I grew up in a Christian family and in a Bible teaching church. I accepted Christ as my personal savior at the age of 10 and have been striving to live for him ever since. When I was 20 years old and in college, I felt the Lord calling me into a career in full-time Christian camp ministry. It was like everything clicked and I could see what God had been preparing me for my entire life. I did everything I could to prepare myself for this career, I changed my major in college to recreation business management, I sought out internships at camps and similar organizations, and gathered as much knowledge as I could to help me along the way.
After college, I was hired on at a Christian camp in Northern California (a long way from my home state of Tennessee), and I served for almost 2 years as the assistant to the director of Camp Alta. The Lord then took me to my next position as assistant director of Guest Services and Recreation at Jenness Park Christian Camp, also in Northern California. Being surrounded by Godly staff members at both of these blessed camps taught me a lot about being a Servant and how the camp staff is truly a ministry team of servants to the Lord.
During this time, the Lord led me into my niche or specialty area in the camp team, and that is recreation and high-adventure programs. After working in this area of camp ministry for a few years, it became evident that I needed some experience in professional challenge course work to gain expertise and credibility. The Lord led me to my next job, this time in Colorado. Adventure Experiences Inc. operates a professional challenge course company who builds courses all over the world, runs certification programs worldwide for challenge course facilitators, sells all the high adventure equipment, and also operates a Christian wilderness camp in Colorado during the summer months. This was the perfect match for me, during the winter and spring I was gaining professional experience as a traveling challenge course facilitator trainer, spending time on the course construction crew, and summer through fall, serving as the operations manager of the summer camp in Colorado.
After two years with AEI, I felt a different type of calling, as the Lord led me to serve my time in the military. I reluctantly put my camp career on hold while I became an infantry officer in the US Army. After a year and a half of training at Fort Benning, Georgia, honing my leadership skills, I joined my combat unit at Fort Hood, Texas. I was put in charge of a platoon of 40 infantry soldiers, whom I served with for another 2 years to include a year deployed to Iraq. The whole time in the military, I looked forward to when my time commitment would be over and I could go back to the camp life.
In November 2009, my time committment to the active duty ended and I returned to the civilian life. I got engaged to Melanie Meyer and we were married in October 2010. After that, the Lord sent me to serve at Glorieta Conference center in New Mexico as the Recreation Manager. That position was ended after a year when Glorieta was closed and the entire staff was laid off as a new owner for the ministry was sought out. From New Mexico, God led us to Kentucky where I served as the Associate Director at Jonathan Creek Christian Camp. God has richly blessed us and we announced the birth of our first child, Jameson Gregory Clark in November 2012.
In November 2013 the Lord called us to the Rocky Mountains where I am currently serving as the Director of Recreation and Outdoor Education Programs at Ponderosa Christian Camp and Retreat Center in Larkspur, CO. God blessed us again in 2015 with the birth of our daughter Evelynn Kay Clark in November.
Picture above: Timber Frame Chapel at Adventure Experiences Base Camp of the Rockies- I was the project manager and also personally harvested all the timber and milled all the beams for this project
