One of the largest and most influential churches in the country, Fellowship Church in Grapevine, Texas is best-known in ministry leadership circles as the home of the C3 Conference. And for Media Pastor and Director Dave Clark, the path to his current ministry position actually lead directly through that conference.
“I’ve always been involved in church,” Clark recalls. “My dad started out a music minster and became a pastor, so I found myself behind a sound board at the age of nine years old. Since that time, I’ve always stayed involved.” He continues, “I feel like God’s always given me a knack for technology. We got our family’s first PC when I was 12 years old, and I kind of gravitated towards learning everything it could do and figuring out how to tear it apart and put it back together.”
“We look closely at the shots, the light wash, at everything and anything that could distract from an engaging moment. I want the viewers to stay plugged in and stay tuned into that message.” - Dave Clark, Media Pastor and Director, Fellowship Church, Grapevine, TX.
After graduating from Valley Forge University in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, Clark accepted a staff position at National Community Church in Washington, DC, where he worked for five years. “Our senior pastor, Mark Batterson, Introduced me to Fellowship Church through the C3 conference, and when I first came to C3 my mind was blown,” he remembers.
"I really always wanted to be part of something non-traditional that would break the mold of people’s expectations of what they think 'church' is," says Dave Clark, media pastor. Learn more about his approach to church tech arts here.
“I wanted to do something different, something that would break the mold of what people thought when they thought of church. I grew up kind of traditional, and what Pastor Ed and the C3 conference was doing was just amazing.” When the opportunity came in 2009 for Clark to join the staff at Fellowship, he and his wife knew it was the right move. “Originally, I was brought on to oversee the post-production video area,” notes Clark, “and since that time I’ve just taken on more and more areas over the years, just whatever they’ve asked me to do. We’re not huge on titles at Fellowship, but in my current role I oversee all media, live production, and IT, as well as overseeing our C3 network of churches.” Of Fellowship’s fresh perspective, he says, “I’m really driven by working with pastor Ed and supporting his heart for evangelism, seeing people come to Christ, and discovering what we can do creatively to communicate the Bible in a fresh way. To me that’s really a page out of Jesus’ playbook. When you look at the life of Jesus you ask, ‘What did He do?’ He taught in parables, he told stories. That was really the creative medium of his day. As we communicate God’s purpose and plan for people’s lives, we try to do that creatively, just as Christ did.”
The Big Idea
Another area Fellowship Church is widely known for the creativity of their weekend worship experiences. “For us, programming starts with a small staff that meets or hosts a phone call with Pastor Ed to go over an idea for a series,” Clark explains. “Recently, we developed a series called ‘Blindspot,’ examining what it looks like to have a Christian worldview. From that original idea started the process of developing different titles and visuals to present various options.”
He adds, “Our team is big on creating options for leaders, rather than just pigeonholing them with just a single idea. Our goal is to flesh out some general approaches that we believe Pastor Ed will like, then start to think through creative elements or worship songs that speak to those ideas.”
Maybe there are secular songs, or dramas, or stories that would really tie into the main theme well. “Everything is ultimately designed to just really come surround and support that main idea. Sometimes the pastor will have very specific things he wants, but about 80% of the time he’s trusting our creative team to bring ideas to the whole experience,” he says. “Procrastination is the enemy. We try to always set ourselves up making sure we’ve done the things we know how to do, so we can have an open hand for last-minute creative requests. If you’ve put things off to the last minute you don’t have any margin. You end up in a place of contention, rather than being prepared for a last-minute curveball. Leading with a yes, presenting options, and getting the feedback from Pastor Ed helps us always be ready to make those ideas come to life.”
Tune In Tokyo
“Broadcast is a big part of what we do,” shares Clark. “We have our television show that we produce in house and broadcast to TBN, but we broadcast live to Facebook and YouTube each week, as well. We also stream the message live to our campuses on Sunday morning. Ultimately, it’s the message that’s the main thing for our campuses, for people watching online and those watching on TV.”
“We look closely at the shots, the light wash, at everything and anything that could distract from an engaging moment. I want the viewers to stay plugged in and stay tuned into that message, so we really pay attention to the details to make it excellent for people to really engage.” In order to make that scope of impact possible, the creative team at Fellowship keeps its focus on engaging the entire body of the church. “We leverage a lot of volunteers in our ministry,” says Clark. “Churches our size tend to contract a lot or utilize a big staff. We have just a handful of people here at our main campus that are media staff, all of whom do multiple things, including supporting all of the campuses.”
And he adds, “Here at Fellowship all of our cameras are run by volunteers. A lot of our control room is volunteer-staffed, our stage team is entirely volunteer, and almost everyone on stage in our worship team is volunteer, except for the worship pastor.”
“That’s the vision that comes from our pastor, wanting to give people the opportunity to really be the church,” continues Clark. “We work hard to make lots of different opportunities and lots of different roles for serving and belonging.”
Missional momentum
In spite of its size and scope, the leadership team at Fellowship is still working and learning the way through this unique season of ministry. “2020’s been a crazy year,” shares Clark. “For us it’s really been a time to get back to the basics. There’s still a big chunk of our congregation that hasn’t returned yet. We value the online, and we continue to do that and offer it.”
Clark adds, “We understand those who need to observe social distancing, but there is something significant that happens when we gather together for corporate worship, and we’re seeing that play out more and more. We’ll accommodate the social distancing for sure, but we don’t want to stop being the church. It’s re-focusing on back to the basics of what it takes to really be the church, to build relationships, to be there for people, to make the phone calls,” he stresses. “We hear people saying that they’re really looking for what we can offer, people wrestling with depression, and how coming back to church can really save those lives.” In addition, “We’re so excited to help churches who are re-starting. So many churches have been wracked by COVID, numerically, psychologically, just in so many ways. It breaks our hearts, and we really hope this upcoming C3 Conference will be a time of encouragement.”
Clark closes, “We want to help leaders get back to those basic, get back to focusing on people, on relationships and just on sharing the Gospel. We hope the C3 Conference is going to be like a big homecoming for a lot of these churches as we hopefully begin emerging from the end of this COVID season.”
