The Gospel Truth
Loving Couple. Tina and Mark Stradiot have been married and ministering to family and others for decades.
“Maybe I’m just a ‘One Tune Tommy,’” Mark Stradiot ’81 says with a laugh, “but the main thing for me is the gospel.”
It was the gospel and Mark’s desire to study the Bible that brought him to Moody Bible Institute in 1978.
In 1977, Mark heard the gospel message at a Christian outreach called the Gospel House. “I believed it, and I went forward there after a service. I was 19 years old. That led to me ending up at Moody the following year. I knew I needed to study the Bible, so I went to Moody Bible Institute because, after all, their middle name is Bible!”
Mark’s major at Moody was Christian Education/Church Music, and he was active in several music groups.
“I come from a musical background,” Mark says. “My dad was a drummer. My older brother's a drummer. I’m a drummer. When I was a senior in high school, I was playing four or five nights a week.”
As a Moody student, he served as the student conductor for the Moody concert band for a year, traveling to perform concerts and fundraisers. He also led the senior ensemble.
“I have very fond memories of my years at Moody,” Mark says.
Unexpected career twist
After graduating in 1981, Mark took a position on the staff at the Gospel House where his salvation story had begun. He also followed a lead that had started at Moody. “One of my Moody instructors had a unique teaching style, and it turned out that he was also a Walk Thru The Bible instructor, so I went to a Walk Thru The Bible seminar in Wheaton, Illinois, while at Moody,” Mark says. “Afterwards I thought, I want to do this!”
At that time, Jim Wilkinson, the father of Walk Thru The Bible founder Bruce Wilkinson, was part of the hiring team. “You had to fill out some paperwork and send them tapes of yourself teaching. Jim Wilkinson got back to me, and he kind of said, ‘Well, you’re not quite what we’re looking for.’ I talked to him on the phone, and I said, ‘This is God’s will for my life!’
“And he said, ‘OK. Send me another tape.’ So I sent another tape, and they invited me to Atlanta to a training. I got trained and started teaching Walk Thru the Bible seminars in 1989. I’ve been with them for more than 35 years.”
The Gospel House became a church, and Mark served in a number of capacities for the next 30 years. During his tenure at the Gospel House, he was in charge of children’s ministry, became the minister of music, and then served as an associate pastor.
Keeping the main thing the main thing
After more than three decades, Mark left the Gospel House to pastor a church in Twinsburg, Ohio. Then, in the 1990s, he used his skills as a musician to write and produce two children’s records that featured Bible verses set to music. He connected with a favorite station, Moody Radio Cleveland (WCRF), and was invited to be a guest on the station’s Saturday morning show for children.
“It was called The Children’s Radio Fun House,” Mark says. “I was a guest there a number of times on Saturday mornings, and we’d have kids come into the studio and sing live. It was a fun experience.”
More than 20 years later, Mark has again found himself back in the WCRF studios. He has joined the Mornings with Brian show several times as part of the staff with True Freedom Ministries, an organization dedicated to bringing the gospel message to Ohioans experiencing homelessness, addiction, and incarceration.
Throughout all these shifts in ministry, Mark’s primary focus has remained the same. “The main thing for me is sharing the gospel,” Mark says. “It’s the death, burial, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins because without Him, we ain’t gettin’ to Heaven. It’s a ‘bottom line’ kind of thing for me.”
Bringing the gospel behind bars
Mark’s bottom line takes him to prisons in Ohio to minister to inmates. “I’m not into the administrative side of things,” he says. “What I get to do is share the gospel!”
Where the Lost are Found. On one of his weekly trips to a juvenile correctional facility, Mark shared the gospel along with music and chocolate candy.
Ron Eastwood, formerly part of the Mornings with Brian team, has seen Mark’s love for the message of salvation firsthand. “It doesn’t take much exposure to Pastor Mark to see that he is gospel-centric,” Ron says. “No question asked of him ends without somehow coming back around to Jesus. There are incarcerated folks who listen to Mornings With Brian, now Karl & Crew. We have gotten messages and sometimes phone calls from various institutions.”
Former Moody Radio host Brian Dahlen adds, “We are definitely passionate about the work of True Freedom Ministries and other ministries to incarcerated people. Men like Mark Stradiot and Mike Swiger [founder of TFM] are making a huge difference for the kingdom inside northeast Ohio prisons.”
Along with Bible studies, Mark teaches inmates about spiritual growth and Christian character development. In one penitentiary he presents a 10-week, Bible-based addiction recovery program. And he still does live events with Walk Thru the Bible. “I’m doing one in a prison this Friday,” he says. But what he enjoys sharing the most is the true and undiluted gospel.
‘We need Jesus’
Mark has been married to his wife, Tina, for 36 years, and the couple have eight children.
“My children need Jesus. The people at church need Jesus. The men in jail need Jesus, and we need Jesus. [These inmates] are people. I don’t know all their crimes or how big, bad, and ugly their crimes are. I know that ‘all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.’ And God is merciful.
“I’ve gone to Chillicothe Correctional where they had men on death row. They bring them in—all shackled this way and that, and I get to share with them. In the Ohio State Penitentiary, a super maximum security facility, the guards bring them shackled hands and feet and put them in what I call ‘cages’ that are not that big. But I can talk to them in there. They’re just like us. They need the gospel. I keep coming back to this because the Bible says the gospel is ‘the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believes’ (Romans 1:16).”
The way Mark sees it, he is no more deserving of the gospel than those on death row—all people are on level ground before the Lord. “It’s a privilege and an honor that I get to go into these prisons,” he says.
“I’ve told them we’re all on death row, so to speak; we’re all in this together. We all need Jesus. . . . God provided, through His Son, the death penalty payment that our sin deserves; and God raised Christ from the dead! Jesus Christ took our punishment for sin on Himself, and His death penalty payment can be credited to our account as we trust in Him, repent, and believe the gospel.”
“We’re all on death row, so to speak; we’re all in this together. We all need Jesus.”
Children Are a Heritage from the LORD
When Tina Stradiot brought up the idea of adoption after having two sons, her husband, Mark, was slow moving. “I didn’t know if I could love adopted children the same as blood,” he says. “Well! God has richly blessed me with such a beautiful family, and I love all my babies!”
The Stradiots adopted two daughters from India (Mahima at 18 months old and Sandhya at 4 years old), one daughter from China (Hui Ying at 14 months old), and two daughters and one son from Ethiopia (Dinkeshe at age 8, Deme at 4, and Balcha at 6).
Eight is Great! Mark surrounded by his kids. Back row, left to right: Mark Jr., Joey, Balcha; middle row: Dinkeshe, Mark, Sandhya; front row: Deme, Mahima, and Hui Ying.
Tina homeschooled all eight from kindergarten through 12th grade. Mark and Tina introduced their children to a variety of activities, hobbies, and opportunities, including soccer, swimming, baseball, wrestling, gymnastics, art, piano, strings, orchestra, debate, speech, and ballet.
“We (my wife mostly) would sign them up and ask God to provide a way if He wanted them in the program,” Mark says. “Sometimes that meant cleaning, catering, and coaching opportunities for us.”
While Mark and Tina have encouraged their kids to develop their God-given interests and abilities, they’ve always emphasized the priority of receiving Christ as personal Savior and Lord.
The Stradiots’ children now range in age from 17 to 34. “Whether coaching gymnastics, designing for a branding agency, teaching underprivileged high schoolers, serving in the food industry, or managing multi-units for a restaurant franchise, they each are right where God has placed them for His glory and their good. Children are a heritage from the Lord,” Mark says, referring to Psalm 127:3. “We are blessed to have been entrusted with them, praying that He will draw them closer to Himself and work in and through each of them.”
