No Sanity Required
No Sanity Required is a weekly podcast hosted by Brody Holloway and Snowbird Outfitters. Each week, we engage culture and personal stories with a Gospel-driven perspective. Our mission is to equip the Church to pierce the darkness with the light of Christ by sharing the vision, ideas, and passions God has used to carry us through 26 years of student ministry. Find more content at swoutfitters.com.
No Sanity Required
Jon Interviews Brody on The Story of Snowbird Pt. 2
In this episode, Jon Rouleau wraps up his two-part interview with Brody. They dive into wild stories from the early days of Snowbird, as well as their experiences with marriage, parenting, and pastoring. Brody also shares valuable insights on maintaining consistency in his fitness routine and spending time with the Lord.
Early NSR episode about Brody’s Father
Please leave a review on Apple or Spotify to help improve No Sanity Required and help others grow in their faith.
Click here to get our Colossians Bible study.
All right, so I hope you got a lot out of that last episode. We're going to come back today, finish my conversation with John Rouleau. It was a long conversation. We're going to shift more from the story of SWO and get into some of the stories, some of the lives that have been impacted, things that you know high points, high watermarks in this ministry through the years and some really cool personal stories that I think you'll identify with and some of you may even hear some familiar names, especially those of you that have been along on this journey for the long haul. It's fall, it's SWO. We're loving it. Awesome time of year to reflect. Welcome to no Sanity Required.
Speaker 2:Welcome to no Sanity Required From the Ministry of Snowbird Wilderness Outfitters. A podcast about the Bible, culture and stories from around the globe.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I, you know, I think there's in the life of a ministry. Obviously there are so many stories you could probably share, but I love to hear them. I love to sit around the fire and you know, this ministry has made such an impact in my life and my wife's life, you know, and our family and I'm just you know, we're all grateful to be a part of it. So I just you know, I would love to. Is there some that kind of stick out, some funny ones, some more, maybe more serious ones that you would just pop in your brain?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So I think I'll start with a story that I think just shows the miraculous hand of of the Lord to make this ministry even exist. And it was in 2007,. We were 10 years old and we were at a point where, financially, we were about to fold. So summer camp ended end of 2007.
Speaker 1:Now for context, in February of 2007, my father died. We talked about that earlier in the first part of this series, this conversation, and so that was such a mixed emotional roller coaster for me, because there's a lot to that story that folks can go back and listen to it. One of the early episodes of NSR, one of the first five episodes I tell his story. So that happened. And then the guy that I mentioned earlier made the deepest impression on me rob hester. He was one year older than me. He died. My dad died in february, little miscarried. A child we had, our would have been our fourth child um, died in the womb. Um, that winter spring, somewhere in there, a close family friend named Tammy Osteen was killed in an accident in April. Rob Hester died June 2nd and then on June 9th, the accident that claimed the lives of four snowbird staff. So from February to June, it was literally. Like I remember, there was a point where I was by myself screaming like like guttural screaming at the top of my lungs what is going?
Speaker 1:what, what, what, what. What do you want? What do you want? What am I supposed to do? What am I supposed to do? What am I supposed to say? How am I supposed to react? You know, because when the accident happened and the four kids died, rob Hester died on June 2nd. So it's the end of week one of camp, it's Saturday, camp has just ended and I get the call that Rob Hester just died. I couldn't believe it.
Speaker 1:This guy I mean I was as close with him as I am with you. It was that kind of relationship. It wasn't like a youth pastor that I had a good ministry relationship with. It was like deep personal friendship. You know what I mean. And he had impressed me and shaped me as much as anybody. And, um, so Tuesday a group of us me and little and, I think, zach and Sean maybe only time we've ever done this left camp Tuesday morning early, drove out to the Eastern part of state. He was from just outside of Rale, maybe only time we've ever done this. Left camp Tuesday morning early, drove out of the Eastern part of state he was from just outside of Raleigh, went to his celebration of life service. Drove back, got back Tuesday night. Saturday, four of our staff get killed in the car. Wow.
Speaker 3:I did not realize it was that close.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I had preached my dad's funeral months before, which was one of the most emotional experiences I ever had and just yeah, it was just, it was just turmoil I think there there might be a few people that don't know about the story.
Speaker 3:Maybe you could share a quick.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so it was, uh, the end of of week two of summer camp. This was 2007,. So we're now 10 years. We're celebrating 10 years. Our first week of camp was in 1998. We were incorporated at the end of 96, but we called 97 the year we were established. We got our incorporation papers in December 96. We went public with the Snowbird Vision and Dream and started to push things in 97 little and I moved to the property september 97. So I was 25 years old and um. So the first camp week was in 98. We ran one week of camp and so then um 10 years, we celebrate in 10 years. And that happened. That whole thing went down. What it was was at the end of week two of camp. So Rob died on June 2nd. Rob was bringing students later that summer but he died on June 2nd. We went to his funeral on the Tuesday. We rearranged the camp schedule so that the four of us could leave and be gone for the day.
Speaker 1:That Saturday, 52 snowbird staff almost our entire summer staff drove from here to Atlanta to go to a Braves baseball game. So like a big, just a big group trip. A girl named Ann Tully Her name is now in total. She had organized that trip and kind of spearheaded it, and so everybody's going to go down, go to a Braves game and then split up and stay at three different homes in the Atlanta area, all just north of Atlanta, and these homes were all the families of people that were serving on summer staff. So a lot of people were going to stay at the home of a girl named, uh, kara Craig, her, her name's Kara Craig, her name was Kara Holland. At the time she was driving the car and her parents were going to host 15 of the staff and then and then another family's going to host some, and other families some. So they carpooled down, they go to a Braves game, they're leaving the Braves game and a guy had ridden down with one group was going to jump in the car with another group and he jumps in the car but it's a five-seater and he makes the sixth person.
Speaker 1:So four people slam into the backseat of the car and they start from the Atlanta Braves baseball game, turner Field, whatever. They're going to drive up to Canton, georgia, which is a 35, 40-minute drive. They're going up Interstate 575, and the ball joint just came apart in that little car. It was a little Jeep Liberty and the ball joint just disintegrated. And when it did, eyewitnesses said the car just went into a roll, so they weren't speeding, it was a car actually going by passing them. A couple cars were passing, they're running speed limit five over, whatever, but the front rock, the ball joint disintegrates, the wheel flies off, the rotor, digs into the pavement and it just turns it into a flip a roll. And it rolled. It flipped 13 times and, without going into all the details, four of the kids died, two right there on the scene.
Speaker 1:The four kids in the back seat were Suzanne, ashley and Michael. All died. Kara and Dawson survived. They were the two in the front seat and both have suffered enormously from survivor's guilt, enormously. And I had the privilege of doing both of their weddings. They didn't marry each other but uh, she. She married, uh, to a snowbird guy. Several years later he married to a girl that he knew from back home there. Both. Both of them were from georgia, and so we've maintained her a strong relationship with dawson through the years. But, um, he has struggled and he's a paramedic, so he's he's working the scenes of auto accidents all the time, but the but.
Speaker 1:So that happened on june 9th, saturday at the end of week two of summer camp. We still got eight weeks of camp to run now and four there's four dead and two in intensive care, and I think kara spent three weeks in intensive care. I might be off on that number, but she, she was fighting for her life, he was fighting for his life. Dawson was, I remember going to see Dawson two weeks later and he's, you know just, his face is still black and blue and it was a terrible car wreck. So that happened that summer and you know, the Lord just was like the Holy Spirit, was a bonding agent to that staff, used that trauma to bond that staff together. Like no other group of people I've ever been a part of. Matter of fact, the older brother to Daniel Branson, who died in the crash, recently passed away unexpectedly at age 40, nathan Branson and we went to his memorial service this past it was this past summer we went, we went out to visit with the family and spend time, and all the staff from that 2007, it was so many staff that were at that memorial service. They've just stayed bound together through the years and so we came out of that summer Well, on top of all of that calamity and loss going into 2007,.
Speaker 1:Two major things. Three major things happened aside from all of that. Okay, One, that was when that was 07, 08 is when the crash happened. Oh, yeah, that's right. So here's how that affected us. We had finally saved up money. We had $160,000 in the bank, which for us at that time was a substantial I mean, it was an enormous amount of money. It's a lot of money, but it was a lot of money for us.
Speaker 1:The way we used to book camp is like if you called me and you said, hey, I want to bring 100 kids to camp it usually wasn't that. Hey, I want to bring 100 kids to camp it usually wasn't that. Hey, I want to bring 30 kids to camp I'd say, okay, send me 100 bucks and we'll hold your spots. You send me 100 bucks, hold your spots, and we would, on good faith word of mouth, I'd say you good for this. Yeah, man, we're going to bring them. Okay, well then we would try to get you to make some payments and we had sort of a payment plan, but we were just so loose with guys. A lot of guys would end up showing up to camp, book for 30, show up with 13 and not pay. So 2007 that happened. Worse than it, we all never saw it happen.
Speaker 1:So 2007 we took, uh, but from the fall of 06 to the spring of 07, when we were booking, we ended up with such a large percentage of no-shows that we lost $160,000 in revenue. Okay so and I say in revenue, we had $160,000 left on the table. So we booked and we had I forget now the percentage of no-shows, but there were weeks where we had 200 people booked to come to camp and 120 that were going to show up. I mean, it was like that. I don't remember what. I think our capacity was like 275, and we had some weeks where we had less than 200 show up and no money paid for the others. So we had 80 no-shows and didn't get a dime for it. But we had staffed for it, we had bought food for it. We just didn't know what we were doing.
Speaker 1:We did everything on good faith back then, and so in that winter the state of North Carolina stepped in and hit us with a bunch of septic regulation and we spent $160,000 connecting our septic systems together. It was crazy. We had to basically overhaul our entire wastewater system. So we spent $160,000, unexpected dollars $160,000. We had $160,000 to $180,000 that didn't come in, that was supposed to come in, and then we had a huge loss of revenue. Plus, we got hit with a bunch of money that we didn't know we were going to get hit with.
Speaker 1:So summer camp ends, we go into September and we were in the red. Not only did we not have money in the bank, we literally had zero dollars, we had a zero balance in our bank account and we had quite a bit of accounts payable, like we owed money to the gas company, the power company. So we go around and we talk to these people because, because we got good relationships with all these people, we say here's where we're at. If you can, let us get to the end of the year, when our revenue starts coming in for the next year, we can start making payments. But then there's this realization of so, as soon as revenue for 08 starts coming in, we're going to spend it paying off 2007. This is not sustainable. We're one to two years from closing the doors.
Speaker 1:So I remember in 2007, sitting down on the porch of the coop with our entire staff and they're all sitting there there's 13 of them, that's how big our staff was and I remember saying to them we can't pay you anymore, we're out, we don't have any money, you're not going to get your next paycheck. I don't know. I'm sorry, here's how this happened. This $160,000 hit and this $160,000 hit, it ended up being about a $400,000 revenue shift, financial shift for us. At a time we weren't a $1 million yet a year, we were just under a million dollar a year operation. So 40% is what we're talking about. Million dollar a year operation. So 40 is what we're talking about. And how are we going to survive this?
Speaker 1:And john, to a man and to a woman and I'm gonna have to not get, I'm gonna try to get emotional right now to a man and to a woman sit on the porch of the of the coop zach mabry sitting there, jennifer for chetty sitting there, steph Gatton sitting there. Bethany Clark was part-time but she was there. Sean Clark is there. They were married, spencer and Amy, pretty newlywed. Rob and Sarah had got married that winter. They were there.
Speaker 1:And to a man and to a woman. They looked back and they said we trust the Lord, we're going to get through this. And we, we trust the Lord, we're going to get through this and we're going to build it, we're going to rebuild it, we're going to do what we got to do. We're not going anywhere Because I said we can't pay you, you need to go figure out how to take care of yourselves. And I'm sorry, this is all of a sudden. This is where we found ourselves, and it was poor management on mine and Kahuna's part to not give them warning, but it literally that was what the Lord used to show us. We got to get a financial guy and nobody left. They said we believe in you, which is the most powerful thing anybody's ever said to me, and so I said okay, let's figure this out, let's trust the Lord and let's work our tails off.
Speaker 1:This is the year where we had the accident. My dad died, my baby died, rob Hester died this is all in a three-, four-, four-, five-month window and so I remember we obviously couldn't afford to take a trip to Honduras that year. We couldn't afford to do anything. But my buddy, steve Finn, was starting a boys' ranch Chestnut Mountain Ranch, up in West Virginia, and we said well, let's just load up our staff and let's go up there. And we let guys go. People were working, substitute teaching, working on the river. Everybody's just trying to make ends meet, doing what they could. And we drove to West Virginia to go up there. We took everybody and drove up there and I get a call. It's December, first week of December. We had limped our way through October, November, with some retreat dollars. So we ran three or four fall retreats and it was enough to just keep paying the light. But we couldn't pay salaries. But we paid the light bill, paid the water bill, you know, kept it going and gave people a little bit of money. We were able to.
Speaker 1:You know if, if somebody's getting 40% of their salary, something like that, and we're on our way to West Virginia and Kahuna calls me. He says you sitting down. I said oh, yeah, I'm driving. He said, oh, that's worse, you better pull over. I got to tell you something and I said okay, well, we're getting pulled over for lunch. He said. I said I'll pull over, we're getting ready to pull over, I'll call you.
Speaker 1:So we pull over in this truck stop, one of those truck truck stops that had a McDonald's and a subway and it was big travel centers. We pull in there and I walk out the edge of the parking lot and call him. He said okay, you know how much we're in the hole right now, and at this point we were. $150,000 is what it would take to dig us out at a time where that would be 15. That would be about 18% of our annual. I mean, think about that. You're 18% of what you plan to bring in in the next year. That you're 18% of what you plan to bring in in the next year. You're that far in the hole.
Speaker 1:He said we just got an anonymous $100,000 donation from a foundation and a $50,000 donation from and he named the people Cooper steel, which is who the coop is named after and a $10,000 donation from another person. He said we just got a hundred. He said we just had $160,000 morning and all I'm doing is sitting at my desk and I just got these three calls. Wow, so we paid everyone's salary. We were able to pay everybody back, pay everybody for October, november, december and pay all of our bills and be in the close the year out in the black, with $10,000 in the bank. It was $150,000 it took to pay all that. We had $10,000 in the bank to start taking January payments and that was 08? That was going into 08, into the crash, into the crash. Yeah, wow, so we go into the crash.
Speaker 1:And I told Kahuna. I said okay, I remember having this conversation. This was one of those intense conversations because we go from oh my gosh, what's going to happen, to we're celebrating, to then me going sitting across from him in january and saying either we hire a cfo I know we can't afford to either we hire a cfo or I'm out. And you hire a cfo and the vision of snowbird can live, but something's got to. We can't do this. And uh, I said and I'm or I'm out until we can get, and I'll, but I got to go make a living and we'll get. We'll build it some other way until we get it where it's healthy.
Speaker 1:So this guy, jeff Cole, was. He was the CFO at a ministry called master's mission up on the mountain on the other side of Robbinsville. You've been out there before and they trained missionaries and they had gone through some serious doctrinal division and their ministry is sort of there've been some people leave and he was one of them and he was looking to start his own CPA firm. He was looking to buy one at the town south of Murphy, blairsville, georgia, and he said I've got some. I called him. I said can you meet me for lunch? We go to lunch. And I said we need help. And I told him the story and he said I need we need help. And I told him the story and he said I can give you two days a week. I can work full time in your office. I'll come into snowbird and we'll get this thing going. And he came in and worked two days a week. Well, he made his own set the first quarter. He made his salary just because he knew IRS stuff and how to, how to get us money and like he knew how to navigate things that we weren't navigating. Yeah, it was amazing.
Speaker 1:So we go into that summer with a whole and then our board by God's sovereign grace, 06 and 07, we built a board that would actually function like a board. And so we go into the recession with a good board in place, with a CFO in place that we hired, and I mean the reason I know Snowbird ain't never going nowhere that we cannot be stopped is because we grew the most in 2008 and during COVID in 2020, the two biggest seasons of growth in this ministry. If that's not the sovereign hand, god's doing work now, I may be gone, you may be gone, but this ministry ain't going nowhere, because god's in control of this thing and, in a recession and an international pandemic that shut the world down both times has not, has only accelerated our growth. So, coming off of 07, we hit the recession in 08, and we and we hit a gear that we had never hit. Wow. So that's not a funny story, but it's a crazy story.
Speaker 3:There's so much there, I mean in the, the, in the midst of all this, you're like, oh, my dad passed away, which is which is traumatic in itself, that that that just that one incident for a lot of people can can throw them off. And then one of your best friends in ministry, and then the ministry that you're leading. If you've been in ministry and you've lost somebody in your ministry, especially student ministry, I mean there's nothing harder. And so all of these things are happening at once. And then almost a financial meltdown.
Speaker 3:So I mean I'm listening to this, the stress and the pressure I can only imagine that existed in your life. And then you have to get up and preach sermons and you still have to pay salaries and you're still carrying all that weight. So can I just ask, how did you navigate that? I mean I'm sure that goes into so many other seasons, dark nights of the soul that if you're a pastor you've had dark nights of the soul, you know. I mean it's your pastoring and life is also happening. So can you just maybe speak to that? I mean, how did you make it?
Speaker 1:Yeah, um. So there's two things I think I need to say. One thing I didn't add in that story is is the accident that claimed those lives. It was so chaotic that when that crash happened they took those four crash victims to four different hospitals. Those six people went to four different hospitals. Okay, well, they're in a car by themselves, so nobody knows where anybody's at.
Speaker 1:We had some folks drive up on the scene, see that there had been a crash Like we don't know what hospital people are at. It was crazy. And I wasn't down there, I was here, I was in western North Carolina and you know we pulled an all-nighter. Nobody slept that night. We're waiting on calls. So I get the first call that I got on. My phone was at and it might've come to Little's phone. It was from a girl named Carrie and she called and said hey, and she wasn't on the trip but Ann who had organized the whole trip. So Ann, ann's story is one of the other stories I want to tell that I want to share with you. But Ann had maybe called Carrie, I don't remember.
Speaker 1:But so there's been an accident, it's a bad accident and one of the snowboard cars, and so it takes several hours for people to get the details together and I won't go into the details of how this happened, but I ended up having to call and notify parents by phone of their child's death because it was so chaotic and there was so much. You know, it was the telephone game, it was misinformation. It was like I heard that one person had died and then that person called me. I'm like, oh, that person's not dead. And so we finally find out, like I've got confirmation, I've spoken with coroners, state troopers. So between three and 4 AM I start calling parents. If I had to do over again I wouldn't do this. But you're in the fog of war, you know, you don't know what you're doing. I mean, it's like you don't go to school for this stuff.
Speaker 1:No no, you don't, there's no seminary class on this and and so at three, 30 in the morning, I remember calling Ashley Craft's mother and Ashley Craft was a kid whose mom didn't want her to be here and I had worked. I had met Ashley. I preached at a BCM event Baptist Collegiate Ministry event at Valdosta State University. Lauren Vinson is the wife of Adam Vinson. They were here last week with Trinity Christian Academy. Lauren Vinson was at Valdosta State. She had grown up coming to Snowbird and had worked a summer, recruited Ashley Craft. I met her when I went down there and spoke. She said I want to come work but she came from a family that wasn't going to be supportive of that initially. They were believers but they just weren't on board with her coming and spending her summer at SWO. So I remember sitting down with Ashley Craft, her coming and spending her summer at SWO. So I remember sitting down with Ashley craft. They came up to visit on a weekend. Lauren brought her up and I remember sitting on the porch of the coop and coaching and walking through with her how to talk to her parents about this and that if I could talk to them if you know, I have to always be careful because I could mess things up If I talked to your parents. You know they might feel trapped or cornered or ganged up on. But if your mother has any questions she can call me. I'm a dad. I get it Like have her, have her call me, you know. So worked through that and got Ashley on board. Her parents didn't want her to come and then she came.
Speaker 1:Well, the Thursday night before the accident in the revelation skit, ashley had broken either her wrist, she had an injury on her wrist. I call her mom at three 30 in the morning and I said, ms Craft, she said yeah, and you know every parent's nightmare the phone rings three 30 in the morning. You, you, you. I put my phone in airplane mode every night because I have PTSD, I think, from midnight, middle of the night. Phone calls I've had several in my life and I've had to make several. I'd rather wait. If something happens to one of my kids, come get me at 7 tomorrow morning and tell me. And so I mean if they've passed away, not if I need to get to the hospital.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:And so 3.30 in the morning, she gets on the phone and I said Ms Craft, this is Brody Holloway-Snowbird. Have you spoken with anyone from our staff or from Ashley's friend group? And she started hyperventilating and she said I said are you aware of anything that's going on with Ashley? And she starts hyperventilating, freaking out, talking about Ashley's wrist injury, and she said I know she hurt her wrist on thursday and I I know that I was upset about that, but I'm sorry, it's okay, it's, it's fine, she's going to be fine. I think she knew. And she just starts to go into shock. And I said is your husband awake? Could I speak with mr pete? Could you get him on the phone? And she wakes him up, she says how, wake up? And he I can hear you know the commotion. And I tell him that their baby girl just got killed in a car wreck. It's crazy, it's surreal, even sitting here right now, almost 20 years later.
Speaker 1:And then I called Michael Mabry's mom. Michael's dad had committed suicide the year before. His mom had been through an enormous amount of calamity. He was one of two children. His older sister was out of the house and independent, but she was. They had caught wind of something and when I called her, a state trooper was coming up in the driveway, so somehow they got. So I'm on the phone with her as the troopers coming and she she just lit into me and it was my fault. You know why'd you let him go, which I totally have never been upset with her about at all.
Speaker 1:But to speak to where I was, mentally and emotionally, I'm also in a tailspin. And then she's screaming, blaming me for her son's death at 3.30 in the morning. So Daniel and Suzanne were dating Daniel was at Southeastern, suzanne was at NC State, daniel was going to go be a pastor and I called Daniel's parents, elliot and Patty. They answered the phone and they had gotten together. Ann had already called them, ann, the girl that was leading the trip, ann Tuttle. She called them and said this is what I think is going on. I can't confirm it. She was close with that family. She said but in this accident I think something's happened to Daniel and Susan. Ann ended up being the one that identified Daniel's body, and so when I called the crafts, they were with Suzanne's family and I spoke with them and they said can you confirm it? We had heard. So I spoke with them and told them yeah, they've they've passed, and so I didn't tell all that earlier.
Speaker 1:But the stress of all of that and then and then coming back and all of our staff is in the coop, all the people that survived, and so we've got it all day Saturday just trying to to counsel and encourage and help people get through the day, and, yeah, the stress of it, it's what it is. It's it's that principle of the Lord's not going to allow you to go through something that he's not going to bear you up under and go through with you. And you know as well as I do the greatest seasons and periods of personal growth and development come in hardship, and so I grew in my knowledge of yeah, I, I developed in 2007,. I developed the theology of suffering, um, uh, I gained a new understanding of the hope that we have in heaven. I, I, I learned that theology better be more than head knowledge, and I learned that when you cannot bear up under the stress and the load load, the Lord's going to carry you through that if he's appointed you for such a time as that.
Speaker 1:I always remember what must have been going through Esther's mind when her uncle said who knows if you weren't raised up for such a time as this, you have to go into the king and she said, okay, and these were her words, I'll go in and if I perish, I perish A Christian. There's not many times in your life where you get to a point where it's that grave, it's that dire, but that's when we feel the power and the presence of the Lord. There's never been a time in my life where I felt the presence of God like I felt him during that season of life. And I will be lying to say that I grew like crazy. And it was a good ending, because I remember telling our staff at the end of that summer hey, as you leave and you go home, be ready, brace yourself, because we've learned what it is to rely on the Lord. The danger is that you have that crash at some point where you just you kind of stop relying on the Lord and you come off of the mountain, you know, from the valley to the Lord, lifts you, walks through the valley, the shadow of death, and raises you up and strengthens you. At some point we're all going to have to face the crash.
Speaker 1:And I remember just having some personal moral failure late that year, not a sexual failure, not immorality that way. I mean just moral in the sense of I, I didn't, I I took my hand off the plow, I just like I need a break. And I remember, um, just making some personal decisions. One was I lied to somebody and I just tell you so people aren't like what did he do? I had some snowboard guys in the car with me and I got pulled over. And I lied to the trooper. I told a lie to try to save myself a big ticket or whatever, and I remember getting called out on it. A couple of the younger guys said man, you just lied to that guy.
Speaker 1:They were in the truck with me and I was like I did. Why did I do that? It was a moral failure. I morally collapsed in that moment, and that was in December, right after we had gotten the right, after I'd had that conversation with Kahuna. We were coming back from that trip to West Virginia where I found out the Lord had provided that money and I think I just, ah, finally I needed some good news and I just hit cruise control and I just lost some intimacy with the Lord. And so I learned a valuable lesson that on the like, when you go through difficulty, you're going to grow the most, but when that's over, you have the potential for the greatest crash. So, good Cause, you're no longer dependent on the Lord the way you were.
Speaker 1:It was literally like we got that call, hey, we got $160,000. We can pay our staff for the last three months that they've served faithfully and we can pay our bills and get ready to how we're going to move forward. And it was like I just went into cruise control and I drunk some beer. I went out with some guys I knew and we went and got some. I didn't get drunk. I did not get drunk, I went and got. You know, I didn't get drunk, I did not get drunk, but I went out and compromised my testimony. I just needed, I convinced myself, I needed a little break.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And I made some decisions that could have compromised some younger believers, and it was right on the heels of such reliance and dependence on the Lord, and so that was a valuable lesson I learned.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, in some respects it sounds like you're at war and you're on the battlefield, and so you go into a different mode. You know, because you just have to. You're like there's nothing else I could do. I have to learn to fall forward and I'm carrying this and people are depending on me, and then you're relying on the Lord and then, all of a sudden, it's like you're, you're not in the battlefield anymore and so you don't have to have that same mindset or mentality. And then, yes, yep, you know, and it's you know. For anybody listening, I mean, you know, just an encouragement. You know how important it is, no matter what season, fight to stay faithful to the Lord. Yes, yes, fight for it. You know just an encouragement.
Speaker 3:You know how important it is, no matter what season, fight to stay faithful to the Lord. Yes, yes, fight for it. You know cause, cause I and that I think that's something that even the Lord has been teaching me in my life is is I have spent different seasons, like sabbatical seasons, and that doesn't mean you're resting from your pursuit of Jesus.
Speaker 1:That's right and and you know let's just be honest Sometimes your pursuit of Jesus.
Speaker 3:That's right and, and you know, let's just be honest Sometimes your pursuit of Jesus feels like work and you want a break and and maybe in your mind you're like, legitimately, like I deserve a break, Look at all the trauma that I went through but not that break, Cause that break isn't going to give you a break. Right, that's right, you know that's so true.
Speaker 1:And um, the other one of the other kind of follow-ups to that story that came around later, and then we'll tell a couple funny stories just to take a breath. But, and and totally now, and total, who led that kind of organized that trip? Um, several years later she was leading an old school trip. Old school was a program for our listeners that was called outdoor leadership and discipleship school. Um, we ran it for from 2006 to 2019. We ran 14 years of uh, of the old school program and it was a college program and it was a wilderness semester. So the students, you know, have 15 kids in a class and they would spend 10 days becoming certified wilderness first responders and they get certified as whitewater rescue technicians. They would spend 16 days backpacking. They'd spend a week in the Everglades sea kayak and so Ann was leading the sea kayaking trip.
Speaker 1:And Ann's story is just crazy. Her upbringing, she was raised by a single mom and never knew her dad or mom. Her mom just lived a tumultuous life. Ann's one of three girls and so her mom was, you know, was demonized with drugs and I just made just non-stop terrible decisions with me and she's just a broken lady and um, and ann never knew her dad and ann's mom like, like ann has crazy story. You could, you could write a memoir, a book on ann's life. She's in like eighth or ninth grade. Her mom moves in with one of her school teachers and is shacking up with this dude, but then just playing house with this guy, and then ann and her sisters are having to get themselves up and off to school every day and ann's, like you know, putting hot water and oatmeal and trying to feed her, her younger sister and then get her to. They get to the school bus. They're self-raising themselves in the eighth grade, you know. And then her mom would be homeless for a while and she'd stay with her granddad. I mean, it's just crazy.
Speaker 1:And so when Ann was working at camp one summer I think it was that 2008 summer, the year after the accident Ann calls me and says hey, my biological father has reached out to me. I've never heard from him, never met him, didn't know who he was. Mom was not in a relationship with the guy. It was kind of a fling. This dude lived, I think, in Chicago and he was dying of cancer. And so she said will you be, will you just be here with me. He's, I'm going to, I'm going to have him come to camp on a Saturday when nobody's there and I'm just going to meet him. And so she actually gave him my address. He came to my house and then I carried him over, took him over and his cancer was a throat cancer, maybe from smoking so much or something, but his face was disfigured. They had removed a part of his jaw and throat. He was real disfigured. He was almost scary looking, couldn't communicate real well, but he could talk, listen real close, you could understand him. And so Ann met her dad for the first time. He died not long after that.
Speaker 1:I think it was the year after the accident. She just went through so much. Well then, two, three years later she's leading an old school trip in the Everglades and we get a call that her mom has overdosed and died. Well, she's out in the Everglades. And we got to get to her so called a friend, a close pastor friend, and his wife, phillip and Tanya Smith. They serve down in South Florida and they went and we got up with the park service.
Speaker 1:They track her down, they're out in the Everglades. They go out on an airboat with Phillip and Tonya and get her and bring her back, and Phillip and Tonya fly with her to Atlanta. Tonya flies with her to Atlanta where Little meets them at the airport and picks her up. We ended up doing the memorial service for her mom at Snowbird, her mom who was not a believer but Ann was. That's another story of a life. She's now serving the Lord and she's married and has a family of her own and and I'm just thankful for Snowbird's impact in a life like that, you know she, uh, there's so many stories, that of people that have just had their lives impacted by the gospel and it's hard to put into words how much you know.
Speaker 3:I think the best way that I could describe I don't know if this is a poor job, but it feels like a family. You know, when you're on staff, when you bring your students here, you know you're cared for, you're prayed for. If there's something that happens, you have a whole support team. We have felt that in our lives. You know we're a part of that. Now you know, and I don't know, family's the best way, because it's even deeper than that yeah you know it is, but there is something beautiful about that it's powerful.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's, it's. I always think of the phrase in scripture where the, the body of christ, is described as being knit together, if you imagine the intricacy of something being woven together you know it's overlaid. It's not just like stapled, it's like woven. Think of a thickly braided rope. How hard it is to pull that apart.
Speaker 3:Man, you know I want to point out one thing and I think shout out to you, know all man, you know. I want to point out one thing and I think shout out to you, know all those families you know, rob, spencer, zach, Sean, just I mean there's probably so many that you can mention, but in you know, thinking back in that moment where you're on the porch, and I think there's those critical markers in the ministry that the reason again, just like we talked about Kahuna, there's men and women that have made sacrifices for the ministry to be here and that's powerful, yeah because Snowbird is where Snowbird is.
Speaker 1:Not because of Kahuna or me, but because of Kahuna and me and you and that team of people. But because of Kahuna and me and you and that team of people, the Lord has woven this tapestry together with a bunch of different lives and faithfulness and commitment, and right down to the kid that served on summer staff in 2006, whose name I might not even know if I saw their face right now. The person that was here in 2013, only time they were ever here. Some girl that served here from May to August of 2013. But she was faithful and obedient and the Lord used her that summer.
Speaker 3:All right, hey, so because I know I'm sure you have a ton, but what are some? Do you have any when you're driving around camps? Just memories that make you just laugh. Okay.
Speaker 1:Huge, let's switch gears and tell some funny stories. Do you know? Do you know the? Do you know the poop story from the repelling site? Nope, all right, I'm gonna get a little bit crass and you don't have to, like plug your kids ears or anything, listen to this. But but your kids probably gonna laugh really hard if you let them hear this story. So so we used to go. We used to go uh, do we used to repel at this off campus repelling site. It's an old rock quarry on a, on a guy's farm, and this is on the lower end of the County. If you know the geography here, it was out towards how I see damn, but there was this Christian school and it was, uh, it was a school with a lot of money from right outside of Atlanta, from Loganville, georgia.
Speaker 3:Hey, that's where my wife's from.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's right. That's right. So this school's from Loganville and there was two schools from there. One was called Covenant Christian Academy, one was called Loganville Christian Academy. I think this was Loganville Christian Academy. I think they came to SLO for probably seven or eight years.
Speaker 1:So there was a lady named Gina Hawkins I don't know if she would ever hear this, but I love her so much and her husband, mike Hawkins. They were just awesome and they had been co-founders of this Christian school, loganville Christian Academy, and wonderful people and she was one of these people that's highly intelligent, very academic, started a school but still had a deep southern Alabama accent. She was born and raised in Alabama, so she had a real good southern accent. She was Southern Belle and Gina was like. Her nails were always right, her hair was always right, but she's one of those people she loved coming, coming to snowbird, getting dirty for the week and playing, and so they bring her senior class trip. But we used to do this where we had several schools that would bring their senior class trip in the spring, back-to-back weeks, so they'd come up every year.
Speaker 1:So we're out at the repellent site and the repellent site was was very wild. It wasn't. It was not a controlled environment like a climbing tower. I mean, it's a cliff series of cliffs. So me and a guy named justin perryman we called justin, we called him jp, me and jp, we go out to set up all the ropes for this rappelling, and there was two different routes you could rappel down and it's about a hundred foot cliff. Did you ever go out there? Yep, so we go out there. We get everything set up. Well, to set up, you had to walk way around up to the top of these cliffs and there was a patch of woods and I went over there and it was after lunch and I I squatted in the woods and did a little boo-boo there.
Speaker 1:You know, little number two, little number two two. And so uh, and this repelling cliff and site was in a big cow pasture. So I go over and poop in the woods, all right. So I come back over and we start, and then the bus pulls in to the pasture and the kids all walk up. And so me and JP are up on top of the cliff. You're looking down, people look tiny. From a hundred feet up, everybody looks tiny.
Speaker 1:Well, all the kids are yelling for Ms Hawkins to go. She don't want to go. Finally they're like they talk her into it. So she doesn't want to do the climbing route to get up there. So she elects to walk around. I didn't know this Because you would climb a real easy.
Speaker 1:It was a pretty elementary rock climbing route to get up on it. And then you go out to the other side of the cliff and rappel down. She chose to walk around the way we walked around. She walks right through that block of woods and steps right in my poop. So I'm over there and they said Miss Hawkins is coming up and so I'm waiting and JP's waiting.
Speaker 1:Me and JP get to talking. The two rappelling routes are maybe 50 feet apart, 50, 60 feet apart. So you, me and JP are having conversation and we're waiting on her. Which route is she going to take? She's, everybody's ready to go. We're just waiting on her so she can repel. Then we're going to leave. It's taken her forever. Well, it's because she had walked way around. It's taken this long way around. And then I hear her yell. I hear a voice behind me. Oh, I think I stepped in cow poop. I turn and look. Jp looks. I look at him, he looks at me. Our eyes get real big. We're both trying not to laugh. She's standing right about where I'd just gone to the bathroom. She comes walking over to me. She had these white New know.
Speaker 3:You know like a white new balance, like a girl's wear.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like kids, yeah, like kids, but they're like perfectly white. Perfectly white, and they've. It looks like she stepped on a banana that wrapped up either side of it, but it's brown. This is a very graphic story for nsr, but it's called no sanity required, right? So she comes walking up to me and she says I've got, I've got cow poop all over my shoes. She's like trying to take sticks. And I was like I'm, I'm doing everything I can. I don't even know how to react. I want to laugh, I want to scream, I want to to yell, I'm about to lose it. So she comes up to me and I said well, you want to rappel on JP's route? That's the more enjoyable route. So I send her up to him and as she's going over the edge and he had a bad gag reflex and he's looking at me gagging and heaving and she goes over the edge and he called me some choice words, so she rappels down.
Speaker 1:Well then, those kids didn't want her to get in the van because it smelled so bad and we're breaking everything down. I remember going over there and just saying Ms Hawkins, sit on the edge of the van seat, kick your shoes off and throw them outside and I'll get them and we'll clean them up good for you when you're back to camp, you know whatever. And uh, so we get back to camp, cleaned her shoes, soaked them down good cleaned them and brought them to her, and so I waited, probably three or four more years. They would come every year. I went down and spoke in her school a couple times, spoke at her graduation one year and, uh, three or four years later we're sitting around and she was an alpha personality, she was a no-nonsense gal.
Speaker 1:I I really liked her a lot. She's about my age Actually, she's probably 10 years older than me Her and her husband and he didn't work at the school but he would come up always and he and I got to be good friends. So we're sitting around. It was them the two of them, me and Little, and several other couples and I said, all right, I got to tell y'all a story. And I told that story. She hit me. She was so mad, so funny. I love telling that story. It's one of my favorites.
Speaker 3:But anyway, yeah, I mean camp life, it's just so different.
Speaker 1:So, different.
Speaker 3:I mean the things that you gosh the stories every summer, the stuff that you just go through.
Speaker 1:you're just like oh yeah, yeah, I was a couple of funny speaking stories. I was speaking at an event in Georgia and nobody told me there was a kid there that was severely like. He had some severe, he had physical disabilities, like he had some major, major physical. He's in a wheelchair. He had some major physical. Uh, I don't even remember now what, but like his body he had like his limbs were affected, his spine was affected. You know he was, he was in one of these wheelchairs where basically all he does is works the joystick, you know, and then, uh, but he's also, he had severe something where he would do these real loud outbursts and it sounded like a dog barking.
Speaker 3:Almost like.
Speaker 1:Tourette's Like Tourette's. Yeah, it was like Tourette's, but he couldn't speak real good. He had really hard-to-understand speech patterns. So he just, you know, I don't know what his condition was, but he severely mentally and physically, physically, had a lot of disabilities. And so I'm up there speaking and they've rolled him down front into like a handicapped spot. So he's real close to the stage and he keeps and there's enough light in the room I can't see the crowd real good and he keeps barking like a dog, I mean like like that, while I'm preaching. And there was a point where and we're in Georgia, we're not far from Athens where I said, all right, I know we're in bulldog country, but we got to stop with the go dogs barking or whatever. And about that time I caught, I saw him, I made eye contact with him as he barked, oh man.
Speaker 1:I made eye contact with him as he barked, oh man I just I remember I wanted to just crawl and uh, I was like I just wanted, I mean give, give somebody a warning church I know somebody should have told me when rob conti was a youth pastor rob conti and adam benson, co-youth pastor at a church in forest virginia, forest baptist church, and they had us we went in and we did an event. We used to do this where we would do event, do an event and we get all the churches from that area that were snowbird churches to meet at one of the churches, the, whatever the largest church was or whatever we get. So if there's five or six snowbird churches in an area, get everybody together, we do an evening of worship and I'll preach. So it was like a pizza party and everybody's, you know, playing game gaga and knockout, and then get everybody in the church and I get up, start preaching, band plays a set, awesome time of worship.
Speaker 1:I think there was a skit. They did some games. There's several hundred students and and I start preaching and I'm just getting out of my intro and a kid on about the third row stands up to leave because he gets sick and he's going to go to the bathroom. He's got to throw up but he waits too long. He stands up and as he turns into the aisle he starts projectile vomiting and walks all the way down the aisle vomiting like he had a. It was a path of chunks of pizza and I've just started preaching, so we just sermons over sermons over service.
Speaker 1:It's over all right, you know what, we're going to go ahead and call it guys and everybody go back out, and that was it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so we had like one worship set and about five minutes of a sermon and the night was over oh, man, like, just as a you know when you, when you've been in ministry and preach, I mean just the randomness oh yeah, you know. You're like when did that come from? Yeah, you're preaching. It's like oh, there's a live bird in here that just decided it's going to fly all over Great.
Speaker 1:And them kids are done at that point.
Speaker 3:Yeah, oh, I mean they're barely kids, middle schoolers, their attention span is barely there anyway.
Speaker 1:That's exactly right. So you're done, you're done.
Speaker 3:I just you know there's so many stories and I'm just man, it's just awesome. But you know I want to, maybe not shift gears, but you know everything that you've spoken about, all this history. You've done it married. You've had kids. I mean, I'm a late-to-the-game kid. I have two little ones my daughter's sick right now at home. My son we had to take him to the urgent care this week because he had a 104.9 temperature and life is happening behind the scenes and you're also married. So the stress of just ministry and life and all the stress that was going on you obviously you're still having to be married. So I'd love to maybe just ask how has your marriage survived and lasted and being married in ministry together and I know she serves faithfully in this ministry and I don't know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was cool because we're going to sit down later this week and we're going to do a filmed podcast episode for NSR. Just 30 years of marriage and ministry and parenting.
Speaker 3:Maybe we can save it for that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, I will say this um, without her here there's a couple of things. I think that if I said it with her here, it might you know she gets yeah, you know she hates stuff like that.
Speaker 1:Um, but I'll say this. Um, I mean it's going to be this, I mean it's going to be this is what I'm going to say is going to be obvious. Uh, it's not going to be like, it's going to be common sense, but, um, it's critical that you're on the same page. And I think a lot of as as obvious as that sounds, I think a lot of ministry failure happens because the husband is on board and the wife can't get on board. I was talking to a buddy last night. We have a, we have a mutual friend who's a pastor and my buddy sat on his ordination board and he said I remember another pastor on the ordination board saying how does your wife feel about your calling? And the guy said well, you don't have to worry about that. We're lockstep, like we're in this together. She's, she's as called as I am and eventually she left him just because she said I didn't sign up to be a pastor's wife and he couldn't let it go. It's just a sad story. So now he's not in ministry, but the calling has to be mutual. But as far as how I manage or balance that, that's probably the question I get asked the most by young pastors, youth pastors, by people outside of ministry. And, honestly, I've talked about this on here before. I shared this with Amy Davis when she interviewed me for her podcast and we put that on SR as well.
Speaker 1:But I have this sign that a guy gave me when I was about 18 or 19 years old, a high school buddy of mine. He said. He said I'm, he was coming up to visit with me. We were going to hunt for three or four days. We're going to bow hunt. It's deer season. I was living up at that at that.
Speaker 1:First camp was when I was in college and I was probably 20. I was 20 years old and he gives me that. He said I got you something. I saw this and it made me think of you and it's a sign that says I have one simple philosophy empty what's full, feel what's empty, scratch where it itches and what, and it's and it's a pretty comical saying but it's pretty profound it means empty what's full. So if there's too much going on, you need to create some space. Figure it out. Feel what's empty. If you got idle time, you shouldn't do something. Figure out a way to. There's something that can be done productively there. So empty what's full, feel what's empty If I'm, if I'm too full on the ministry side, I need to empty some stuff and create some space. If I'm too empty and I've got and I need, and I need to empty some stuff and create some space, if I'm too empty and I've got and I need and I need to create some, you know some, some I need to fill up some space, then I need to do that and then scratch where it itches.
Speaker 1:Goes back to that, what we were talking about before we started recording, which is there's times where you need to do something fun, you need to spend some money. Go splurge, goge, go, you know. Go eat somewhere nice or go on a fun vacation. Do you got, be spontaneous, do something uncomfortable, do something exciting. Go ride a roller coaster, go skydiving, go on the hunt of a lifetime, go climb to the top of that mountain.
Speaker 1:Out there, you know, like, scratch where it itches, be, don't be so regimented that everything's locked into a. So for our marriage, I think it's finding that flexibility and that in-and-out movability of hey, we've overlooked there's times where I've overdone it on the ministry side and where she's had to say some hard things to me and I'm grateful that she's willing to say it early enough in the game that we can make corrections. There's other times where I think I've made the mistake of letting ministry be neglected because I was scared I was going to not be a good dad or husband and I can't, you can't do that, you gotta, you gotta. Whatever your job is, you to make a living, you got to be the best in the workplace. So it's all about balance. Is finding the balance, you know, and then being spontaneous at times and and just living loose yeah, having having a loose approach to life not being so uptight, um and and then all of that.
Speaker 1:I would say this there's a lot more hours in your day than what you think you can get. A whole, the average person can get a whole lot more done in their day than they think they can. I had a guy last week ask me. He's one of our institute guys. We had, you know, 51 people at our house, the entire institute and the FT3s, so 51 snowbird people at our house and we grilled burgers, burgers, and they're all there. And I'm sitting around talking with five or six guys towards the end of the evening and one of them said man, I got a question for you how, what's your exercise regimen? How do you find time to exercise? And and uh, and I said it's not hard. There's a whole lot more time in your day than you think there is. People are just we're distracted and we waste time.
Speaker 3:Just efficiency of movement and how you feel your day you know, well, you know your family just has meant so much to. I mean, I know so many but personally to me, you know little my wife is who she is because of little. You know, and I think you know my wife came up here and she grew up in a Christian home but wasn't really following the Lord and she would even say she wasn't sure if she was a Christian and found snowbird through, uh, brandon Brown invited her to a Bible study. She came up here, little did what she does so many times. She just befriended her broader in her life so many times she just befriended her, brought her in her life.
Speaker 3:And I don't even think it was, it was just Jenna, seeing somebody actually love Jesus in an authentic way and have fun. You know, just live in life and just like man, like you, can love Jesus and have fun. And it changed her life and she gave her life to Christ and has been serving the Lord ever since. And obviously I met and found her here, you know, at Snowbird and you know so I've just man, I've, I've shared that with little, I think, maybe once. I'm just super grateful, you know, for you, for her, for the faithfulness that you guys have had in this ministry. I think so many people can testify to that and and I literally told somebody this maybe it was my wife, I don't know who I was talking to but I literally said man, I'm so grateful that God saved Brody and little, because if he didn't, they'd probably be in prison.
Speaker 2:I mean, you know so when you say when I'm sitting here.
Speaker 3:I'm kind of I like cracked a smile when you're like, yeah, do something fun like climb. I'm like I don't know if people understand the type of fun that Brody and Little have together, I mean it literally is like hey, honey, you want to go jump out of a plane today? Yeah, you know and you're just like. I mean, you guys are it's the Lord for sure has brought y'all together. There's no doubt. There's no doubt about it.
Speaker 1:God made us for each other.
Speaker 1:And yeah, and one thing that, uh, that's been so good, because there's times where she has a, she wants to do something, let's go do X, y or Z. I don't feel like it but I just go, let's go. Yep, I think that willingness to yeah, let's do it, let's do it, you want to do it, let's do it, and I think that goes a long way. And and also, having a, you know, having a structure to your life where there's very little space or bandwidth for TV and movies and lounging around at the house, I mean, we watch, we, we watch a movie or a ball or a ball game, but having a plan to fill the days with meaningful stuff and then, yeah, making sure there's that spontaneity.
Speaker 1:One thing Little talks about. I love this, I appreciate this so much. Forget how she words it. When we sit down later this week, I want to make sure she talks about this, but it's like a short ledger of accounts. Keep the accounts short, short ledger of accounts and forget. Keep the account short, the the.
Speaker 1:What she means is um, address things early that need to be addressed and so don't let something linger that could create division in in your marriage.
Speaker 1:If there's an issue that needs to be addressed, address, and, and for her that doesn't mean it's it's, it's really, it's really, uh, wise and powerful. Because she doesn't react spontaneously and snap like it's not, like you just made me mad. I'm going to address it right now because we need to keep a short account of this. It's oftentimes she'll, she'll talk to me and she's been contemplating and praying about something for two or three days, but she's not going to let it linger, but she wants to let the initial and I'm the same way, I want that initial emotion. I don't want it to be an emotional reaction. I want to deal with it internally between me and the Lord, get it sorted out and then sit down for the good of my partner, my spouse, and she for my good. We want to work through it, but we need to keep that out in front of us and address it frequently. That's so good. We want to work through it, but we need to keep that out in front of us and address it frequently.
Speaker 3:That's so good.
Speaker 1:Instead of letting things linger and harboring grudges and you become, you know, bitter. Yep, so, but at the same time, today may not be the day to address it. Yeah, if it's fresh and you're hot and people take that verse, it says don't let the sun go down on your, on your wrath, your anger. It doesn't mean I need to sort it out with this other person. It means I need to deal with it between me and the Lord and be committed to the process of reconciliation. So when I go to bed tonight, the only way I'm going to sleep well is if I've committed to the Lord. You know what We've got some work to do in this area.
Speaker 3:That's really good and we're going to work on it. It's really good too because twofold, you know it's easy to avoid. You know, I mean, if you sometimes it's like you address in the moments too hot up, that was terrible. But then if you ignore it and you never address, it's easy to not because you don't want to bring up the confrontation, you don't want to have to deal it. You know it might bring up something you're going to have to work through for months and you're like I don't want, you know, but that's good yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and then being committed to, to be in each other's voice of reason at times, or like, like there's times where I might make a decision and then I'm like, hey, here's what I'm with, maybe with a, with a parenting decision. Here's what I, here's what I just said or did, or here's what I'm feeling. What are your thoughts about this? Making sure we're always on the same page, because kids will divide you so they can conquer you. Yeah, they can turn mom and dad against each other and and get if I can get mom to side with them. There's so much family dysfunction because of that. Mom and dad better be united if they're going to raise healthy kids yeah and there's times where little has called me.
Speaker 1:I think I told you this story, but I don't know if our hearers, our listeners, have heard it. Um, several months back this was back in the summer we've we've had a problem with one of our kids. Uh, we'd never had this problem until more recently. One of our kids is he's. Basically, if you let him, he would play video games all the time, and we've I've just never wanted to have a game system because of the temptation. He's very compelled to just go. He's one of those guys that would spend 10 hours down there and that's it. Go, get food and then leave the trash laying there while he plays and then eventually fall asleep. We still don't have a game system, but someone had given us an older playstation or xbox, one of those type systems, and we had an older tv and little said you know what. Let's create a space where they can. If they have a good day of school, the boys can go down there and play, uh, one of those fighting games or a football game. So we set it up and it lasted good for the end of the last school year, and so it was a good chance for Malachi and Mo to get along and they'd play together and they did real well and it was real measured. I got 30 minutes to an hour depending on what day of the week and what they had accomplished at school and with chores, and more times than not they weren't allowed to play it because they didn't do their part. They're into the bargain.
Speaker 1:And I was walking one Sunday morning. Did I tell you this story? I was walking one Sunday morning this past summer and Little calls me and she says you need to come to the house. I said okay, I was probably a mile from the house, I was just walking. I said I'm on my way. Sundays are real lazy mornings. I get up before everybody. Me and Moses are two people that get up before everybody. Then people start getting up. Well, what had happened is, uh, the tv had been turned on, the video game had been turned on, which is not allowed. That's not allowed.
Speaker 1:One thing led to another and there was some back talk about it and little took a broom handle and smashed the tv into about 100 pieces. So it's, it's dangling. This flat screen tv's dangling off of that little right, that little arm that holds it off the wall, and there's, you know, pieces in the floor and there ain't much left of that game system and she calls me she's. She's like I don't know if I cross, she's still pretty fired up. She's. I don't know if I cross the, she's still pretty fired up. She's like I don't know if I cross the line. I need you to get home. I get up there and I was like no, I 100% support this decision. And so we left that TV hanging there for about two weeks. It was going to take me 10 minutes to pull it down and haul it to the dump, but I left it hanging there. The boys had to walk under it every day.
Speaker 1:And, and, uh, and, and so we laugh about it. Now I'm like that's one of your finest parenting moments, you know, but having that like-mindedness, because there've been other times where maybe she said to me hey, I think you, I think you went a little too strong or hard on that. Well, okay, let's make an adjustment. I need to sit down and talk to the kids and apologize. I went too far, I raised my voice when I shouldn't have. So it's critical that you're lock, stop, lock, step and barrel.
Speaker 1:So good that that you're in step with this thing together and that, um, yeah, I, I just I believe that we overemphasize thing we, we are when, when we have, when our family suffers because of work or ministry, we are lying to ourselves that that needs to happen. Well, I'm just so busy. Who do you think you are? Who do you think you are You're so busy that your marriage or family is going to have to suffer, and who do you think you are that you can stay home and play, mr Mom, and not do your job? You got to do both, especially as a man. You're a man. You do what's expected of you at home. You do what's expected of you at work or in the ministry and you do it to the best of your ability and do it well, and don't make excuses.
Speaker 3:Yep, so good.
Speaker 3:Um, so okay, I'm going to keep going, cause I don't want to get off track, just for the listeners, but you know, in that same vein, because you're talking about parenting now and, you know, raising a family in ministry, you know, and I've always appreciated the episodes that you've really touched on that, because this is stuff that, again, like they don't teach you in school, they don't teach you in seminary, they don't teach you in college like how to raise a family. You're just kind of, and especially for somebody like myself, you know, I didn't grow up in a Christian home, grew up in a broken home, and so I've had to look to other examples pastors and Christian families of how to raise kids to learn how to raise my own. So I don't know, could you just touch on that? And if y'all are going to talk when you get in that other episode, that's fine, but maybe, man, how you've navigated raising some godly kids in the midst of yeah, yeah, no, I'd love to.
Speaker 1:I'd love to do that. Um, and keep in mind, I have three kids that are at home. Yes, so you know, I've had a lot of people say when you're going to write a book, and I I'm like, well, we ain't done so. For those that maybe aren't familiar, I think most of our listeners know but I have. Kilby is 24. She's been married to Greg for five years. She got married at 19. Kilby's 24. I have one granddaughter, that's Alma Ruth. That's Kilby's daughter.
Speaker 1:Love Kilby so much. She's the first human that opened my heart to love at a level that I didn't know existed. She opened my heart to that. She's the first from the womb does that? Or the first you adopt. The first time you parent, you find a part of yourself that you didn't know existed, and especially if it's a girl, absolutely I feel so. I feel so bad for dads that never have a girl. You know, here you got dads that only have boys say I couldn't do it, I don't know how. Oh man, yeah, there's a part of me that I didn't know existed, and and you know what.
Speaker 2:Maybe God, only you know there's a guy named Sean Clark that you and I love and know who has five sons.
Speaker 1:Sean's a dude. That, I think, is so sensitive to people's needs.
Speaker 1:He didn't need a daughter to open it up, he's. He. God's given him that heart, yep, and I love and appreciate him as a brother. I needed girls to change me. Yeah, I don't think I was a good husband until I had a daughter. You know, I feel like there were so many. Fortunately, little is wired more like a guy in a lot of ways where I think my marriage would have struggled before my first child came along because I just so hard as a dude, you know. So anyway, that's my first born Tucker's, my second born. That's my first born Tucker's. My second born, tucker is. He just turned. As this is being recorded, he's got a birthday coming up in two days. When this drops, he will have just turned 22.
Speaker 1:Faithfully serving the Lord, both of them, they love Jesus. My next child is Laylee, who's 18. She's a freshman at university of North Georgia, faithfully serving the Lord, loves Jesus. God used her. I watched him use, I watched him use. All three of those kids all through high school, impact people with the gospel. And I won't speak of my three that are at home yet, because I don't want to put that kind of pressure on them.
Speaker 3:I'm careful about that.
Speaker 1:So I've got juliet, who is a ninth grader, we call her juju malachi, who's a seventh grader, and moses, who's a fifth grader. They're still at home, and so we're right in the middle of the parenting world with them. You know, kind of the we've moved with the three oldest, you move to counselor, you play a counselor role the rest of their lives, but we're done, we're done. Parenting in the, in the, under the same roof sense, you know. And so to answer your question, how, how did we parent kids that love Jesus?
Speaker 1:I don't. I don't know the best way to answer that other than to say if there's anything I hope my kids will say, it's that we were authentic. And so when they see us in church on Sunday and we're sitting together in the worship service and we're hearing the word, if I'm not preaching you know I only preach one Sunday a month. So those other three Sundays where we sit together as a family, or when I'm the guy up front preaching, my prayer and hope is that there's nothing in their imagination that's different about that guy than the guy that's driving them to call practice Authentic and consistent. I think kids need authenticity and consistency, among other things. Those two things are critical to them staying the path.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 1:Because the world is inauthentic and inconsistent, and so when they're going through the formative teenage years. I'm in it right now with a 14-year-old daughter. It's my third time around. I know she's being lied to by the world. I know she's believing things that this will make me happy or this will give me approval. The problem is, it's a constantly changing dynamic. The world is inconsistent.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 1:Their peer group is inconsistent. What I need to be is consistent, not perfect. I'm not gonna get it right every time, but I need to be the same dad today that I was yesterday, the same guy that she hears at church preaching on Sunday or at camp worship service. I need to. When I make a mistake, I need to own it and confess that to them and confess that to them. I don't need to apologize for making hard decisions, disciplining them in a godly manner, even though it's uncomfortable. I don't need to apologize for that. But when I fail them or sin against them, I need to confess that and apologize and ask for their forgiveness. That's where they need to see consistency. And one of the like I had to recently.
Speaker 1:I had to apologize to Moses and Juju and it's because we couldn't find Mo. He had ended up down the road in a. There's a couple of friends of his that he goes to school with. That live pretty far from our house and we let our kids roam Free range. Kids, man, you ain't got to stay at the house, get out, play in the woods, but you, they're not allowed to go into other people's homes. And that's where he was and I couldn't find him. We, we circled all down through the woods behind the Hank and Wendy, behind the Parker's, a property. They've got a trail that goes all down along the Creek, the creek, and we had looked, little had walked the creek and I'd gone up the ridge. Behind that we couldn't find him.
Speaker 1:Well, he was in in the home of a couple little kids and about a mile from our house and they're playing video games. And I'm mad, but I'm more mad because of a two-hour hunt for him. And so there's, there's, it wasn't. I never got panicked, I was just like where's he at? What's he being exposed to? And so when we finally got him, I finally found him and I got him in the car and it was me and Juju and him, and and I said, what were you doing? And he, he kind of raised his voice at me, smarted off to me, and I and I snapped pretty hard. I mean, I mean I raised my voice, I hit the, I hit my hand down on the door.
Speaker 1:I had the window down on the on the van and I said you're not going to talk to me, like you know, and I and I let myself get a little bit too out of control when I got fired up and it freaked both of them out and there's a part of that. It's probably good, they need to see that side. But I had to sit them down later and ask their forgiveness. I said, hey, I'm sorry that I raised my voice the way I did. They need to see that consistence. But then there's also, I have to make some hard decisions where little and I sit them down and say, hey, you're not going to do this, and here's the repercussions and the consequences. And you got a parent and be willing to hold them to a standard of what you expect under your roof. And so consistency, I think, is critical and all of that to say just be faithful, be faithful to the Lord, be faithful to say I love you, to tell them stories, to spend time with them, to have hard conversations. Don't avoid things that are uncomfortable. Just be connected, engaged and involved and, most importantly, as a mom and dad, be united. And there may be times where one of you feels more strongly about something. You've got to come to a conclusion and trust the Lord. If you're the one that decides okay, we're going to do it your way then unify, make that decision. Conclusion and trust the Lord. If you're the one that decides, okay, we're going to do it your way then unify, make that decision and trust the Lord to protect your family and your kids in that Um and then um with the three oldest ones. Uh, my prayer, from earliest stages of their life, was like I pray over them, I pray intentionally with them. We don't, we. We don't have a real dynamic like family worship time where we're every day spending a bunch of time in the Bible together and singing. We don't sing songs together. I know a lot of families sing we don't. If we do that, it's just feels awkward and we end up laughing and giggling and um. So we don't but figuring out what works for you, for your family dynamic. I know families that sing songs together, which is beautiful. It doesn't work for our family.
Speaker 1:The point being, there's not a hard fast set of rules, it's a principle of have gospel conversations. You look at the Deuteronomy, six passage. He says hey, when you rise up, when you're going in the marketplace, when you lie down, when you're at the table, we could put that in modern context, On car rides, do you redeem the car ride? Sometimes, Maybe listening to a book or having theological discussion, Having conversations about? Like yesterday I had a conversation with my teenage daughter about another teenage girl that's in a difficult situation and we had some hard conversation about that. And hey, here's a lesson to be learned from that Just being committed to those conversations and then having the word of God as part For us.
Speaker 1:We have a little bit extended time of worship on Sunday mornings where we read some scripture and have some discussion and I prepare some questions and Little is involved in that. I'm involved, we kind of lead it together. And then the rest of the week it's prayer in the evening, before bed, prayer at mealtime and reflection on the day. Let's tell a story. What is something that happened today that you can be thankful for? It goes back to that this is the will of God for you. Rejoice always, Pray without ceasing. And in that, this is the will of God for you, Rejoice always, pray without ceasing and in everything, give thanks. So before bed we're going to pray, we're going to rejoice over something and we're going to give thanks and tell a story from the day.
Speaker 1:And then in the mornings, before they go to school, I read a devotion. They're usually barely hanging on, but I'm going to read a devotional thought. It's short, it's a devotional thought, a scripture. Pray over them and send them out the door, and I don't expect them to go light it up and get on fire for Jesus, because they're hearing a 6 45 AM devotion for three minutes, but it's just planting the seed of the word of God in their hearts and don't be.
Speaker 1:I would say to younger parents, parents of younger children, don't be scared of their season of rebellion. If you stay the course and you are consistent, you need to know that there may be a season where they turn away, but the promise of Proverbs 22.6 is that when they mature, they will not depart from it. There's going to be a prodigal moment for a lot of parents where the son or the daughter walks away and, by faith, where the son or the daughter returns. And so, as parents, we need to be consistent, we need to be engaged and involved, we need to be vulnerable and transparent at times, and they need to see that we're people of conviction. Live with conviction and don't compromise. Um, that's all a lot of high level stuff.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, you know it's for somebody like myself, even you know I know you casually talking about yeah, we don't really have a high like a worship time where we sing, you know, and to hear.
Speaker 3:I remember the first time that you know I heard that y'all did Sunday morning like worship together and you kind of bring the family to get. It's funny because in my mind I'm like I've never thought of that. I was never taught that, nobody, ever. My family, we never did a devotion at home, you know, never had any of that stuff. You know, my, my dad was Catholic, so actually he used to come up in my bedroom and pray like the, our father, and hail Mary at night. But that was literally it. So, raising kids myself and wanting to grow them in the word, you know, you're, you're kind of like how, how do we do this, you know, and so it's it's just good to hear, cause I'm sure there's some families that like oh, like oh, we we disciple our own kids at home. Yes.
Speaker 3:Yes you do and and figure it out. Don't be afraid, like you said, just hey, it's probably awkward for you, cause you're like I don't know how to. Yes, you do just do it, that's right.
Speaker 3:Um, man, going on the uh, the theme of consistent and authentic. So I'm just again, I'm going to just shift gears real quick and I just, uh, I'd love to hear about your routine. You know how you've, you know one, stayed faithful over the years and stayed fresh and you're preaching sermons all the time and pastoring and family and all this, and and you know how do you personally stay consistent and authentic in your relationship with God? Maybe you know you could share some insight just on what what God's used in your life, and maybe it could be helpful.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's, it's pretty simple, honestly, which I've learned is for me that's best. It's pretty simple. Um, as far as my personal, um, my, like my daily personal devotion life, I just get up in the morning and read the Bible, slowly, um, I spend time and I'm going to read. I really am going to read every day. I don't think I can afford a day off because the word of God is life for me. And now, that's not to say I don't miss a day because I do, and I, everybody, I do, but I don't freak out if I miss a day, and it happens very seldom, I mean, it is the rarest thing. So, um, I get up in the morning and I spend time in the scripture, um, so, every so. So here's a principle every day I spend solitude with the Lord to start the day and then now some mornings.
Speaker 1:This morning I got in bed so late last night after a crazy weekend we were recording this on a Monday I didn't get up until, kind of it was time to get everybody up, but I knew you and I we had set a later meeting time. We didn't meet today until about 8, meet today till about eight, 45 at nine o'clock because you had some stuff on the work schedule this morning, so I was. I knew I wasn't going to go into the camp office, so what I did was I got up with everybody else. That gave me an extra 45 minutes to an hour of sleep, which I needed as something else. I knew I needed that rest, so I just planned on getting up with little and then help her get the kids up, um, but I but I got my reading in. They left to go to school and I spent 20, 25 minutes just reading the scriptures. So, but anyway, I, every morning I'm going to read, um, and if you don't know what to read, just read the new Testament over and over and over and over and over. You should read the old Testament. But if nothing else, read the old Testament every three, four years, get through it. But the new Testament is just full of life and godliness, um, practical for life and godliness, um, I love reading the gospels, I just love reading through the narratives of Jesus. But I read every morning Uh, ideally I want to read for 30 minutes. Uh, go for a walk and pray, that's what I like to do. So that's that.
Speaker 1:And then, as far as sermon prep, my sermon prep looks so different than anybody, I know, I think partially because I've I'm hesitant to say this out loud, but but I'm not ashamed of it, but I've I've never been to seminary, and so my undergraduate, though, although it was at a christian university, it was not a christian degree, it was a. I was a government major with a concentration in criminal justice, and what I wanted to do with that, I'm not sure. I just thought it'd be a fun and interesting major I was going to. At one point I wanted to be a game. I'm not sure. I just thought it'd be a fun and interesting major I was going to.
Speaker 1:At one point, I wanted to be a game warden in the park you know, a park ranger, cause I grew up right here by the Smokies. So that was one thing I thought I wanted to do. And um so uh, because of that, I had to figure out how I learn and how I preach, and so for sermon preparation, I use the method that I learned from Alistair Begg in a seven-minute YouTube video 10 years ago that I watched, where he said write yourself empty, pray yourself. I'm sorry, write yourself empty, read yourself full, pray yourself hot, and then be yourself and lose yourself in the delivery of the message.
Speaker 3:That's good. I've never heard that yeah so write myself empty.
Speaker 1:When I start a sermon preparation, I basically work through the text and just write everything I can think of in my notebook or my journal or whatever. And I'm just writing, basically work through the text and just write everything I can think of, um in a, in a in my notebook or my journal or whatever, and I'm just writing right, and sometimes it may be 20, 30 pages. I'm just writing every thought that comes to mind. Every you know, um, like I'm, I'm I'm writing word, verse by verse, line by line, kind of my own little commentary of that text and um, so I'm just writing everything I can think of and then I start to pare that down. I might have 30 typed pages or 20 typed pages and I start to pare that down to a manageable five or six pages. And then I start reading myself full and so I'm going to read commentary.
Speaker 1:Study helps listen to sermon clips, go for a walk and listen to a sermon on that text. I'll listen to the sermon on that text after I've emptied myself. So I don't start by listening to someone preach that text, because if I do I'm afraid that I would just regurgitate that. And so I start by just being in the scripture and writing it out. And so I go for a walk and listen to a sermon and maybe two or three sermons over the next few days but I'm reading commentaries, I'm going back and I'm making a new outline and new notes from the commentaries. But that's that reading yourself full. And sometimes the first round when I write myself empty, the Lord brings together a really good outline and I'm happy with it. So then I just read those commentaries just to check my work. Am I off base? Is this? And as long as what I've written out is consistent with what the trustworthy commentaries are saying, then I feel good about that. And then just lay it before the Lord and pare it down and then I try to memorize the general flow of it. My preaching style is I connect best with people when I'm just.
Speaker 1:I'm a storyteller, raised in a storytelling tradition on my mom's side of the family, my mom's dad and his people Appalachian storytellers, and so telling that story. And then when I'm done preparing that message, I want to have memorized the flow Now if I'm doing a really difficult text like a couple weeks ago at Red Oak, I did the text where it said I had to go over the passage where Jesus asked the Pharisees okay, I've answered all your questions. He had answered three major questions to them. He said now you answer me this question Is the Messiah the son of David or is he David's Lord? Because the covenant was that David the Messiah would come in David's line and be a descendant of David. But then David writes in the Psalms that the Messiah is his Lord and what he's doing is he's setting them up to show them that he's the Messiah who has come in David's line. Well, it was such a theologically weighty text.
Speaker 1:I spent a lot more time hugging notes and reading from my outline in that particular scenario. But my sermon prep is just exhausting myself in a text and checking my work. My daily devotion reading is reading through the Bible. I don't go like January to December, I just read when I'm done and start over Um, and sometimes I'll get through it and I'll go. You know what? I'm just going to read through the new Testament again. I'd say I read through the old Testament every every couple of years and read through the new Testament a couple of times a year, maybe something like that you know.
Speaker 1:Um so, and then I don't read a lot of books, but I listen to books audible books if I'm driving or I'm on the mower, and then here this is important this is the last piece I carve out. I carve out large swaths of time where I'm not listening to anything. So when I work out, I have no music playing, I have no sermon playing. When I'm doing, when I'm exercising, when, uh, if I'm on the mower, if I'm gonna be on the lawnmower for three hours, the first hour so good time to think time to think, just boredom, empty, empty headspace.
Speaker 1:When I'm driving down the road I'll go for an hour nothing playing, you know. So I think that's important.
Speaker 3:You know, it's funny because I've read so many leadership books where that's a principle, that's talked about, that I you don't hear it talked about a lot, but when I read, you know, john Maxwell, john Wood, and just these different guys, they've, they've talked about setting, setting aside time to think and allowing you know, and I would even say, as a believer, like allowing the Lord to kind of speak to you. You know, in those moments you know kind of bringing sermons together, passages, scriptures that you didn't even think of, and it's boom you know kind of it comes together, yeah, and where?
Speaker 1:yeah, that's 100% the case. Just, you know things like keep a notepad, handy, notepad by your bed, which most people use their phone to make a note, but being ready to make a note when the Lord does bring something to your mind. And where I got that idea from was years ago. Our oldest kids were young and little. Read something somewhere that talked about the importance, the value of when you get in a car and start down the road. Don't put a movie on the screen.
Speaker 1:Let your kids stare out the window yeah if you're going on a six-hour road trip, that at least that first hour just let them stare out the window and be bored, yeah, and if they fall asleep that's fine. Then when they wake up, don't put a movie on yet. Just boredom is good for a child's mind and imagination and I thought I remember just thinking it was good for kids, probably good for me yeah I started doing it.
Speaker 1:Yep, when we'd be going down the road and we'd have our kids would be in the in the back of the car and me and little and and she would just not play music. Little's a music person. She's not a podcast person, an audible book person, she plays music. So if we're going down the road and I'm driving she's working the playlist and she's a music person and it's good music. And then all of a sudden it'll be just like it would go quiet and she just wouldn't play music for an hour. You know, or we got to go from here to hayesville, which is for a 35 minute drive, like realize, we're just talking, or it's quiet, and I started to see the effect of that and and I wasn't listening to anything, and we're just driving and I'm daydreaming and thinking, and that's very healthy.
Speaker 3:So good, yeah, yeah, I I pulled all social media off my phone about a year and a half ago, maybe a year. Um, and it's same thing, like it, just cause now I don't have anything to distract myself, and it just and that time to think, um, okay, well, this is maybe a personal like. I like this question. I think maybe we've talked about this a couple of times. But fitness routine, you're obviously somebody that stays in great shape and works out and it's healthy and, and I think there's there's an important aspect of that. When it comes to ministry, I mean this is a high capacity, high level ministry. I mean we are, the summers are a grind and we are getting it done and then and then retreat season. It's not, it's not a slow season. You know people, people sometimes they'll ask me oh so you're off now, and it's like no.
Speaker 3:You know so yeah just share a little insight. You know how you've stayed fresh, how you stay Like fitness, yeah, fitness, you know health-wise. I mean listen, you know, I know you're like a Dairy Queen, stop, but it's funny.
Speaker 1:I have such a sweet tooth. This I know I talk about all the time and somebody I was telling the I think it was last, was it last winter? When I tell that that sermon illustration about, I was driving down the road I pulled into the dairy queen. This was a year ago and uh, or maybe earlier this year and I got you know a blizzard.
Speaker 1:And I got you know a blizzard and I got like a medium blizzard and it was a new flavor and I was like dang, that was good and I mean I had it eaten by the time I got back on the interstate. So I stopped and I bought two blizzards my favorite at the time and then this new one. So I bought two medium blizzards and I ate them both and that new one. I bought two medium blizzards I ate and I ate them both and that new one. I don't remember what it was now, but it was so good. I was like I'm gonna do that again and I pulled into the next dairy queen, which is like 20 miles down the road I was going through georgia there there's a lot of them and got another one okay, I think, I think I remember the sermon and this is a little for those of you.
Speaker 3:This is a caveat that I think is really funny, because you said, oh, and my dairy queen app notified me that there's another, and I just thought wait, hold up, he has his notifications turned on for his dairy queen, just to let you know. Hey, there's one coming up.
Speaker 1:There's one coming up. You might want to stop. It might be blizzard time. That's funny. My favorite is there's a, and all of our Central North Carolina people are going to get excited here the Gastonia crowd. Gastonia, north Carolina, is just west of Charlotte. It's in Gaston County, which borders Mecklenburg County, where Charlotte's at, and there is a place called Tony's.
Speaker 3:Oh, I've heard about Tony's Tony's is a creamery.
Speaker 1:They make their own ice cream. They do it all right there and you get burgers and hot dogs and stuff. It's one of those little hole-in-the-wall 120-year-old restaurant creamery place like restaurant slash ice cream parlor or whatever you would call it back in the 50s and I think it opened up in the 1910s or 20s. And uh, tony's is. You get a milkshake from tony's. First off, they have, they have like every fruit flavor, so they have lemon, grape, pineapple, so and they don't have a lot of crazy flavors, but they have flavors you don't typically see other places and it's like this thick malted milkshake and then they put long, thick scoop of whatever flavor ice cream they made it with, sticking out of the top of the milkshake. And I'll go to Tony's. I always get two. I always get. Usually I get a lemon and a grape, but and I'm a chocolate guy too but when I go to Tony's that's what I get. So, tony's, if you're driving from Andrews to Raleigh, you're going to go to Asheville, then Hickory, then Greensboro, then Raleigh. That's like the northern route, that's I-40 most of the way To go to Tony's. You would at Hickory you would need to turn south and go towards Charlotte and then from there you would go northeast to Raleigh. It would add an hour to your drive and many is the time that from here to eastern North Carolina I routed through Gastonia to go to Tony's.
Speaker 1:So let me say before I tell you how this works for me, you need to understand I'm not a nutrition guru. I've got a brother. We talked about him earlier. I mean, he doesn't even have to count calories now or count grams of protein. He's so dialed in from so many years of doing it. He eats so consistently and I don't.
Speaker 1:My theory, first and foremost, is I heard a guy say one time you can't out train a bad diet, and I disagree with that. I think it's pure science. If you take in 3,000 calories, if you burn 3,000 calories, you break even. But if they're bad calories, then you need to burn about 4,000 calories to burn off those blizzards or whatever. So if I'm on a road trip and I stop and get some blizzards and I'm by myself somewhere on that trip, I'm going to stop and go at it for an hour to 90 minutes, walk, push up, squats at a truck stops, I mean a rest area or whatever. So I do so I'm I do take my fitness real serious and so I just, I just try to exercise every day, do something. Um, you know it's rough, like we, we, we were on the road traveling this weekend and I I got a good walk in and I went swimming because we were staying at a house beside a lake. So at six, seven, seven thirty in the morning I went out, hit the lake and swam, just goofed off and played, and it might be.
Speaker 1:My exercise is like playing, playing with the kids, you know let's go cliff jumping or whatever, but I'm gonna do something. But it's all about movement. So I'm gonna move every day. We were not made by god to sit still and sit in chairs and be in a seated position. I have a pull-up bar, a heavy, gnarled pull-up bar, mounted to a girder beam on my porch that'll hold my weight and I do pull-ups and dead hangs on that every day.
Speaker 1:I do squat movement every day. But, um, I, I exercise in a weight room four days a week. I do squat movement two of those days and even if you don't squat with any weight, the squat movement is so good for your skeletal structure, your back, your bones, your joints. Squat movement is so good for your skeletal structure, your back, your bones, your joints. So twice a week I do squat movement, I pull backwards, I drag a weighted sled that I keep in my truck. I carry a 100-pound sandbag in my truck, so I'm always in a position where, if I can't get to a weight room, if I'm on the road, I can pull off at a rest area and carry that 100-pound sandbag around for 20, 30 minutes, do sets with it, do squats with it, whatever.
Speaker 1:But then I'll go in the weight room and do bench press, squat, deadlift, overhead press, traditional weightlifting movement. So I probably lift weights three or four days a week. I pull a sled three days a week. I carry a heavy bag, and then I do. I do heat therapy and cold therapy, and I started the heat and cold therapy in 2017. After I'd mentioned some seasons of stressful ministry where I ended up in the, in the uh, at the doctor's office, in the hospital, and I started doing heat and cold in 2017. And I've, I've, I've done it consistently. A lot of people will have like a fad season of that. You know, I'm going to cold plunge, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do cold showers.
Speaker 3:I literally since 2017, I've not stopped doing it, so I do cold therapy and heat therapy Such an important, I mean, I think, being in ministry and staying healthy, your energy level because, like we've talked about, it is stressful. I think me and my wife could testify that I think our biggest weakness at times is stress eating. You know, we've always bonded over food and I saw, I know, a lot of people. That's just a reality. So I wanted to ask, because I think it's such an important and it's not easy. No, yeah.
Speaker 3:You know you testify into working out four days a week. I mean, like you said earlier, time management you have time, but I think there's an aspect of like you just got to be committed to it. Committed or consistent and authentic.
Speaker 1:authentic, like you said earlier yeah, and then the other even for me, the other three days that I don't hit the weight room, I'm gonna do something. Um, and people laugh. Probably I've got one of those you know back in the 70s or 80s, those little mini tramps that women would do these jazzercise. Yeah, little mini trampoline, I have one of those. A lot of people have a stand-up desk. I don't have a desk, I don't sit at a desk ever and so, um, but in in my I have like a man cave and what would be a desk is my reloading bench where I reload ammunition for my rifles, like for hunting and shooting and stuff, and so I don't really have a space where I'm in one spot all day ever. But I have this little mini trampoline and if I've, if I'm going to do some reading, I'll go into my shed and before I do anything, I'll do a 10 to 15 minute, uh, sprint workout on that trampoline, which is a really. There's some cool workouts you can do on that trampoline, which is a really good. There's some cool workouts you can do on that. So 10 to 15 minutes and it's worth. It's it. 10 minutes on that is, they say, you can gain the benefit of 45 minutes of fast walking.
Speaker 1:Um, and then I walk a lot. I walk every day. I walk up and down, lots of elevation change and I carry heavy things. So I got that sandbag. I keep a couple of weights in my truck that I can just carry around. So I go into the weight room four days a week and lift weights. Um, and people say I don't, I don't like, I just don't like it, I'm bored with it. That's fine, I'm not.
Speaker 1:You asked me what I do yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure I'm not shaming it, I'm just saying anybody else, needs to do it, yeah, but I do think this.
Speaker 1:Um, I heard a non-Christian one time and he was one of these special forces speech givers and I don't remember where I heard it, but he said he made the statement strong people are harder to kill, and he was talking about the importance of fitness in that world. And I thought you know what Strong people are harder to kill in general? From disease or from laziness? And and then I, we are madly in love with comfort in our society. We like soft things and we like comfortable chairs and we like to. We are, we are madly in love, we're obsessed with being comfort, comfort driven or comfortable, and so I just like to be uncomfortable every day. I like to do things that create discomfort, and so I think that's just a good principle to live by, and that's where things like heat and cold are helpful.
Speaker 3:I think I sent you a quote. Oh yeah, you did, but it was.
Speaker 1:it's about being old getting old and uh, something about cause I'm gonna look this up, cause I just think, did you find it Like? I've got it in my text thread from you Hold on. It's from somewhere. I got it. Here it is. You sent this to me last Tuesday. It says aging is the aggressive pursuit of comfort, meaning the faster we pursue comfort, the faster we age.
Speaker 3:My wife sent me that we started doing cold therapy recently and it's been such a blessing to her, me, our family, and she was lit, she was researching the benefits of that and somebody on a podcast somewhere or a video thing she saw and she sent me that quote and I thought, man, you know, cause we've talked a lot about that, and it's blessed to work at Snowbird where I feel like everybody on staff, you know, has their own routine and regiment but fights for their physical health. You know, and you know it's encouraging to be in that environment, cause everybody knows, man, there's days you don't want to do it you know to see other people like kind of charging ahead, it's like yeah and uh, it's important and I do as I've gotten older.
Speaker 1:I'm in my 50s now and so, uh, I've changed. You know I do much slower, controlled movement. I don't. I don't do power cleans anymore. That was one of my favorite lifts for years power cleans and hang cleans and it's an explosive movement that athletes use. But I just got to a point where I thought joint health now has to play into this in a way that it didn't in my 30s and even for early 40s, and so I do just a lot of controlled movement. But I do know this Men who don't do strength training do not age well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they do not age well. And I mean, I see a lot of guys that are active, that run. Like, if you're a guy that goes out and runs three days a week, four days a week, that's good and there's a health benefit. But what are you doing to not lose? I mean, after 40, after 30, your body starts it will naturally lose muscle mass. After 40, it's it that ramps up. After 50, if you're not doing anything, it's crazy the speed that you'll lose strength and muscle mass. And so, um, what are you doing to to make yourself stronger, to build longevity?
Speaker 1:And guys will say I just, I don't enjoy lifting. What's that got to do with anything? Yeah, what does that got to do with any? I don't enjoy doing it. That's absurd, yep. And so I think, um, I want to do things that are uncomfortable. That's why I squat a lot, and I don't squat a lot of heavy weight.
Speaker 1:So I sent you something the other day. It was like a list, I read, of things that, as you age, you should be able to do. Was it like after you're 50 maybe, or something like that? Yeah, it was eight basic strength tests every adult should pass, but most can't Eight things. Number one squat your body weight. So you and I are about the same weight. I weigh two, 25. Yep, I should be able to squat 225 pounds. I think I should be able to squat it a bunch of times, so I want to be able to do that. Number two perform 10 consecutive pushups. I mean, if that's the baseline, that's his like, that's not hard to condition yourself to do 10 pushups. Press half your body weight overhead, do a single pull up. Deadlift your body weight, bench. Press your body weight clean and jerk three quarters your body weight. Run a mile and under 10 minutes past these and you'll experience life with fewer limits and more possibilities. Now I don't know what that's. You know some influence or something?
Speaker 1:like that, but it a good just stuff like that. Can I lift my body weight? Can I? If you haven't, if you have an episode, if you have a cardiac episode and we're we're in a bad place, can I pick you up, get you onto my you weigh? You weigh the same as me. Can I pick your dead weight up, get you across my shoulders and carry you up to the road so an ambulance can get? To you I want to be able to do that. Yeah, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3:As long as I can do it, I want to be able to do it and we talked about this earlier it's it's not just living a long life, it's living the, a quality life as long as I can. Yes, the highest quality life as long as I can. Yes, the highest quality life that I can live, as long as I could live it. Yep, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we have a friend at our church. His name's John Ridenour. He's approaching 80 years old and John, I was sitting behind him at church last night and he looks great. He's an 80-year-old man. I would guess him to be 70.
Speaker 1:If you can look a decade younger, I think that that's a a realistic goal. It's a good goal, and it's because he and his wife spicy her name's spicy and the name fits. They're awesome. They have they have sit on top kayaks, they have paddle boards, they have beach cruiser bicycles and every day they do something. They go for a bike ride, they go for a walk, they paddle their paddle boards and then they don't eat a lot. One goal that I have so I'm not I'm not super strict nutritionally. Um, I try to eat a lot of meat, I eat a lot of eggs, but one, one rule that I have is to it's okay to be a little bit hungry most of the time, and so when I leave the table, I think it's it's good to to be a little bit hungry when you push back, because 20 minutes from now you won't be hungry. It's that you know, it's proven.
Speaker 1:Your, your brain, thinks you're still hungry as long as you've got that food in front of you and so it doesn't mean about that one though it doesn't mean we can't go crush a large pizza, you know, and and and, celebrate and have some, but in general the overall pattern is don't just eat all the time and move, move a lot, just keep moving. You don't have to go do a bodybuilding workout, but just stay moving. Yeah, I try to move every day, like, and I try to do things that are uncomfortable. I mean, it's we were built to to carry things from day one.
Speaker 1:So if you can't carry 100 pound sandbag, like when I was talking, and I carry, I can throw that on my shoulder and carry it a long ways, but I like to carry it in front of me, like in a bear hug position. So I've got 100 pounds, I'm stiffening my spine and then just walking as far as I can walk with it, and I'll do that three times. And now I've got to walk back. So I hold it in a bear hug and I start walking with that 100-pound sandbag and I walk until I feel like I want to drop it or fall over and I just let it hit the ground and I sit there for two or three minutes, get my wind, shake it out, pick that thing up. So bending over and picking it up is an exercise.
Speaker 1:And then I walk with it and this time I'm not going to make it as far and I drop it and I do it again. I take a three or four-minute break and now I've got to walk it back. I take a three or four minute break and now I got to walk it back, and when I'm done I've just carried a hundred pounds. I don't know how you quantify that, but I carried it. I don't know. Quarter of a mile, half a mile, whatever, and I've carried it in front of me where I'm having every stabilizer in my body is firing to keep me from bending over, falling down, you know stuff like that's good.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's good, good, and anybody do that. But I would say to somebody that's my age or older or younger, that's saying I just I can't get into, where do I start? And if you'll walk once, once a day, walk for an hour as fast as you can walk, walk down your road. When you get 30 minutes, turn around, walk back, that's a good start. Yeah, man, just move that's awesome, you know.
Speaker 3:I just I appreciate being on staff and in being around guys that just take their health seriously and fight for that. I think it's important and it's encouraging. And this would be the last question and again, if you get listeners have other questions that you think I didn't hit, please let me know. Um, what's fun? Look like Brody Holloway has fun. What is what? Because I know for me fun gives me energy, keeps me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, fun for me. So I have two categories of fun. I have fun with others, so that's anything I'm doing with my family. It could be something where we're doing nothing, we're watching. We just watched season 11 of Alone. Took us four or five weekends to do that. That was fun. That was fun. I enjoyed that. Fun is going swimming. As a family We'll go up to the dock. Sometimes we do it at night, it's spontaneous. Let's go up and jump off the dock, you know. So fun is just outings and playing like a kid in the the water. And then for me personally, there's there's one principle I do want to close with that I didn't mention earlier. Um, but fun for me is something that that I gotta kind of step out of everything else and step into.
Speaker 1:So I mentioned that I reload, so I love. So this morning at 6 30 I took little's hunting rifle that I'm trying to develop a load for and I went out. It's got a suppressor on it so I can shoot. It's not going to wake people up. I went out in the field and shot three bullets that I had hand loaded at 100 yards and then I measure the size of the distance between those bullet holes and I know how accurate that setup is, and so it's something that I do. Shooting and reloading is something I do, that when I'm reloading and developing a load I can't think about anything else.
Speaker 1:I had a buddy. Where I got this idea from was I had a buddy that I was flying with him in his plane one time and I said what got you into this? And he said, well, my job is so high stress I needed something that when I'm doing it I can't think about anything else. He said aviation and flying. He said when I'm in the plane, when I'm pre-tripping and taking off and flying and landing, I can't think about anything else. And I needed that to unplug. And that's kind of how reloading is, and so that's good for me.
Speaker 1:And then the gratification of fine developing a load and then, for people that don't know what I'm talking about, it's fine, just, but it's, it's an. It's an activity that requires all of my mental capacity and energy and thinking. I'm not listening to a podcast while I'm doing. I gotta be focused on what I'm doing. And then uh, and then I. I love the outdoors, so fun for me is anything from mountain biking, fishing, hunting, being in the outdoor, hiking with my family, fishing or hunting with my boys or going out by myself, like this fall. I just talked a little this weekend. I said, hey, I've got to plan about a four-day hunt by myself in the mountains, where I'm just gonna throw my backpack on, either take my rifle or my bow and start, and I'm gonna have you drop me off at point a and pick me up four days later at point b and uh, hopefully I'll have a dead animal or two packed on, you know, on my back, and it's awesome that's fun to me.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's fun and uh.
Speaker 1:So, um yeah, playing with the kids shooting basketball, shooting hoops, playing horse, or going for a hike, going to the lake and playing in the water, that's fun. Watching a movie, just no, I mean what everybody you know pretty normal stuff yeah um, and then, and then I enjoy.
Speaker 1:I do enjoy exercising yeah I love riding my mountain bike. Anyway, the thing, the thing, the last thought that I I was going to say, um, every morning when I was talking about solitude in the morning, every, every day, I need some solitude. And then, once a week, I carve out a half a day to be alone, and it's usually for me. I have the benefit of a lot of weeks. I can do it during the work day and I'm fine if I'm working. It doesn't have to be recreational, but I want to be where nobody can call me, nobody can talk to me, four hours by myself. But if I can do it and and and put some recreation in there, it's awesome.
Speaker 1:So what I'll typically do is there's a, there's a spot, I go up in the mountains to do some sermon prep and I'll sit outside and my phone doesn't work and I'll spend three of those four hours or four of those five hours studying and writing, and then I'll spend an hour either hiking or or walking in the woods and but but, uh, a half a day window every week that I call a mini Sabbath or sabbatical. A one hour window every day, a half day window every week, and then once a month, I'm going to be somewhere for an entire day by myself, where I'm not talking to anybody, I'm not entertaining myself with my phone or a podcast. I'm doing something that's very healthy.
Speaker 3:So good's, so good I'm, I'm an extrovert and I need, I'm. I'm totally tracking with you because even my wife she's learned over the years we've been married for 15 years she'll come to me and say, hey, you need some alone time because she knows I'm a better, I'm a better husband, father, if I get that. So I can absolutely identify with that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's so good man.
Speaker 3:Well, um, I think I'll just, I think I'm going to cut it here and this is awesome man I.
Speaker 3:I love it, I, you know, I, I think I get the privilege, you know, just we hang out and by the fire and hearing stories. And I just thought, man, you know I know so many people have the fire and hearing stories, and I just thought, man, you know, I know so many people have been blessed by you and your family and this ministry and just you know, are a part of this, of the story you know, and and would love to kind of just hear a little bit more. So I hope, I hope it was encouraging to everybody listening and you, you know, uh, it was a blessing for me. So, love you, brother.
Speaker 1:Love you too. Thanks for doing it. It was cool. When you asked me the other day I got an idea I was in. So yeah, I appreciate it. Well, that wraps up my interview, or John's interview of me. Uh, the story of SWO, our early days, stories along the way, how we got to, kind of where we are now a quarter century of the Lord's favor, more than a quarter century and I'm excited to see what the next 27 are going to look like. I know God has great things in store for this ministry. We're going to hold the light in the darkness. We're going to hold forth the gospel of truth and we're trusting the Lord to continue to use this ministry long after we're gone. And it was a blessing to me to be able to share some of those stories. I hope it was to you. We'll see you next time.
Speaker 2:Thanks for listening to no Sanity Required. Please take a moment to subscribe and leave a rating. It really helps. Visit us at SWOutfitterscom to see all of our programming and resources, and we'll see you next week on no Sanity Required.
