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WBC PODCAST
WBC PODCAST
APRIL 7, 2026 #010 M.SIMPSON/J.SPRY (FAITH THAT LIVES)
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In this episode of Talkin’ Grit, M. Simpson sits down with J.Spry to talk about what it means to be a Christian-based company, but this isn’t about telling people what to believe. It’s about sharing our faith, being real about our imperfections, and having an honest conversation about what Easter means to us.
From the job site to the office, from lessons learned to stories worth telling, this is Talking Grit, brought to you by Wright Brothers. Here's your host, Jared Walter.
SPEAKER_03Hey everybody, welcome back to Talk and Grit. And as we're getting started today, we need to announce our gift card winner. And the winner is Ashley Falls. Congratulations, Ashley. We'll be reaching out to you soon with the details on your gift card. And to all of our listeners out there, thank you. We appreciate you tuning in, being part of what we're building here, and keep the feedback rolling in. If you have that, we want to hear it. Send your thoughts to podcast at WBCCI.com. Get your name in the hat for another giveaway. We're going to be doing those constantly, and you might be our next winner. And also, before we get started, you know, our next podcast coming up. We're going to be talking the 2475 Interchange. We'll be having Brian Charlesworth in here on the podcast. Be sure to tune in for that. It's going to be the next one rolling out. But let's get to today. We have a special conversation today with our beloved chaplain, Jeff Spry. And it's going to be a great, great message. And Mitchell, why don't you lead us into that and let's take it away?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, thanks, Jared. So Right Brothers has been blessed to have corporate chaplains of America working with us since 2010. Jeff, you came on board, what was it, 2018? So you've been here a minute. You've you started out working with contract and you were traveling around, and then you've come here to the main office. And, you know, the chaplaincy program, that is really one of those things that exemplifies Wright Brothers culture. You know, we're not trying to tell everybody what to believe, but we're going to freely share what we believe. You know, we outline as everybody comes to work here, hey, we're a Christian-owned company. And that doesn't mean that we're perfect, because none of us are perfect, but we, you know, we stand by what we believe in. And, you know, this weekend coming up is the Easter weekend. Those of you ball that are listening to this, you'll be hearing this right after Easter. It's going to be released the Tuesday after Easter. And we asked Jeff to come on board and talk here for a minute, but I just want to give a plug for the chaplaincy program for a minute. You know, look, guys, once again, we're not trying to sit here and tell you guys what to believe. We're going to tell you what we believe and you guys make that decision on your own. But everybody has problems in their lives. Everybody. And anybody that says that they don't, hey, they're lying to themselves. Right. All of us have problems. Um, you know, if you're married, hey, nobody's marriage is perfect. Perfect. You got kids, oh Lord. Uh anybody that's got a house payment, a car payment, anybody that's paying bills, anybody's just walking through this life. It's life. It's life. Life's life. And the purpose of the chaplaincy program is to help everybody to have somebody to lean on and talk to about life. It's not about to beat in your head, hey, this is what we believe, because everybody this is America, a great place. We're all free to believe what we believe. And we want everybody to do that here at Wright Brothers. But um, you know, Jeff, appreciate everything you do, appreciate what Jeff Turner does, appreciate what Roger Woods does. And give us a word today, man, about Easter. What do you what are you thinking about Easter?
SPEAKER_04Hey, thanks for the invite. I uh I've been looking forward to this actually. And so um, as you would imagine, I want to begin by just a commendation to you for your effort to communicate well. And as you would imagine, I uh I think the the effort in regard to growing our company, when you all talk about the numbers in terms of our performance and the productivity and the safety matters and just the financial aspect of how our company is growing. You referenced I was in the field four years with primarily contracting, and so I've been in those remote locations where there's six or seven guys on a crew and they're way far removed. They have no sense whatsoever about how robust and dynamic and growing our company is. Yeah, mm-hmm out there in these workplaces. Right. I guys, I know that with all of my heart, yeah, that we have some of our people, that this is the place they're not in church. Yeah. This is the place where they've come to come to know Jesus Christ. Right. Yeah. And so for on this this special week, holy week, for you all to invite us to come in here and to to share this thought, I I thank you for that. I uh what makes our company a Christian-based company, it's absolutely true. You referenced, Mitchell, the four core values: the integrity, urgency, selflessness, and hard work. And just how we go about doing business. We're not a perfect company, but I can promise you the leadership of this company intends to represent the Lord well. I believe that. I see that in the two of you. I I know that's true. But as much as anything else, what I want to say is I'm so thankful that we're up front and unapologetic about the fact that we believe that we have an opportunity to be a mission field, that people can come to know the Lord in our company. Yeah, that's right. Absolutely. That's right. That's right. And there are a lot of places places that is just not true, guys. That is not true. And so fundamentally, what we're talking about here is coming to a place where people can find faith. Right. Okay. Okay. Where they can find faith. And so you would know if we go to um to the resurrection story. And I've been encouraging this week as I've been with the people and the field. Go and read the Gospel of John, read chapter 18, 19, 20, and 21.
SPEAKER_02Go and read it. Yeah. So let's just talk about this for a second, real quick, Jeff. And I talked about this with, you know, the the little Sunday school class that I teach my kids, you know. So this past Sunday, Palm Sunday. Yeah. Right. Just think about how this went down.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_02You know, Christ knows what's going to happen. He comes back to Jerusalem, right? Hadn't been there for a while. That's right. Because he was persecuted. He came back to Jerusalem. He knew he was going to die. He knew it. But when he came into Jerusalem, you know, they treated him like a king.
SPEAKER_01Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_02There was people, palm trees, they were things. He was walking on the cold. A parade. It was a parade.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And, you know, the Jewish people at that point in time, they were oppressed, and they were looking for an earthly king to come and save them from the Roman Empire. Right. And that's what they thought Christ was going to do. Oh, yeah. But, you know, just like them, us being human beings with a finite understanding, you know, we don't always see the ways of God, do we? We do not. And at that point in time, wow. They totally missed the mark. They did. They totally missed the mark. So, you know, think about the week Christ went through. Sunday he comes in. And then Friday, Good Friday, he's crucified on the cross. Yeah. What a turn of events. Okay. So faith. So then you're talking about Easter, right? Yeah. Talking about faith.
SPEAKER_04So what I what I'd like to do for just a second is so on Easter morning when Jesus rose from the grave. Yeah. You uh you remember it was the women who got there first. And then they got word to to the early up some of the early apostles. Um that evening, John tells us that he met with the apostles, all the Thomas. They were all gathered in the room behind closed doors. Yep. And lo and behold, Jesus miraculously appears. And he speaks, peace be unto you. And he puts out his hands and he allows for them to see and feel. Man, it was convicting, and they were so grateful. It's true. He's risen. But Thomas wasn't there. And so when they told Thomas this, he's he said, Ha! I'm sorry, but I just can't believe. And so that's what we find here in John chapter 20. I want I just want to read this for a second. Eight days later, the disciples were together, and this time Thomas was with them. The doors were locked again, but suddenly as before, Jesus was standing among them. Again he says, Peace be with you. Then he said to Thomas, he knew who needed him the most. He looked directly to Thomas. Put your fingers here and look at my hands. Put your hand into the wound in my side. Don't be faithless any longer. Believe. My Lord and my God, Thomas exclaimed, but this is the big the big point I want to make. Jesus then turned to him and he said, You believe because you've seen me. Blessed are those who believe without ever seeing me. And you know what, Mitchell? That's us.
SPEAKER_02That's us. Two thousand years later, Jeff, that's us.
SPEAKER_04Jesus knew that there was going to be an opportunity for every single one of us to have faith, to own it for ourselves, and to believe. He wanted that for us. And honestly, the real simple, the real simple message of Holy Scripture, you know, in the very beginning, early times of the patriarchs, God was directly with the people. He talked with them, he walked with them. Then came the Mosaic Age, and finally, Moses, when he got out of the people out of Egyptian bondage, he asked for them. The Lord said, We need to build a tabernacle. And the reason for that tabernacle is he wanted to place that ark of the covenant there so that the people could know that's where God is.
SPEAKER_02And that's where he dwelled.
SPEAKER_04That's where he dwelt. And then, you know, Solomon later built a temple. Yep. He built that temple because there was going to be a holy of holy place. And the Jews knew that's where God is. But in the fullness of time, God sent his son. Because God has always had a desire to reside with his people. And at that point in time, he sent Jesus Christ. And Jesus lived among men. And as you move into looking at that gospel of John, you're going to find a really pivotal point where he says in chapters 16 and 17, I'm going to go. I'm going to leave, I'm going back to the Father, but I'm going to leave the comforter, the paraclete, the Holy Spirit. And he's going to be the one that's going to reside in you, but it's going to be, he's going to reside in your heart. And we see that at the beginning of Acts. We do. That's the fulfillment of what Jesus said. But my point all along the way through Holy Scripture, God has always desired to live with his people.
SPEAKER_02That's right. He did not want to be separated from us. We were the ones that drove the separation with sin. It's exactly right. We drove the separation.
SPEAKER_03And now through Christ's sacrifice, we are the temple.
SPEAKER_04We are.
SPEAKER_03You know, so, you know, Emmanuel God with us is now, you know, the Spirit of God in us. That relationship has been, you know, there's been that way paved through the shed blood of Jesus Christ for each and every one of us to have a relationship with him.
SPEAKER_04It's exactly right. Yeah. Now, there's another little matter in the whole story about the resurrection that I I've always found interesting. Do you remember? There was a man named Joseph of Arimathea. Yeah.
SPEAKER_05Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_04When those final hours, when Jesus hung on the cross, Joseph was convicted that he needed to go to Pilate and ask to give Jesus' body a proper burial. Yeah. At three o'clock on that Friday afternoon, Jesus took his last breath. It is finished. And Joseph of Arimathea, and what you need to know is that he was among the Sanhedrin council, the Jewish leaders of the people who were the ones that had Jesus crucified. Joseph of Arimathea took a risk, a huge risk. He stepped out. He he took a risk and he took his friend Nicodemus. You guys remember Nicodemus was in a conversation when he went to him by night about the new birth, about the fact that a man must be born again. And those two men went to Pilate. Pilate agreed you take his body, and so they did. They took his body off the cross, they took it to a tomb that had never had a body placed in it before. It belonged to Joseph, and they took 75 pounds. Now imagine this. Between three o'clock that afternoon and six o'clock when they had to have the deed done, they anointed his body with 75 pounds of myrrh, aloe, and frankincense. And then they wrapped it according to the custom. You can imagine all the emotions that those guys had knowing that they stepped out and took the risk that they did. And when they walked out of that tomb and rolled that stone away, they knew things were going to be different in their life. Here's the big point. Mitchell, I believe with all of my heart that each of us have to make a make a decision. We have to make a decision that we're going to claim Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. Yeah, all of us got to step out just like they did at some point. And I'm telling you, it's not it's not going to be a road of comfort. There are going to be some some ways that the Lord is going to stretch us. All of us have been stretched, every one of us here. God stretched us into some things we never would have expected and never could have done on our own. But if we'll believe, just like doubting Thomas, if we'll believe, the Lord promises he's going to be with us and he's going to enable us to do some mighty things on his behalf. And so in our company, we're a part of a mission field. That's how I see it, Mitchell. Absolutely. We're in a mission field. And we get to talk with people about faith. And I'm, I will tell you, you're going to know at least my approach is to recognize if we just build a caring relationship with folks, somewhere along the way, there's going to be something come in their life that they're going to need some help. And there's going to be a spiritual aspect of that that they're having to face like never before. And because you all have agreed to make it possible for us to interact with these people and build these caring relationships, we're able to step into that moment and walk with them through it. Yeah. And it I promise you, there's some tough things our people deal with. You don't believe that our some odd almost 800 people don't have, you can look across the spectrum of all the human condition and our people are facing it.
SPEAKER_01Yep. Absolutely. Life's tough. It's true. Life's tough.
SPEAKER_03You know, one of the things that I love about you know what you shared, when you were talking about doubting Thomas. And there might be some doubting Thomas is listening right now, wherever you're at. The great thing about that passage in John is Jesus is not scared of doubt.
SPEAKER_01No.
SPEAKER_03He invites that interaction. So if you're at a place where you're like, man, I don't know about any of this. I don't know about life. I don't know about what's going on. God's not scared of that doubt. He actually welcomes that and uh give him a chance to prove himself.
SPEAKER_02And you know, the cool thing about that is Jesus understands that because he's both fully God and fully man. Right. Right. He walked the same shoes as us. He gets the emotions that we all got. He gets the problems we've got. He gets it.
SPEAKER_03Absolutely. And he gets it. And what's awesome is, you know, with what we have set up is we basically have, you know, built into our company through, you know, just the the way that Jeff is and the other chaplains are in the rhythm of meeting with guys and going from job site to job site. Like, if you've got questions, if you've got doubts, we've already got basically a pastor that's on the job site from time to time that you can talk to and just be like, hey, you know, I I gotta talk. I got some doubts. Um, but we have that built in to the company to say, hey, we're ready to take that on. And we've got, especially in you, Jeff, somebody that's that's caring and willing to say to anybody, hey, let's talk. Yeah, let's talk, let's talk about life, let's talk about faith, let's tackle that. And I think that's awesome.
SPEAKER_04Mitchell, I want to share one more little incident here. And um we can wrap this up. I'm sure we're close on time. You remember Jesus had a half had a half-brother named James? And he doubted. James. Mitchell, he grew up in that home and he could not fathom how in the world Jesus could be the Son of God.
SPEAKER_02So the hardest problems we have is with our family, right?
SPEAKER_04Oh, oh, he couldn't fathom it. And it was only it was only on the day that Jesus hung on the cross. I promise you, it was on that day when he saw Jesus hang on the cross that finally it it all clicked. Surely I believe he's the Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world. And he was so convicted it was life-changing. His faith was life-changing at that point in time, and he chose to write the important things that he felt down in a little book we have in our Bible toward the close of the New Testament. Book of James, five chapters. Super impactful. Oh, when he gets to the end of it, though, and here's my final real point I want to make. There's a lot of things that he says about what it means to live an authentic life and to lead with our faith. A lot of things he has to say. I would encourage you to go read it sometime. But when he gets to the very last couple of verses, you know whatever's last has got to be something important. Right. And here's what he says. My dear brothers and sisters, if someone among you wanders away from the truth and is brought back, you can be sure that whoever brings the sinner back from wandering will save that person from death and bring about the forgiveness of many sins. So here's the deal. As we all, in the distinct roles that we have, as we all lead with our faith in every aspect of our life, I can promise you, God's going to bring some people into our orbit that's wandered away from God. Because we work so closely with people around here. I mean, we know the people we work with. I mean, we've been with these people years and years and hours and hours. We know the people in our group that have wandered away or who have not yet claimed faith. James encourages us to please understand that we all have an opportunity to rescue somebody from death to life. If we will all be aware and lead with our faith when we see somebody that we know, because we know when somebody's not walking with the Lord, yeah, we know when they're not living out their faith. James challenges us, lead with your faith. Don't be quiet, don't sit on your influence, speak into that. Encourage somebody, challenge them in their faith. And when doing that, you'll rescue them from death to life. And he even says, you'll cover over a multitude of sins. I know James, in his mind, when he wrote that down, he saw Jesus hanging on a cross. And he knew the opportunity that we have to participate in the kingdom work of enabling people to be forgiven of their sins. And we all can be a part of that. Every one of us, not just the chaplains out there in the field, but every one of us, when we see somebody wandering away, please lead with your faith. Don't be quiet. God wants you to use your voice and rescue and bring them from death to life. At the end, that's what this is all about, Mitchell.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that's why we're here, Jeff. That's what it's all about. No matter all the good things we do every day, all the cool stuff we build, everything that we do at the end of the day, it ain't gonna matter, is it? It all boils down to faith in Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_04And that's at the heart and soul of what it means to be a Christian-based company. That's really what's gonna differentiate us at the end of the day, is how well we are all doing and leading with our faith. Good word, Jeff. I hope it is.
SPEAKER_02Good word, man. Good word. Ludic. I appreciate everything you do. I appreciate for how you care for our people. I appreciate how you're just always out there. You care. You care. And you're authentic. Man, I appreciate you. Appreciate all the years you've poured into here at Wright Brothers. And you know, you've been a blessing to us, man. Can't tell you how much. Hey, it's feelings mutual.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. And you're pastoring this company, you know. Um, you and the other chaplains are pastors to people, and it doesn't mat it doesn't have to be in a church. I believe the revival that people are looking for is in the marketplace. I do too. Everyday people working everyday jobs doing just living life, but you've got people that are choosing to step into that um that arena and meet them where they're at with faith. People that, you know, might not ever walk into a church. That's okay. Um, God's not scared of that. So he's commissioned uh laborers in the field to go in and bring the good news. And so if if you see Jeff, if you see any of the other chaplains, talk to them. Some of the most loving, kind, caring people. You know, it is a not just a benefit, you know, that we have here at Wright Brothers, but um they're also serving in the mission field of everyday life. And Jeff, thank you. I always love to see you coming and uh just your love for for everybody. Thank you, buddy. I appreciate this. I hope this has been good this morning. It's been great. Absolutely. We're good. Let's wrap this one up. All right. Uh great word, great conversation. And thank you everybody for tuning in. Um, tune in next week as we keep this conversation going. Uh, and send that feedback. We want to hear from you. But, anyways, wherever you are, wherever you're tuning in from, have a safe, great rest of your day. This has been Talking Grit.
SPEAKER_00That's gonna do it for this episode of Talking Grit. Thanks for listening, and thanks to everyone out there putting in the work day in and day out. If you liked what you heard, be sure to follow the show and share it with someone who knows the value of hard work. We'll catch you next time right here on Talking Grit.