The Man Who Said It Out Loud

September 2026

I want to tell you about my friend Spencer Folmar — and about a conversation we had that just went up on the Hard Faith Podcast. But first I have to go back to the beginning, because I wouldn't be here without him.

I met Spencer at the Hard Faith Film Festival in New York. I showed up an hour early, while the team was still setting up chairs — old Fighter Pilot Standard, if you're not early, you're late. Spencer didn't blink. He just welcomed me in, warm and unhurried, like there was nowhere he'd rather be and no one he'd rather be talking to. I would come to learn that's simply who he is. At some point during that festival, he pulled me aside. He told me how much he loved my script. And then he said something I have carried ever since: "Somebody is going to make this movie."

I need you to understand what that meant. I was a fighter pilot and an airline captain who had spent years quietly carrying a story I wasn't sure I knew how to tell — and here was a real filmmaker, a real writer, saying the words out loud. Not "keep at it." Not "maybe someday." Somebody is going to make this movie. Something shifted in me that day, and it hasn't shifted back. Since then, Spencer has been extraordinarily patient with me. I've asked him a hundred questions — about the craft, about the business, about the parts of this world I didn't understand — and he has answered every one with grace, and then pushed me a little further than I thought I could go. That's what the good ones do. They believe in you, and then they refuse to let you settle. And I have to mention McKenna. If Spencer is the heart of Hard Faith, McKenna is the engine that keeps it all running — all smiles, completely squared away, the steady hand behind an operation with a hundred moving parts. Watching the two of them work is watching what a marriage and a mission look like when they're pointed at the same thing. What I love most about Spencer is that none of it is performance. He is authentic, genuine, and full of faith — and he is genuinely, uncomplicatedly happy to help anyone who's trying to make something true. In an industry that can be all elbows, he is all open hands. So when he sat me down for this conversation, it didn't feel like an interview. It felt like a friend asking the kind of questions that let a person finally tell the truth — about 9/11, about the writing, about the long road home to faith and family. I'm grateful he made the space, and grateful for how he held it.

You can watch the whole conversation here: [YOUTUBE]

And this one I'll say plainly. Go watch it — and then go do something for Spencer. Like it. Comment on it, and tell him what landed. Share it with someone who needs it. Spencer has spent his career quietly lifting other people's stories; the least we can do is lift his. Let's fill his comments and send this thing everywhere.

If his work is new to you, go find it. Spencer and the Hard Faith team make films that take faith seriously and tell the truth about being human — including Saint Nick of Bethlehem, a Christmas film that's earned a permanent place in our family's traditions, and God Is Beautiful, which they just wrapped. You can find their work at hardfaith.org.

Thank you, Spencer. For the encouragement, for the patience, and most of all for saying it out loud when I needed to hear it.

Soli Deo Gloria.