By Mike Sparks
I grew up around cars. My dad was a World War II veteran who joined the Army Air Corps and flew missions over Nazi Germany aboard B-17 Flying Fortresses. He survived all of that — and then helped his teenage son get his first car: a 1969 Camaro he bartered a Honda CX500 to obtain.
The car needed a lot of work.
I was working at the iconic Omni Hut Restaurant — owned by Major James Walls, a man I considered one of the great mentors of my life — for $1.50 an hour. Some nights I walked home along the railroad tracks when I didn’t catch a ride with the Major himself.
But I kept working. Kept saving. I had the front seats reupholstered at a shop that once sat on Rock Springs Road, just past Marc Lewis Farmers Insurance Agency. I tracked down used custom wheels and tires at George Corbitt Auto Sales. Years later, I attended George’s funeral — held just across the lot from his old dealership, at Roselawn Funeral Home. Life has a way of circling back.
Those cars taught me something about work, discipline, and the value of a dollar. By the time I was 21, I had saved roughly $10,000 through the sale of a few cars. My late father believed in me enough to loan me another $10,000 — at 10% interest, because he wasn’t just investing in my dream, he was teaching me one more lesson about how the real world works. Together, that became the seed money for Hardbodies Fitness Center on Lowry Street — my first business, located right next door to what just opened last Friday.
The car needed a lot of work.
I was working at the iconic Omni Hut Restaurant — owned by Major James Walls, a man I considered one of the great mentors of my life — for $1.50 an hour. Some nights I walked home along the railroad tracks when I didn’t catch a ride with the Major himself.
But I kept working. Kept saving. I had the front seats reupholstered at a shop that once sat on Rock Springs Road, just past Marc Lewis Farmers Insurance Agency. I tracked down used custom wheels and tires at George Corbitt Auto Sales. Years later, I attended George’s funeral — held just across the lot from his old dealership, at Roselawn Funeral Home. Life has a way of circling back.
That 1969 Camaro taught me something I’ve never forgotten: a car worth saving is worth the work. So is a man.
That’s why what Eric Richie and Ron Alley are doing at Crusader Auto Works isn’t just a program to me. It’s personal.
There’s a verse in the New Testament that doesn’t get preached from many pulpits in Rutherford County. Not because it’s complicated. But because it demands something most men would rather not give — their time, their hard-earned knowledge, and the willingness to invest it in someone else.
“What you have heard from me through many witnesses,” the Apostle Paul wrote to his young protégé Timothy, “entrust to faithful people who will be able to teach others as well.” — 2 Timothy 2:2
It’s a four-generation chain of discipleship packed into a single sentence. And in a garage off the streets of Middle Tennessee, two men are living it out one oil change, one Bible verse, and one conversation at a time.
The Wrench as a Metaphor — and a Ministry
Eric Richey didn’t set out to start a men’s ministry. He set out to fix cars. But somewhere between the engine blocks and the exhaust systems, he discovered something the church has always known and the culture has largely forgotten: men open up when their hands are busy.
That insight became the foundation of what happens at Crusader Auto Works — a gathering that looks like a shop class but functions more like a discipleship pipeline.
Ron Alley of Carpe Artista, an artist and creative thinker who joined Eric in shaping the program’s curriculum and culture, puts it plainly: the garage isn’t the point. The men in the garage are the point.
Together, they built a weekly program they call Wrench in Hand, Word in Heart — a name that says everything about their philosophy. You don’t have to clean yourself up to walk in. You just have to show up.
The program runs on three rails they call The Shop, The Spiritual Service Center, and The Bodyshop Log — each one targeting a different dimension of what it means to be a whole man.
Passing the Wrench
The phrase they keep coming back to — the one that anchors their entire Phase 3 curriculum — is simple enough to fit on a bumper sticker: I pass the wrench.
It comes straight from 2 Timothy 2:2, a passage that the Apostle Paul wrote while sitting in a Roman prison, knowing his own days were numbered. He wasn’t writing a theological treatise. He was writing a transfer of responsibility. What I gave you — give it to someone else. And make sure they give it to the next man after that.
Paul to Timothy. Timothy to faithful men. Faithful men to others.
Four links in a chain. Every one of them essential.
That’s the model Richie and Alley have imported into The Shop. The men who came before you — they passed you the wrench. Now it’s your job to pass it on. Not just the skill. The faith. The discipline. The brotherhood. The honest conversation about what it means to be a man who doesn’t quit.
The Spiritual Service Center: Diagnosis Before the Fix
Every garage runs diagnostics before it starts repairs. That’s exactly what the Spiritual Service Center portion of the program is designed to do — run a spiritual diagnostic on the man standing in the bay.
The questions they ask in the Spiritual Service Center aren’t comfortable. They’re not meant to be. Who am I discipling right now? What am I passing on? Where do I need to be more intentional in leading? How can I encourage others to step up?
These aren’t questions most men get asked at the office. Or at the ballgame. Or, if they’re honest, even at church.
But in a garage, surrounded by men who are all holding the same wrench — metaphorically and sometimes literally — the walls come down. The posturing stops. And the real conversation begins.
The Spiritual Service Center runs on a theme of discipleship and multiplication. The weekly code the men speak aloud says it in four words: I pass the wrench.
The Bodyshop Log: Own the Rust
The third rail of the program may be the most countercultural of all. They call it the Bodyshop Log — and its operating philosophy is stamped across the top of every session in four blunt commands:
Don’t fake the fix. Own the rust. Trust the Builder. Do the work.
That’s not self-help language. That’s the language of a man who has looked at a rusted-out frame and decided to restore it rather than hide it. You can Bondo over the rot — or you can grind it down to bare metal, treat it right, and rebuild it to last.
The Bodyshop Log applies that same logic to the body and the soul. Each week, teams they call Pit Crews pick a physical challenge together — a 5K, a push-up benchmark, a group workout — and complete it as a unit. The question they journal afterward isn’t about their fitness. It’s about their leadership: What did I learn about discipline through this challenge?
The answer, almost universally, is that discipline isn’t private. It ripples outward. How a man pushes through when he wants to quit, that becomes the example someone else is quietly watching.
Own the rust. Don’t pretend it isn’t there. That’s where restoration begins.
Why It Matters in Rutherford County Right Now
Tennessee is not short on churches. Rutherford County is certainly not short on churches. But any honest observer will tell you that formal church attendance and genuine male discipleship are not always the same thing.
The fastest-growing crisis in American communities isn’t a lack of religion — it’s a deficit of mentorship. Boys becoming men without anyone handing them a wrench. Without anyone saying: here’s how you do it, now you show someone else.
What Eric Richie and Ron Alley have built at Crusader Auto Works — through The Shop, the Spiritual Service Center, and the Bodyshop Log — is a partial answer to that crisis. It’s not a program that requires a seminary degree to understand or a suit to wear. It’s a place where a man can ask hard questions while doing something useful with his hands. Where the work itself becomes the teacher, and the community becomes the accountability structure.
Paul wrote 2 Timothy 2:2 to one man. But he was thinking about generations.
Richie and Alley are thinking the same way.
The Long Game
The Apostle Paul understood something that every coach, every mentor, every father who has ever raised a son eventually learns: you are not just building the man in front of you. You are building everyone that man will ever influence.
That’s the long game at Crusader Auto Works. Not just fixing cars. Not just filling a room. But building men who build men — who build men.
Don’t fake the fix. Own the rust. Trust the Builder. Do the work.
The wrench gets passed. The Word gets planted. And somewhere down the line, a young man who never knew Eric Richie or Ron Alley will hand something hard-won to the next generation — because somebody, once, cared enough to hand it to him first.
That’s discipleship. That’s 2 Timothy 2:2. And in a garage in Rutherford County, it’s happening right now.
Mike Sparks is a Tennessee State Representative for Rutherford County and host of Conversations with Mike Sparks*, airing Sundays 5–6 p.m. on WGNS Radio (100.5 FM, 101.9 FM, 1450 AM). He can be reached at TennesseeLedger.com.*
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