and show the world what unity with Christ – and true generosity in the name of Jesus – looks like.” Mark later helped expand that outreach with the group “I Heart Treasure Valley,” branching out and bringing churches together to help serve schools, single mothers, the elderly, and even area Boys and Girls Clubs, not only serving those groups, but showing them why the volunteers were serving.
Due to those community outreach efforts, Mark eventually became the volunteer chaplain of the BSU football team. “As an alumni, BSU asked me to come and speak to the football team. So I did that a couple of times,” he said.
“It began in 2010, when Boise State played Virginia Tech in Washington, D.C.; the director of football operations called me up and said, ‘Mark, we were supposed to get the [Virginia Tech] Redskins’ chaplain to hold chapel before the game, but he became unavailable. Do you know any pastors from the Washington, D.C. area who could help us out?’
“Well, Capital Church has a national prayer center back there. I was going back there anyway to do a prayer trip and watch the game. So I told him, ‘Well, I’ll be there. I can do it, if you would like.’
“He said, ‘You would really do that for me?’
“I said ‘Sure. Why wouldn’t I?”’
So he held not only that chapel, but another one at another BSU game later that year, at the Maaco Bowl in Las Vegas – one that became personal for Mark on two levels. First, “… because I had played at BSU, and knew what it was like to finish your career unfulfilled.”
And secondly, because, “The other chaplain, who was from UNLV, gave a good ‘For-God-so-loved-the-world’ message but, to me, issues and turmoil were still going through these young men’s hearts and minds because of their season of life. They had hopes and dreams of going to the NFL, as does any college football player. Yet, very few of them make it. And I didn’t want those guys to get so disappointed that they would go out like I went out, and perhaps go through some of the same struggles I had gone through. When I was a student at BSU, I thought my identity was being a football player; when, in reality, being a football player is an assignment, not an identity. Half the reason I got in trouble was that I was searching for love in all the wrong places.”
Prior to the bowl game, local chaplains from two groups, the Fellowship of Christian Athletes and Athletes in Action, pretty much divided BSU chaplain duties. But only for home games, since many were unavailable – or unwilling – to travel. “So they did the home games, and I made myself available for the away games,” Mark explained.
Saturday away games posed particular physical challenges. “Imagine getting home at five in the morning from a game, after standing on the field for some four hours and then traveling back home on a plane, then having to preach at a Sunday morning worship service only two hours later,” Mark said. The rigorous schedule began to wear on him. “I remember when BSU played a game in Hawaii, I misjudged the time difference. I got home at 5:30 a.m. on a Sunday. And I was scheduled to preach that morning. It was a 6 ½-hour flight, and I didn’t get any sleep. Then we did a triple-overtime game at Colorado State. The game didn’t end until 2 o’clock in the morning, and I didn’t get home until 4:30. Finally, I thought ‘Why am I putting myself through this?’”
So, after getting the go-ahead from the Capital Church leaders, Mark removed himself from the Sunday morning preaching schedule to become more available to the football team. “I’m still attending church. I’m still there as a staff person. But I’m not leading worship or preaching,” he said. “So now, my priority to the church is first, the outreach to the football team, then the outreach to the community.” And today, he feels, “It was a confirmation of: ‘You’re in the right place now, so keep doing what you’re doing.’”
In 2016, BSU asked Mark to become the team’s only chaplain, which entailed attending both the home games and traveling with the team to away games, replacing the other chaplains. “I never would have positioned myself to be the only chaplain,” he admitted. “The Lord had to work through the coaches for me to do it, because I never would have tried to do it on my own. I felt really bad for the other guys [of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes and Athletes in Action] when it happened. I felt like I was replacing them. In hindsight, though, it was God thing that I became the only chaplain, simply because it creates consistency with the players.
“The convenience for me was: I worked for a church. The church was my full-time job. So I didn’t have the pressures the other chaplains did.” Plus, being a former Bronco himself, Mark was able to connect with the student-athletes in ways the other chaplains couldn’t. “It wasn’t that they did not have a genuine love for our players. But it was easier for me to understand where these guys’ (the players’) heads were at. There’s a lot of notoriety in playing for Boise State, but it has a shelf life, so to speak. So I tell the guys, ‘Make the most of this opportunity you’ve been given.’ Like the adage says, ‘Opportunities of a lifetime must be seized in the lifetime of the opportunities.’”
Today, as the team’s sole chaplain, Mark conducts optional 30-minute chapel services, usually the evening before each game – last year, he conducted 39 services – and also-optional 60- to 90-minute Bible study sessions with the players; sometimes, even one-on-one sessions to better accommodate the players’ demanding schedules.
“People don’t understand how crazy their schedules are and how much time these guys put into strategizing, studying game films, and practicing. They spend close to 40 hours a week just with stuff pertaining to the game. That’s not to mention going to school, sleeping, or eating,” Mark pointed out. “That’s why I tell the players ‘I will bring the gospel to you. On your schedule.’ There’s the famous quote ‘People don’t care how much you know, until they know how much you care.’ So I always make myself available for the guys; I go out of my way to serve them. That’s the heart of what I do.”
As a former Bronco himself, Mark has learned to minister to the players on their own level, often pulling from his “Famous Quotes Tool Box” to help them better understand biblical teachings. For instance, if BSU is about to go up against a particularly tough team, “I use the ‘opportunities of a lifetime’ quote. The players realize they need to make the best of that game, that opportunity,” he explained. “It helps the players understand the principle – but then, I give them the spiritual applications; I point them back to the gospel and say, ‘But I’m not talking about the game. I’m talking about life. I’m talking about the opportunities you have every day to do something, to be the salt and light of the world. Are you making the best of that? You may have other moments, but you’ll never get that moment back. So make the most of that opportunity.’ … And it becomes food for thought.”
However, when Mark first accepted the role of the Broncos’ team chaplain, little did he know that position would soon lead to what he calls the greatest challenge of his life, a challenge that would put both him and Boise State University administrators in the center of a headline-making controversy.
Be sure to read all about that … and how God has miraculously worked in the school’s sports program, and in one player’s life in particular … in our upcoming November/December issue!
Steve Bertel is a multi-award-winning professional radio, television, print media, and social media journalist, who retired after a 30-year broadcasting career. Now a busy freelance writer, he released his debut suspense novel, “Dolphins of an Unjust Sea,” available on both Amazon and Kindle. Steve and his wife of 43 years live in Meridian. He can be reached at stevebertel65@gmail.com.
