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
His Glory, Our Good: Kicking Off SWO25
In this episode of No Sanity Required, Brody Holloway looks back at the first week of SWO25 and shares what really goes on behind the scenes at Snowbird Wilderness Outfitters. From a single army tent to a camp that now hosts hundreds of students and serves 14,000 meals a week, Brody reflects on how far God has brought this ministry.
He gives a quick overview of Romans 1–7 to help set up this summer’s theme, “His Glory, Our Good,” focused on Romans 8. Brody also explains what a typical day looks like at camp and how every part of the team—from bus drivers to kitchen crews—is working hard to point students to Jesus.
You’ll hear stories of salvations, challenges like flooding and power outages, and how God is still moving in big ways. Brody reminds us that ministry is messy, hard work—but it’s worth it. Be encouraged and pray with us as we dive into another summer of gospel ministry at SWO!
Leaving Comfort, Finding Calling | No Sanity Stories
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In this week's episode of no Sanity Required, we're going to look back at the first week of SWO 25. It was a good week. It was a crazy week, a lot of things to share. But I want to give everybody an update. I want to talk a little bit about what goes on behind the scenes at SWO. This is going to be an episode where we kind of dip into a few different areas of what we do here in a normal week and then also I want to give you a little bit of tailgate theology where we go into sort of an overview of the first few chapters of Romans, because the teaching content this summer at SWO 25 is Romans 8, with the theme of that teaching His glory, our good, and so I want to kind of mash it up. Talk about SWO 25 kicking off and.
Speaker 1:I hope it'll be something that gives you a little bit of insight, a look behind the curtain of how we do things around here, and then we'll talk a little bit of theology. Thanks for tuning in and listening to this week's episode of 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 1:Well, I'm not going to lie. Every year at this time of year I get a little bit overwhelmed with what all God has done here. We've sent the book off, as you know, we've talked about this and finished the book, but I'm not an author, so I've second-guessed 100 times over man, am I really conveying what all God's done here? And then I realized no, there's no way you can. You can't take a hundred page book and tell a 30 year story, you know. And so just for me, it's very reflective, and this time of year is especially reflective. You know, if you're a listener of NSR, you know we're a whole lot more than a podcast. It's not just that we produce this podcast weekly, though. That is something we do and a lot of work goes into it.
Speaker 1:We're a camp and conference center. We do Bible conferences, apologetics, discipleship, theology, we take the Word of God and we teach students and instruct them from the Scripture, all things that pertain to life and godliness and that interfaces or intersects with cultural issues how to live as a light in a dark world, how to interact within culture and society. So we do a lot here, and throughout the year we do a lot of events, not just our summer camps, and so our summer camps are, even so, much more than camp. There's a lot of stereotype that goes with the word camp or summer camp, that phrase. For us, what we want students to experience in a week here, we want them to experience an equipping, challenging, growing, conference sort of feel, and so we go into the scriptures three times a day corporately. Corporately simply meaning everybody in camp comes together and we open God's word three times a day and we and we teach and instruct the scripture from the scriptures and then, once a day, to end the day, students are divided into into small groups with staff who lead those small groups. To just make sure there's clarity, discussion, a lot of thought and conversation around the content.
Speaker 1:This year we're going through Romans, chapter eight, and I wanted to kind of unpack a little bit of how we how do you take something that's such an important work of scripture but it's in the middle of an important work of scripture? How do we go to Romans eight without having taught through the first seven chapters? I want to share how we're approaching that and so that we're going to do that in this episode. But before we get into that, I wanted to just give you a look behind the scenes. I wanted to talk about all the different moving parts. We're going to be putting together a little sort of I don't want to call it documentary, but a little video series where we go behind the scenes and show people what it takes to operate at the transportation department, what does it take to operate at the food service department, what does it take to operate in the front office and through production and marketing and media and so many different departments and department heads. There's a lot going on.
Speaker 1:You know, in the early days I was thinking about what all it took to run a week of camp and I remember the first couple summers. The only people left here from those summers that are still here at SWO are Little and I and her parents have moved on. Her dad passed away, going on three years ago now but had been out of anything really, snowbird involved for gosh for years, and then there are some people here that are serving here that have come in uh, 2000 and 2001, so we've got some quarter century people but from the very beginning, little and I are the last ones left and um, and I really think that snowbird took off about 2000 is where it really started to take off and we have a lot of the people that helped build this ministry. They are here now. But I was just having some some funny thoughts about, you know, those early days, especially those first couple summers, which would have been 98, 99 little, and I would work to get food ready, we would, uh, we would work rec, we would lead share groups, we would do skits, we would play music you know I wouldn't play music, she would play music. Um, you did everything. We would drive buses. So essentially every department was managed by a small, teeny, tiny team of people and now we have a big team in each department and it's just crazy to even think about that aspect of growth.
Speaker 1:On a normal day at SWO, we have eight buses moving students around. We have about as many transit vans moving students around. We have about as many transit vans moving students around. We have a fleet of a dozen work trucks in maintenance and construction. We have multiple food service vehicles, including a food truck moving food around. We have a staff of almost 200 people and we have staff divided into departments, our marketing and media team right now, the people that put out the content that y'all hear and see that team alone is larger than the entirety of our first full summer staff. Um, so it's just amazing to see what God has done and to see what it takes to pull off a week of SWO. The front office that organizes and coordinates where groups stay, when they come in, registration, sign up, booking, housing, all of that I mean that's a big team of people and it takes several people that work in a full-time capacity in that office just to get everybody onto the property.
Speaker 1:Snowbird started with 50 acres. We office just to get everybody onto the property. Snowbird started with 50 acres. We now manage well over a hundred acres of property. We've more than doubled size-wise. We started with a $300 army surplus tent and under that tent we had some electric cable spools turned on their ends as tables and people ate by standing at those tables and we cooked beef stew on Coleman stoves. We first built one cabin called Freedom Cabin, but all we did was dry it in and get it under roof and then we put up two outfitter's tents and that's how we ran our first few camps. Now we have housing for over 800 people on site.
Speaker 1:Meals alone we prepare about 14,000 meals a week. Say that again 14,000 meals a week is what our food service department produces In the early days. We used to. This is crazy and some of our listeners will remember this. But in the early slow days we would go, uh, we, we would pick up food from local businesses like Subway and Andrews would would, would box up cold cut combos, six inch sandwiches, and we would go pick them up, and that was lunch one day. And for breakfast some days we would do cereal and milk and we'd set it out on those spool, those cable spool tables under that old army tent. And then some days we would go pick up, uh, hardee's biscuits. We would, we'd go buy a couple of bags of Hardee's biscuits, you know we'd only have about uh 30, 40 people here, and then we grew to where we would have around a hundred people here and it was still the same. We'd go get that food and bring it in. And now we have a food service department that produces, turns out, 14,000 meals a week. Pretty crazy. It's just amazing to see what God's done. And so a week of camp like this week we're we've grown this year by 50 students a week and we put in six new cabins. Going in for next year, lord willing, will be more bathrooms, bath houses, shower houses to alleviate some of the pressure that those extra 50 people create in terms of infrastructure.
Speaker 1:But I'm sitting in the. I'm in the worship building at the super coop at snowbirds north campus. If you're familiar with our layout, if not, we've got a 20,000 square foot open sort of an open air big roll-up garage doors on the walls facility. It's an old concert venue and it's where we do our worship services and I'm sitting in there and you've got 620 attendees, a couple hundred staff, probably 250 staff and families. We've got our element team there, which is 40 students ish and six, uh six staff members that run that. That's our high school, uh, our high school staff.
Speaker 1:Um, it's like a discipleship program we're going to be highlighting in an episode this summer. Jb actually is one of the folks that runs that and I'm just looking around and there's so many people under under the roof. You know, in one week of camp we have more people here than we had in our. For sure, our first two summers combined, like, if you take all the weeks of the first two summers, uh, it doesn't equal what we had or all, I'm sorry, the entire first two years. So, from the time we started SWO through two years of ministry and you could almost do it through three. So about three, four years of ministry, we have more people here under roof in house in a single week than we did in three years of ministry back then. So the Lord has blessed us and we're so thankful and I just want to. I want to make this an episode where I mentioned that you know a lot of people really enjoyed Joseph Wainwright and that episode where Joseph came on the podcast. But there's, joseph is one of an army of people.
Speaker 1:We have a young man named Sam Haybecker who works in maintenance and last night, as I'm recording this, on Friday of week one last night, I got a call from. This was at midnight. I got a call. I'm in a conversation with a youth pastor. I get a call from another church, a lady at another church and they had a maintenance issue in their dorm. I call Sam Haybecker and 10 minutes later he says it's taken care of and we have a team of selfless people who understand that ministry is not just preaching or leading worship or leading a share group. It's turning wrenches, fixing doorknobs, plunging toilets, serving phenomenal this is funny Serving phenomenal food. I said that right after I said plunging toilets, I should probably flip that. Serving amazing meals, plunging toilets, because one turns into the other. Uh, that was funny, I cracked myself up with that.
Speaker 1:But we've got behind the scenes people doing behind the scenes things that make Snowbird what it is, and we're on track. We're literally on track to continue growing and we just want to grow right and do this the right way. And, um, you know, jeff Garner is the guy that's over all of our transportation. We came into this week with all. He had worked so hard this spring to get bus drivers trained up, cdl licenses passed to get all the buses up and running. The problem, you know the problem, is we drive all of our buses. They average about they're about 30 years old and uh, they're just old machines. And jeff had worked so hard this spring with his team, with uh and as far as getting our vehicles ready to go, and we had four of our eight buses go down week one, on top that it's been raining. All week it has poured rain. We've got flooding in places. It's a crazy way but watching everybody come together to make it happen and then, as a result, I want to read you just a couple texts that I've gotten in the last 24 hours. Okay, let me read you.
Speaker 1:Let me read you three texts. This is from a staff member named Catherine. She's a phenomenal young lady who served here faithfully for several years now. She texted me early this morning. I had a camper who got saved last night. She's from my home church and the Lord has clearly been working in her life. He has sought her out. Our youth leaders have been praying for her continually. It is a great praise. Also, I'll be able to continue that relationship with her back home after the summer. So there's a cool testimony of God saving someone.
Speaker 1:Let me give you another one. This is from a staff member. This is a veteran staff member named Kendall. Kendall's a phenomenal, beautiful young lady who has faithfully served Jesus here. I'm so thankful for her and her and her faithfulness. She texted me this at 1215 this morning, so literally right after I got that text about the um, the, the, the maintenance issue.
Speaker 1:Hey, brody, it's Kendall Just wanted to let you know that one of my girls gave her life to the Lord tonight and I figured you'd want to know. I responded in all caps with exclamation points Thank you, thank you. This makes my night. She said it definitely made mine. I texted back this is the best kind of text. I was literally just sitting here thinking how cool it would be to get to get a text about a kid trusting Jesus. Then you texted. She said that's amazing. After working here for three summers, it's the first time I've had this experience. I'm feeling so thankful for the Lord's goodness, so awesome to hear that from Kendall last night. All right, let me read you one more Brody, this is Leo. Leo's a young man that serves on staff this summer. This is Leo. Just had a kid come to Christ and be saved. I said heck, yeah, thank you, this makes my night Hail. The king Jesus saves. He said, yes, sir, jesus truly does save. I asked him if the kid was from Ripley First Baptist Church. He said yes, sir, and he gave me his name young man named Braden.
Speaker 1:So God is moving, doing awesome things. He's been doing that from the beginning, and so you look at a situation and maybe there's a little lesson. This is not what this episode's about, but an awesome little lesson that y'all can be praying for. There's conflict and there's pushback. The enemy doesn't want us to do what we're doing and we got four out of eight buses go down, and then you got, we had a power outage, and then you know you've got. You've got conflict on every side, at every turn, and I'm just reminded that the devil's not going to sit idly by and things are not going to go smooth. As a Christian, when you're trying to do what God's called you to do that's true for every one of us, that's true for you, that's true for me If you commit to put your hand to the plow and be faithful, to advance the gospel and to try to live for Jesus, there's going to be conflict. Just expect it.
Speaker 1:And then, in the middle of all that, to get these text messages where these, by the way, these three, this young man and these two young ladies that I just read those texts from, for people that don't have hope for this generation. You should have hope for this generation because Catherine and Kendall and Leo are examples of young adults. Our staff is predictable I mean predominantly, rather, 18 to 24. Most of them are, I'd say the median age is 19 to 20. And they love the Lord, they work hard. These young men and women have given up their summer, some of them. You heard one young lady, kendall say this is her third summer. Catherine it's her second summer. She did the Institute. Leo's a first year guy.
Speaker 1:So wherever they are, on the on, on, on the scale of how long they've been here, whatever, the bottom line is young men and young women being raised up. God's calling them to SWO. We're investing in them, training them up. They're boldly proclaiming the gospel and they're passionate about seeing these young people come to faith. They're discipling them, serving so well. I'm just so blessed to be a part of it. And I think back to that outfitter tent uh, that first one. We put up that old army tent that there's old electric spools and serving beef stew off of a Coleman stove. And you know what? King Jesus has not changed. Snowbird has changed drastically in 27 years, going on 28 years, but the Lord has not changed. He never changes and his mission is the same and that's to build the kingdom, to advance the church, for the gospel to impact the world. And it's happening. It's happening right here at SWO and I'm so thankful to be a part of it.
Speaker 1:And it takes men like Jeff Garner and women like Michaela Howe and food service and people that are in that front office, cassie and Ellie, and Josh and his team in the front office, people like Riley Shannon, who works in HR, who nobody ever knows what's going on in HR. In fact, you're scared of HR. Spencer Davis, who people know as a as one of our teaching staff, who also plays bass in our band he's one of the bass players in one of the band sets, but Spencer runs our risk management department, which involves everything from making sure we've got medical staff on standby each week, a staff, a camp nurse in-house each week, standby each week, a staff, a camp nurse in-house each week. How we handle conflict with if two students get in a fight or if a boy puts his hands on a girl or like the things that you might not think about, but when you put 800 people on one property, we're going to make sure we run a tight ship while also, at the same time, making sure everybody's having a good time. And it's a big operation. And these men and women that have given their lives to this thing.
Speaker 1:Jb edits this podcast, sometimes hosts this podcast, but she also runs the girls element program and that's not all. She teaches on Wednesday mornings to every girl in camp when we split up the girls and the guys. That's a lot of hats to wear. You know that's a lot going on. That's a lot to do with very little time. The people that are here committed to this summer all 200 of them average start time of their day is 6 am. Average go to bedtime is between midnight and one and we go all day nonstop. And it's nonstop all day.
Speaker 1:And I'm telling you, the Lord is blessing the faithfulness of these people. And so when I think back to those early days, it's just me and little and a few others. And then I think about the early growth and the first few staffs. Some things have changed drastically, but some things have not changed. But one of the things that always stands out to me is that God is always bringing people into this work, calling people here to pick up the mantle that others have laid down when they've moved on to other things and to be faithful with the calling God's given us. And, as a result, I just read you three texts from the from, from from the last couple of worship services where kids are giving their life to Jesus. One more thing on that Uh, if you've been to swell you, you know we don't do big invitations where we draw kids forward, and the reason I don't do that is because we don't do that we learned early on is a lot of times kids get caught up in an emotional moment and they'll go forward not really understanding why am I here? What decision do I need to make? And I've had a lot of conviction about not just getting kids to quote unquote make a decision.
Speaker 1:Listen every time you hear the word of God, you make a decision what you're going to do with it. You get up this morning, you open your Bible. You made a decision how you're going to respond to that. Same tomorrow morning, same Sunday, when you go to church. Every time we hear the word of God, we make a decision.
Speaker 1:This morning I was preaching out of Romans eight I was in verses 31 through 34, and there was about 10 kids sleeping. Their heads are back, their jaws are gaped open, they're sleeping hard. While I'm preaching I'm like, well, that guy's already made his decision what he's going to do with this. But that's not my deal to to. Uh, you know that's that's between that young man and the Lord. But then and it's Friday and like, give him some grace. It's a, you know, 13, 15, 16 year old dude who's played hard all week it's rained. All week it's pouring rain during the worship service. It's beaten down on that on that metal roof. It probably put me to sleep too, I don't. You know, I'm not mad, I can't blame him. But then I look around and then there's kids that have their notebooks open, their Bibles open. They're aggressively taking notes. Everybody's responding to the word and I believe that if the word of God is preached, if the Holy Spirit is going to move in a kid's heart, they're going to come to faith in Jesus. And so we facilitate those conversations through share groups and and discussions and, um, yeah, it's just awesome.
Speaker 1:So in a normal day, let me run you through a normal schedule real quick Get up in the morning, breakfast staff will be meeting students for breakfast and coffee and having devotions and just just getting the day moving, opening God's word together. That's real organic. It's not organized. So our staff might connect with one or two students or they might have a small group meeting. Then breakfast, then morning worship, which is we got some games it's kind of crazy high energy to kick it off and then we'll go into some worship through song. Then we'll hear the word and we'll take a break. Then they'll go into breakout sessions where we'll talk about cultural topics, and then lunch and then all afternoon they're doing recreation high adventure recreation.
Speaker 1:Come back together for oh, in the morning, during breakouts, one of the things we do is we have a breakout session for parents and youth pastors and youth workers where we're talking to them, just trying to partner with and equip folks for student ministry. So there's student breakouts, there's leader breakouts. Back to end of the afternoon we go to supper. After supper we have another worship service that starts. In between There'll be a bunch of games and different activities kids can get into, and then we come together, sing songs of praise and worship with our band playing. Um put together an incredible. By the way, our production team is phenomenal. The skits, the dramas, the videos, the sound, the music it's all phenomenal. It's literally first rate. And then uh, and then we have, we hear, we hear the preaching of the word, and then we sing some more and then we take a break and everybody heads off to share groups and then we cap the day off with just free time. Food trucks open, snack shacks open that's typical day at SWO. Might, uh, might, get up here and visit sometime. If you've never been, I think you'd love it because we do adult conferences as well.
Speaker 1:Saying all that to say, god is moving in every department and men and women here. This morning I saw Jeff Garner, who I mentioned earlier is over at Transportation. I saw his wife, keturah, walking across the parking lot. She's coming to the worship service. She wants to come in on Friday morning. She works a few shifts a week in the dining hall in worship service. She wants to come in on Friday morning. Um, she works in the. Uh, she works a few shifts a week in the dining hall and food service and she's. She's not working this morning, but she's coming to be a part of the worship service. Just amazing to me, the family buy-in and investment. Um, this morning I came through the front gate. John Reagan was working the front gate. Well, john Reagan manages and runs and oversees the entire web operation of SWO and he's over here, man, in the front gate. Everybody pitches in and does their part and it just takes so many people cooperating selflessly to make this thing happen.
Speaker 1:And so, um, I just wanted you to know how you could be praying for energy and strength as we go into this summer. We are, I'm going to, I'm going to be unpacking more of the Roman stuff, but I did want to just close by giving you an overview. We're unpacking and working through Romans chapter eight. So we begin on Monday night in Romans eight one and we'll finish on Friday night in Romans eight 39. And we, and the teaching focus is his glory, our good.
Speaker 1:And you know if you, if you know much about the book of Romans, the first few chapters walk through how people cannot earn the righteousness of God in their own strength. Everyone falls short of God's glory. In Romans one we see that God's wrath is being revealed from heaven because people have suppressed his truth and rejected what he's revealed. In chapter 2, we see the Jewish listeners being warned against religious condescension, where they look at the people in chapter 1 and they go well, we're not like that, we're not practicing homosexuality or idol worship, we're not murderous or rebellious, we're very p homosexuality or idol worship, we're not. We're not, you know, murderous or rebellious, we're very pious and religious. And he says, hey, y'all going to be judged very strictly because you're judgmental and it's God's kindness and mercy that should have brought you to salvation. And so by the second chapter we realize everyone has sinned and no one is righteous before God, whether you're Jew, baptist, catholic Gentile whatever.
Speaker 1:And we get to chapter three and we realize, oh, jesus has to provide what we cannot earn, and that is salvation. And so chapter three goes in, that most wonderful passage in the end of Romans, chapter three, where the Lord provides righteousness for us through the work of Jesus. And so we, you know, we're just, we're so thankful to be able to walk through the, the, the eighth chapter of Romans, because it culminates by recognizing and realizing that condemnation has been removed because of what Jesus has done, as is explained in Romans 3. And from there you get into chapter 5, and it's like man, we're sinful from birth because Adam was a sinner, we inherited sin, and then we're sinful because we act on it. In chapter 6, I love, because he says that sinful man or woman has been buried with Christ In baptism. We're buried with Christ in baptism, we're buried with Christ, and when we're brought out of the baptismal waters there's this symbolic raised with Christ. And we now walk in newness of life. And so we've got this new life, this new creation. Righteousness is given to us, and we just want students to know what that all comes down to is identity. Their identity is in Christ and it is through what Jesus has done that they can celebrate and rejoice and grow, and they've been made new. Our newness comes through who Christ is and what he's done. I'm so grateful for it. And so pray for these students as we go through this summer, unpacking, week by week, romans, chapter 8, and just that we would be able to convey to them the importance of this text, and it really is so critical, so important. Pray for the staff as they lead. We're asking you to pray for them, pray for the teaching staff, the band, but pray for those folks I mentioned earlier food service, transportation maintenance. Can you imagine the maintenance that goes into keeping an 800-person facility operating day to day? It's a huge operation. And so pray for them and pray for I would ask you to pray for safety, for students to be safe, for no one to be injured or harmed, or for their you know, moving eight buses around and eight, 12 vans around every day getting kids to the whitewater.
Speaker 1:We actually move 11 buses a day because we have three buses come in from an outside company. So 11 buses a day on the road, 60 passenger buses, you know, and some of them are full. Some of them may only have 20 kids in them, but we're moving them all over running wakeboarding, uh, or I mean, I'm sorry, um, yeah, we got our wakeboarding boat up there on the lake and we're pulling kids on tubes and just there's a lot going on. And so would you pray that not a kid gets hurt, pray for safety, that God protects and preserves these kids as we take them out and do recreation in the afternoons, and then just pray that hearts and minds will be open and that students would respond to the gospel.
Speaker 1:This first week was great, was awesome, the Lord used it, but we got nine weeks to go and we're asking you to pray with us through those nine weeks.
Speaker 1:We'll be showing up here day in and day out or, I'm sorry, week in and week out and keeping you up to speed on what's going on, and we've got a few guests lined up that you're going to hear from some of our staff and got some episodes lined up that you'll get to hear from our staff, and then also we will be highlighting the element program, things like that, and I look forward to sharing that with you. Pray for us, come see us. So a lot of our listeners, I know you're on your way. You're going to be here over the next few weeks and we can't wait to see you. And it's going to be. The summer's going to come and go so fast. Heads are going to spin and it's going to be over, so let's make the most of it. Pray for us. We pray for you. It means the world to us that you listen to NSR each week, so we'll see you soon.
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.
