I’ve had some fun stretching my Clark experience out in a few post. It’s been a lot of fun. I started off with Welcome to Clark, where I walk the reader through Clark’s beautifully innovative space. From there, I try my best Peter Parker, Daily Bugle impersonation, and interview Sean, the lead singer of Bellarive, and Clark’s guests for the event. Part 1 | Part 2
Today, we will hear from one of the guys who helped start it all…
Houston Clark
Houston’s wisdom was very apparent from the start so I hope you enjoy this interview as I pick his brain on people, space, and technologies.
Let’s start the conversation…
Me
First off, how are you doing?
Houston
I’m good. Flew in from Dallas this afternoon and had enough time to fun out of gas, thanks Mark Miller 😉, had dinner with the band (Bellarive), and have enjoyed coming back and meeting folks from all around the country.
Me
For sure. So Clark, how did all this come about for you guys. How did it start?
Houston
Right. Well Clark has been working with churches from a technical perspective for almost 20 years now. But what most people don’t realize is the passion that we have is not with the technology, it’s for creating platforms for the artists to be able to share either visually or soncially (?) their passion and their heart. So it’s really been about the creatives and creating platforms for them. So as we thought about people coming to Drive, what could we do that is a little bit unique that would allow us to show people that we have some interesting technical platforms but without the context of someone very creative sharing their heart, which is what the band did tonight. We’re not excited to show technology for technology sake. We want to give it some context.
Me
What’s your background in all this?
Houston
At a personal level, I grew up in a Christian home with Christian parents. George and I are brothers. (George is the other cofounder of Clark) And we’ve been working together for 20 years now. But before that, we always had a heart and passion for the church. We just didn’t really have an avenue to invest and share in that.
So before George and I started the company, I was a software developer and worked in the software industry for about 10 – 15 years. But when we began to realize when George and his passion around the performance and technical art was something we could build a company that could invest in the church, we quickly pivoted and wanted to work together.
So that’s how we started. So I come at it with a pure laymen’s perspective in terms of the technical or creative aspect but I know have almost 20 years experience working with churches all over the country. Both at a creative and technical level but also at a organizational and facility level. My background is more looking at the big picture. You know we can put systems in buildings. We can put people in buildings, but if they are not holistically working together, we may have made big investments in technology and space, but it’s not been a wise investment. So my role now is to come alongside churches and help them understand that technical decisions are not just technical decisions. They impact space and they impact people.
So we want to come alongside with professional and leadership development, organizational development resources, which we have on staff now, and facility planners and facility development resources that we have on staff now, to make sure when you’re investing these big dollars in these space and technologies, you have an organization that actually can leverage that. So it’s a real holistic approach.
It’s just been awesome to be able to build an organization that can help churches think holistically not just silo’d along those three areas. So we call it, helping churches connect the dots on how people, space, and technology interact.
Me
This is may be a weird question but it’s a cool question for me. The two chairs that sit out front, right when you walk in to Clark; I heard you were the person I needed to speak to about those. They look similar to Ludwig Mies van Der Rohe’s style of less is more.
Houston
I want to say definitively that those are chairs that developed along those lines. I have a passion for design, and for clean design. And you use the term, less is more, we tend to be in a culture that, just broadly than the church itself, that we deploy things because we can and not because we should. That needs to be a thoughtful process. Just because you have 30 moving lights doesn’t mean you need to have 30 moving lights to tell the story this week. So the real idea there was that you can eloquent but you can be very simple; and those chairs are impressive chairs to look at when you walk in. But they’re pretty simple too. I would like for people to look at Clark and say, boy, they know how to dive into the details and create environments that are clean, that are at the right level of expressive work, but they are not overwhelming and over the top.
Me
Last question, here at ChurchMag we love comics so with that who is you favorite comic book character, or even cartoon character.
Houston
Oh my gosh, let me think for a minute. (laughs) I always like the Flash for some reason. He could get where he needed to real quick. (laughs again) I’m sure I’ll remember another one after we’re done with this. (laughs)
Well that’s the last of the interviews from the Clark event. Thank you so much for entering into the conversation with me. For more on Clark visit there website here
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