Many United Methodists have memories of summer camp being full of fun and friendships. But it’s also a place where faith comes alive through powerful worship and real spiritual growth. In this conversation with Garrett Hammonds, director of Camp Wesley Woods, discover how these sacred camp moments are impacting young people long after summer ends and how you and your local church can be part of the story.
Guest: The Rev. Garrett Hammonds
- Learn more about Camp Wesley Woods.
- Support the ministry happening at Camp Wesley Woods.
- Hammonds is an elder in the Holston Conference of The United Methodist Church.
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This episode posted on Sept. 5, 2025.
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Transcript
Make this Advent season a time of peace and reflection. With “Advent: A calendar of devotions 2025,” each day's reading draws you closer to Christ's light, offering hope and joy for your journey. Available now at cokesbury.com. Your source for meaningful advent resources.
Prologue
Many United Methodists have memories of summer camp being full of fun and friendships, but it's also a place where faith comes alive through powerful worship and real spiritual growth. Discover how these sacred camp moments are impacting young people long after summer ends and how your local church can be part of the story.
Crystal Caviness, host: Hi, my name's Crystal Caviness. I'm your host on “Get Your Spirit in Shape,” and today I'm here with Garrett Hammonds and I'm so excited to have this conversation with you, Garrett. Our friendship goes back about six or seven years. It's been a while since we've talked and I know that you're in a new position and that's why you're here today is to talk about that. But before we get started, just tell us a little bit about yourself.
Garrett Hammonds, guest: Yeah, so I'm happy to be here. I'm actually, I'm from this area. I'm from where Camp Wesley Woods is. I actually went to high school just down the road like 10 minutes, which is exciting, but also not what I ever expected. I didn't expect to work 10 minutes from where I went to high school, but I'm the director at Camp Wesley Woods and we just wrapped up our first summer season. So yeah, I was a United Methodist pastor for a couple of years before this and I didn't see this coming, but here I am and I'm excited and a little terrified.
Crystal: Tell us where Camp Wesley Woods is for our listeners who don't know.
Garrett: Yeah, it's in Townsend, Tennessee, so that's about 20 minutes outside of Maryville and about 45 minutes outside of Knoxville. It's right next to the Smokies. We're in the mountains. We have been here. The camp was started in 1959, so it's been doing ministry here for a long time. But yeah.
Crystal: You have a real affinity for the mountains and we're going to talk about that also. This is not your first time being out in the mountains, but just to start us off, you are the director at Camp Wesley Woods. And tell us about this past summer. What were some things that you experienced the kids experienced? We talked about this before we started recording, and I think there's a lot of United Methodists who don't realize that camps are thriving through across the United Methodist connection, and I'd love to just hear about summer.
Garrett: Yeah, yeah, so honestly, I didn't really know what to expect. I did not grow up United Methodist. I grew up Baptist, and then when I was a teenager, I joined The United Methodist Church, so I didn't really fully know what to expect. I had worked here a long time ago, like a decade ago with the Outdoor education program, but that is very different than summer camp. So walking into summer didn't really know what that was going to look like, but it's been amazing. It has been amazing. I worked in two previous churches before this, that one of them had a pretty good children's ministry and the other one hadn't had one for quite a while, but being able to do ministry with kids and young adults was just amazing. We had 375 campers this summer and one of the things that stood out to me probably the most was for training.
We have these young adults, people in their twenties who are showing up to camp to be counselors, to do all the different jobs at camp, and that's so exciting to get to talk to them and grow with them. But we had worship with them leading up to the beginning of camp. And then I remember when all the campers started to arrive and being in the pavilion where we have our worship services at night and just hearing all of these little voices just rising up, just an entire choir of kids' voices just singing and worshiping. And that was something I don't know if I've ever really experienced, especially not in a church in a really long time. And so that was just very, very powerful to see, wow, there are a lot of young folks and kids who are coming to this place worshiping God and having a powerful experience connecting with Jesus. And so that was nice. That was a pleasant surprise, and I think that was what kept me going. I told my wife the other day, we were kind of doing some math. I think I was working on average over 90 hours a week, but there's something spiritual that keeps you going.
Crystal: What do you think that is?
Garrett: Okay, this is going to make me maybe sound really, really strange. I told this to, we were having a leadership meeting, but I remember at some point this summer, I think it was a psalm I was reading, it was talking about David saying that God gives him the power to jump over walls or something like that or leap over walls. And for whatever reason it stuck in my head that that's the Holy Spirit. I think it was the Holy Spirit that gave us the strength to do all of the things this summer that I don't think we could possibly do on our own. I could not, I mean, I love working in an office, I love doing kind of the day-to-day things, but I couldn't do that 90 hours a week. But this summer I really think God brought us through and I think it's because he wants these kids to know him and he wants campers to experience his love, and he wants the counselors who are people in their twenties who come from all different backgrounds, all different denominations, different countries to be connected to him and growing in him. And this is a powerful place where our denomination gets to actually minister to people who are not normally sitting in our pews. So that's been really, really powerful for me.
Crystal: Wow, that does sound powerful and really special to get to be a part of that on a daily basis. When you're seeing these kids there, Garrett, how does that make you feel about the future of our church?
Garrett: It makes me feel really hopeful. I wish I that we could have everyone somehow be a fly on the wall for our vespers service, which is any of our worship services, but Vespers is the final worship service we do on Thursday nights with campers. And it's just such a powerful experience to see kids who not out of coercion or pressure or anything like that, they are just experiencing the love of Jesus and choosing to follow him. And it's powerful. I mean, I think I cried just about every single Thursday night. I wouldn't even think it was going to happen, but when people have shown up who haven't even known what to expect, who get to witness that, they come away transformed. We had a few ministers and residents, the people who lead the worship and the different things that happen throughout the week, worship in what we call morning watch is like a morning devotion. And they were speechless at the end of Vespers because some of them said, we haven't seen worship like this in so long. And they're talking about kids, they're talking about kids. So it makes me feel very hopeful, but we need to not let it end on that Thursday night. We need to be supporting the camps, connecting with them and seeing how we can connect with those families. Because an awful large number of campers who weren't plugged into churches so hopeful, but recognizing we've got work to do.
Crystal: So that kind of like a call to the local church and those of us in the local church to really just to keep, people are out there and the kids are wanting it, the families are clearly wanting it because they sent their kids to camp. So that sounds like maybe some suggestions or maybe a little more strongly than suggestions for us in the church to really be connecting with those families and those kids. Is there something in place where that could happen?
Garrett: I mean, yes and no. To be honest, when I stepped into this role, I don't know. Now, I don't know everything that's happened here. So take what I'm saying with a grain of salt, but there wasn't something so much in place in connecting campers to kind of follow up beyond summer camp. But what we started to do and what we want to continue to implement in the future is to reach out to those churches and sometimes to parents as well. When the campers have expressed that they've made the decision to follow Jesus, they've made the decision to reconnect with Jesus or a surprising number of campers who feel a call to ministry and a surprising number of these campers don't have a connection to a church. I mean, there are kids who have, or parents actually, because the ones filling out the forms who say even they're agnostic or part of another religious tradition and they're sending their kids to camp and their kids are meeting Jesus. And that to me is really exciting. So there needs to be some more structure in place to connect them, and we need the help of the churches for that.
Crystal: You're in the Holston Conference, which serves East Tennessee, parts of Southwest Virginia. So about the camp, the camps offerings in that conference of course, but this is going on across the connection. Do you have a sense for, are you guys an isolated event? Is this happening in every conference camp?
Garrett: So we're not isolated. I think this is something that is happening in all the conference camps. There may be more structures in place in other camps that are connecting to those campers, but not to say it's a formula or to say it's to oversimplify things. I really think it comes back to God moving and his spirit moving. But I think when, when young adults get to experience the community of camp, the authentic worship that happens here, and a key component too is being in an environment that invites them to be challenged and to grow. All of those things coming together and God's spirit. Moving through those things, I think is what leads to this kind of powerful experience of Jesus. And I think that's happening at our camps across the conference.
Let's take a break from our conversation with Garrett to talk about budgets. Let's be honest. When you hear apportionments, you might think, is that just a church budget thing? We get it. It sounds like accounting, but here's the truth. It's actually a story of ministry mission and multiplication. Apportioned giving is how your small offering becomes part of something much bigger. That means supporting churches in underserved communities. That means funding seminaries, hospitals, and disaster response teams. That means reaching people you may never meet but who know God's love because of you. It's not about how much it's about all of us showing up together. You are part of a church that is united in impact. That's a story worth sharing and a story worth being part of. It starts with you and your faithful generosity. We are the people of the United Methodist Church and together we are united in impact visit resource umc.org/united in impact to learn more. Now, back to our conversation with Garrett.
Crystal: As you're talking, Garrett, I hear you talking about how these kids are transformed, but I'm kind of curious, from the beginning of the season to now, how has your faith been transformed?
Garrett: Oh, it has felt like reading the Psalms, it's felt like a roller coaster sometimes. It's just like I'm on top of the world. It's like I trust God fully and everything's going to work out and God is going to just handle everything. At the next moment. I'm like, everything feels like it's going unhinged and off the rails, and God, where are you at? But in the long, long story of summer, I feel like I've grown closer to God. And it's one of those moments where it's like you realize it's one of those periods where you realize what faith actually means. Faith is not just a ahead thing. It's not just a set of theological checklist, things that we agree to. It is a relationship of actually you have to put yourself and all of who you are on the line and trust that God can handle that. And that is really actually hard if we have faith. I think it's simple and sometimes it feels like all things are easy, but there is some, there's a real challenge to it.
Crystal: I really like that phrase. Faith is not a theological checklist because we like to check things off. We like to be told what the checklist looks like, and then we like to go behind and check them off. But I think you're right, authentic faith in an authentic world definitely is not formulaic at all. So you and I know each other because you were part of the Appalachian Trail Chaplaincy, which is a ministry of the Halston Conference, which that ministry puts one or more folks on the Appalachian Trail for the season to through hike or section hike and just be out there as a presence, a loving presence to minister as needed on the trail in 2019. You and your then fiancée, Kailee Pierce, were commissioned to go out on the trail and did complete the through hike. And I'm curious, how did your experience on hiking at, how has that been beneficial maybe, or what did you learn there that you've been able to put into at Camp Wesley Woods?
Garrett: Yeah, the first thing that pops into my mind is that it is amazing the things that can happen and that I don't want it to sound cliche because I don't want it to take away from the reality of it, but that God can do in our lives and that God can carry us through that. I am not, I wouldn't have said this in my interview process for either this job or for the Appalachian Trail, but I am not an outdoorsy person. And I think that's maybe shocking to some people to think like you lived in the woods for six months, what do you mean? And I love the outdoors, but I am whiny and soft, and I like my own pillow and hot showers and all those things, and I'm kind of a chicken whenever it's nighttime. But God brought me and Kaylee through that brought us through the trail, challenged us.
And so the things that I take away from that and how it connects to what this experience this summer has been like is that God can use me even in my fragile softness and windiness to still do things beyond what I could possibly do myself. God has carried me through these things, and it's in that experience of relying on him that I think that faith, like I was saying earlier, that that just becomes more real, I guess, more part of shaping who I am. And then the second thing is that I don't think people can grow in any part of their life without challenge. Don't think anybody can grow in their faith without being called to step out beyond where you're at. It might sound kind of cheesy, but following Jesus is following Jesus. You don't get to sit in the boat, you don't get to sit with your nets. You're called to step out and do.
Crystal: You don't always get the hot shower and get to sleep with your pillow, do you?
Garrett: No, no, unfortunately. But it's a good thing. So I think that through challenge, God has grown me and Kalie, and sometimes I wish that wasn't the case, but I think that's, and I think that's what I've taken away from this summer and from the,
Crystal: So the camp season is officially over at Camp Wesley Woods, but you work all year. It's not just a summer career or a summer job. So I feel like that the rest of the year is where maybe some local churches can get plugged in to next camp season. So can you talk about that?
Garrett: Yeah, absolutely. So one thing this made me think of, I have a brother and I have two brothers, but one of them em asked me when he found out I was going to be a pastor, he was like, well, that's nice. You only work on Sundays. And I was like, no, not quite. And I think that's sometimes how people feel about the camp. It's like, oh, well you only work during the summer, and it's like, Nope. During the rest of the year, we're also very, very busy. What we're looking at at camp right now is, like I said earlier, when we were talking camp's, been here since 1959. We have a lot of facilities that need some refreshing, some updating, and so we are really focused on trying to get volunteers, trying to get resources here at camp to do some of the necessary renovations so that we can keep doing ministry here. Where Vespers happens is in a pavilion that has a roof that needs to be repaired, there's buildings that need to be painted. There's all sorts of things. So I mean, we appreciate anyone who wants to show up to volunteer, anyone who wants to support us financially, there is a lot of work to be done here. It is a community, like a little city in some ways. So yeah, that's our focus for this off season is to just start to address some of the needs here at camp so that we can keep serving campers.
Crystal: And Garrett, we can put on the episode page an email address or a website where folks can go if they're interested in volunteering, how they can contribute to the camp if they want to financially or with probably you would accept lumber and paint and things like that in kind contributions as well. So we'll add that to the, we'll definitely add that. So I'm always curious, it feels like that in a camp season, there's always one or two or maybe more stories that just kind of bubble up to the top as this was my favorite thing that happened this camp season. Do you have any of those?
Garrett: Yeah, I think the thing that stood out to me, and I can't give too many details I guess, but we have campers in a range of ages, but I think some of the campers that can give you the most challenge and some of the most reward is middle school age campers. They are all of the emotions and all of the excitement and all of that. But in particular, there was a story of these two campers that hadn't been getting along, and this one camper in particular just really struggled to fit in. And there had been some pretty significant tension among them. But after about, they were part of a two week session after about halfway through the second week, these girls were doing a bible study together about forgiveness, and I might get a little emotional, I think, and they came up to their counselors and they said, we talked about forgiveness and we've talked with this girl who they were having issues with, and we decided to forgive her. And we're all friends now, and if adults could get that half as well as what those campers did, I think the world would be a different place. So that was a powerful experience
Crystal: And how brave of them, all of them, to have those conversations to have. Yeah. Wow. Well, as we finish up today, Garrett, is there anything that you wanted to talk about that we haven't touched on yet?
Garrett: I think really just to get the word out, I'm going to be blunt. I don't always think that in the news that we hear about the church today, it's always positive things. And I think that can overshadow sometimes the reality of what God is doing. And here at camp, and I think all the camps and in a lot of churches around the area, God is showing up and doing powerful things. And here I see it every single week, every single week, young kids and young adults following Jesus and choosing to follow Jesus. And that is, that's something we've got to hold on to. So yeah,
Crystal: I talked to a lot of ministers and some bishops on the podcast, and I sometimes will ask about their call story, and it's surprising to me how many of them felt their call at a summer camp, at a church camp. And so you said earlier that there are kids coming in who don't even have an affiliation with a specific church, but yet they're already feeling this tug to ministry that God's already speaking to their heart in that way. And so that's really exciting and for them to probably for the first time maybe be able to talk about that and have a supportive community, it's the formation piece that's happening there is just so powerful.
Garrett: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And it's just exciting. I mean, it is challenging, but it is so worth it.
Crystal: Well, as we finish up today, I'm going to ask you the question we ask all of our guests on “Get Your Spirit in Shape,” and that's how do you keep your own spirit in shape?
Garrett: Yeah, so a couple things. This is going to be like the pastoral sounds. Good answer. One, me and my wife try to regularly, and the try is emphasized there to study the Bible, read the Bible, and usually chapter sections together and just, that's nice. Sometimes it's frustrating. Sometimes we have debates, but it is fulfilling. And then I think for me too, it is being outside, even though I do love the inside as well, but to be out in the woods, to just take a moment and actually think about how good creation is, and that's refreshing. I think just doing that regularly, taking a moment, stepping out, focusing on the goodness. That is what keeps my soul in shape.
Crystal: I love that. I'm going to share this. We had a guest on a couple of episodes back and he had written a book about the Old Testament and just different parts of it. The guest was Bill Brown and he'd written a book called “Sacred Tension,” and in the conversation in the book, he talks about that the word for man in the Hebrew is A-D-A-M which we would call Adam, and the word for ground or earth is A-D-A-M-A, which is Adama. And so man comes from the ground, and so we're all Groundlings, and I've really adopted that in my own. Those folks closest to me are hearing me talk about how I'm a groundling and I love being near the ground. And so I can definitely appreciate that. That's how you keep your spirit in shape is like being there in creation. God's creation is amazing, and so you're getting to be a part of that on a regular basis. I can appreciate how that encourages you and enriches your life.
Garrett: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And that's our mission statement. It's about connecting people to Jesus in his wonderful creation.
Crystal: I love it! Garrett, thank you for being a guest on “Get Your Spirit in Shape.” Thank you for the ministry and the impact that you're making on these young people, and I love seeing how you and Kalie are working and growing your lives and just such an important part of The United Methodist Church. So thank you for that.
Garrett: Thank you so much. It was good talking with you.
Epilogue
That was Garrett Hammond, director at Camp Wesley Woods. To learn more, go to umc.org/podcast and look for this episode where you'll find helpful links and a transcript of our conversation. If you have questions or comments, feel free to email me at a special email address just for Get Your Spirit and shape listeners, [email protected]. If you enjoyed today's episode, we invite you to leave a review on the platform where you get your podcast. Thank you for being a “Get Your Spirit in Shape” listener. I'm Crystal Caviness and I look forward to the next time that we're together.
Today's “Get Your Spirit in Shape” episode was brought to you by Cokesbury, your partner in ministry. This Advent season make this advent a season of hope and connection with “Advent: A calendar of devotions 2025.” This meaningful and affordable resource offers daily readings from the first Sunday of Advent through Christmas Day, each with scripture, a short devotion and a prayer or practice perfect for your congregation, outreach or as gifts. These booklets come in packs of 10, can be personalized with your church's details and are also available as an ebook or daily email. Order today at cokesbury.com.
