Redefining Ministry—Answering God’s Call in the Marketplace

One day God just hit me after service and put on my heart to begin to strive for him to provide and not the church to provide. I started selling meat out of the back of a truck in a parking lot because God said start a meat company. I had never even cooked a steak. I knew nothing about agriculture. I'd never wanted to be an entrepreneur.

How many households are you feeding right now? Close to Probably $100,000. Wow. You were full-time in the church. Do you feel like you went backward in your calling by going into providing meat for people?

Honestly, I did ministry at a church all through my 20s into my mid-30s, and by year 3 of Good Ranchers, I remember telling my wife, I've done more ministry in these 3 years than I ever did in the church.

I look at the person who's a marketplace businessman or businesswoman. They have gifts in their life to do what they're doing. And they do it well, and every bit of it is important to God. And I think we have done such a disservice by getting people to think the pinnacle of serving God is being on a platform, when in reality the pinnacle of serving God is actually— Hey everybody, welcome to the John Bevere Podcast. I am joined today by a man I greatly admire, Ben Spell. You and your wife Coralee, we actually knew each other when you were leading worship and I came to your church years and years ago. But God has led you down a different path, and a path I'm very, very excited about. Now, I'm going to say this: most people that know me personally, and a lot of people that even don't know me personally, know that I am a stickler about eating healthy. I'll never forget, Ben, one of the top surgeons in the state of Oklahoma looked at me and said, 75% of the people in hospitals shouldn't even be there. And I said, why are they there? And he said, because of diet and because of stress. And I want to, I want to take you all back and I want to just share a little testimony before we start talking to Ben. But when I was 22 years old, my favorite meal was a Big Mac, fries, and a Coke. I mean, literally, I loved McDonald's. I ate Twinkies, I ate Hostess Ding Dongs. I, I was I didn't know a thing about health food. And I'd never heard anybody speak about health food. Well, I'm walking into my fraternity at 22 years old looking for some cookies or something like that. And I heard God's voice so clearly. And he said, "Your body is my temple. Take care of it." When God speaks to you, thoughts come to your mind. So immediately the thought came to my mind, Ben, If I owned a Ferrari, would I put dirty gas and recycled oil in it? And I thought, no way. What would happen? Yeah, the car wouldn't run to its peak performance, and I would shorten the life of the car. Then the thought hit me: your body is my temple. Now it's your Ferrari. And I know you don't own a Ferrari, but it's your Ferrari. You've lent it to me. I'm putting dirty gas and recycled oil in it. One day I'm going to have to answer to you on why I shortened the life of your car. All of a sudden, the realization this body is not mine. It really isn't mine. It belongs to him. Yeah, that's part. And so I— when I hear of somebody who is trying to help people eat, because a lot of people don't know this. But Ezra wrote 3 books. One of his books is in the Bible, but there's 2 other books, and one of them was an apocalyptic book. And in that apocalyptic book, he wrote that before Messiah returns— now everybody listen, this is 500 years before Jesus came, he writes this book— before Messiah returns, right? He said food would be corrupted and it would shorten men's lives. And I remember the day I discovered that. I mean, you've got all these Dead Sea Scroll writings that have brought out all these ancient Jewish fathers' writings that we have available to us now. I realized how important it is to take care of the temple. So you are doing something right now that is helping countless numbers of people stay healthy so that they can do what God has put them on this earth to do. Yeah. And, you know, Lisa and I, we just have the utmost respect for what you and Corley are doing. And so I wanted to have you on today.

Sure, thank you for having me.

But I want you to share your story. Just, just start wherever you want to start. Maybe you can start it when we met at praise and worship, I don't know how many years ago, at your home church. But how did you get to where you are today? Now, uh, first of all, you are the founder of Good Ranchers, which is a supply company that supplies us people who don't own a ranch. That's right. I have less than a quarter of an acre that my house is on. We have 4 little boxes where we grow our garden, but we don't have a place to raise cows and chickens and sheep. And so guys like you, I have the utmost respect and admiration for because you're allowing me to continue to do what God has called me to do. You sent me a box of food, Lisa had met you, and I ate your meat and your chicken, and I went, that is the best tasting chicken and meat. It's because of how pure it is. So talk me through it, let's go.

Yeah, yeah, well, again, thank you for, thanks for having me on. Super excited to have this conversation with you. I will tell you, I told Arden this earlier, and I have to tell you, At the church that I was on staff when we met years ago, I was there for 8 years. I missed very few Sundays. And the most powerful move of God that we ever had was one of the Sundays that you, it was one of the Sunday mornings that you spoke. And Arden said, what did he speak on? And this would've been probably 2013, 2012, around there. And I said, it was the awe of God. And I don't know if that was the title of the message because I know that book just came out in 2023, 2022, somewhere around there. 10 years before, you got up to 7,000, 8,000 people and preached on the awe of God. And he just moved so powerful that morning. I don't know if you remember it, but it was so impactful. It was so impactful for me and so many other people. So thank you for what you do.

I'm just doing what you're doing. I'm just serving Jesus. Yeah, that's right. We all have our parts. Yeah. And if he can speak through a donkey, he can speak through any of us. So go ahead.

Yeah, yeah. So yeah, so I was, I've been in full-time ministry since I was 19 and in my early 30s, and I had a successful job. I was a licensed pastor and I was on staff at a—

And you came from a family of ministers too, correct?

Yeah.

Most people who know me well know that I am extremely passionate about eating clean. Do you know what's sitting in my refrigerator right now? A New York strip from Good Ranchers. Now, what I love about Good Ranchers is The founder, he felt like God called him to get food into the hands of people, but he did something. He connected small farms with people.

We're getting so much of our meat from overseas places that we don't know what is being put into our meat. Every single 37 minutes, an American farm, family farm, closes down. So I love what Ben and Coralee did, and they came alongside this podcast and just saying, we love what you guys are doing., and we want to be able to share this about them. So you can even find out more by going to goodranchers.com, and they've done a special promo for us. So all you need to do is type in the promo code John, so J-O-H-N, and you'll save immediately $40 off your order. Plus they have a lot of additional things. It's the best offer that they've ever done before.

And so I want to encourage everyone, please know your meat source, know your food source, and take care of the temple of the Holy Spirit.

Yeah, so head over to goodranchers.com to receive an exclusive box and make sure that you get signed up for this special offer. Remember, it's goodranchers.com, American meat delivered.

My grandfather's a pastor, my uncles, cousins, kind of the family trade. And, um, uh, yeah, I love, love serving God, love working in the church, and And so, yeah, so I was always really gifted with music and I play piano and guitar and I write and I sing and I produce and do all those things. And so, love leading praise and worship, love writing music, love singing songs. But one day God just hit me after service and put on my heart that to begin to strive for him to provide and not the church to provide. And so this was probably around 2013, 2014 or so. And the term side hustle wasn't a phrase then like it is now. And, but that's what I thought was, okay, well, what can I do on the side? And so I started praying and asking God to open up avenues for me, doors for me. And this was over, over the course of a few years, but he starts putting this idea of a meat company, starts putting this idea of a meat company. And that's like the furthest thing. I had never even cooked a steak. I knew nothing about agriculture. I definitely had never wanted to be an entrepreneur. I loved working at the church. I loved ministry. If anything, I thought I was going to be a pastor. Like, I did feel like eventually I wanted to start a church. And my wife knew that, and that's what, you know, she knew the plan was one day we were probably gonna start a church. And then one day, after about a year or so of every few months having this idea of a meat company coming in my head, and I would tell my wife, man, somebody should do this, this, this, and this. If somebody would do this, this, this, and this, because it wasn't me. But one morning I was getting ready for service and I started having these ideas again. I heard God's voice. Like you said, God speaks and he puts a thought in your head. But it was loud and it was clear and it was the words, you do it. And it shook me to my core. I came out of the bathroom and I walked over to my wife and I said, I think God just told me to start a meat company, expecting, fully expecting her to tell me, we don't have the money to do that. We don't know how to do that. We're not resourced. Like, I thought we were supposed to start a church. And she looked right back at me and she said, if you heard God, then I trust you. And it was the most empowering words anyone's ever spoken to me.

What a great wife.

Oh, she's amazing. And so we had just had our first baby boy. This was in 2017, October, November, into 2017. We had just had our baby boy in September. I went and talked to my pastor. I resigned at the end of the year. Had no idea what we were gonna do. And I started selling meat out of the back of a truck in a parking lot, 'cause God said, start a meat company. And I, yeah, just went all in. And then what I thought he was doing was, giving us a means to an end to start a church. That's really what I thought. I was like, okay, 'cause the way we started the business doing pop-up sales, it's kind of like a firework stand almost, just like through the summer, temporary. You can make some money seasonally. And I thought, okay, well, 'cause our first year we were very, very successful, again, selling meat out of the back of a truck. Who knew? But God really blessed us that first year. And my wife, we got toward the end of that year and she was like, okay, are we starting a church now? And I was like, I don't know. I mean, God said start a meat company, so this is what we're doing. And that was 2018. So went into 2019 and we were even more blessed. We had a really great year. Selling meat out of trucks. And we got to the end of 2019 and she's like, okay, what's the plan? Are we starting a church now? 'Cause my wife is a planner. And I said, God said sell meat. And I think what we need to do is focus on selling meat. 'Cause I know I heard him say start a meat company. And as much as I, have felt like I'm supposed to start a church, I'm supposed to do these things. I know God said start a meat company. So I was like, I feel like we just need to put our head down and focus on selling meat until God says do something else. And that next year was COVID, it was 2020. And so we went all in, really scaling up the truck side of what we do. We didn't sell online back then. Back then. And COVID hit and we, I mean, we just exploded because we had meat when the grocery stores didn't. And we had about, by that time we had about 25 trucks. And by trucks, I mean like 26-foot box trucks, fit 12 pallets, 15,000 pounds of meat in each truck. Wow. And we just, couldn't keep it on our trucks. I mean, we were just sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out. And that gave us the resources to be able to, to be able to start selling online, be able to get online. And which by that time we knew at some point we wanted to get online. Yeah. Shipping perishable items online is really hard, really expensive.

You have the supply, it has its own, a whole host of problems, but Um, uh, so fast forward, I was pretty amazed that when I got my first box of meat from you, everything was still frozen. Yeah, I mean, there was sitting on my front porch, and I think it was— it wasn't, it wasn't cold out, but it wasn't warm out. Sure. I mean, it wasn't warm out, but it wasn't cold out, right? But yet everything was still frozen. I was like, this is impressive.

Thankfully for you, we've been doing it for, for 4 years now. Okay.

Because those first—

I apologize to any of our early customers because we, we were not good. We were, we were in the learning curve. But yeah, we just continued to get blessed. And we had the saying early on, we said, God just goes before us, because everything just always lined up the right way. And this last year, I was reading through Proverbs, and Proverbs 16:3 just jumped out to me. And I was like, oh, This is what we've been doing. It's commit your work to the Lord and he will establish your path or your plan.

Read that out of the Amplified. It's even cooler. Commit your works to the Lord, commit them wholly to him, and he shall cause your thoughts to become agreeable with his, and so shall your plan succeed. Yeah, that's better. No, the Amplified does it so— that's why I want— because if that's a foundational scripture for you, look at it in the Amplified. It's so good.

Yeah, no, it is. That's amazing. But yeah, we've been, again, from someone who knew nothing about agriculture, nothing about meat at all, and never starting a business, I mean, we've just been massively successful. We've just grown since we've launched online. And that was another situation. The trucks were profitable. The little bit we were selling online was not profitable. And then in '21, God said, shut the trucks down, go solely online.

Wow. And this is when your trucks were really profitable.

Yeah.

You shut them down and went online when it wasn't that profitable.

Yeah, and for reference, we had at that moment, year to date, that was in August of 2021, we had sold $220,000, roughly $220,000 online. We had sold $7 million out of the trucks.

Oh my goodness. Okay, that is a big difference.

Yeah, yeah. And God said, shut down the trucks, sell online. And so we did. Shut them down. Put our focus on, uh, went into 2020, shut them down by the end of the year, went into 2022 solely online. Um, and we just—

was that a good move? Because everybody's thinking that. Was that a good move?

It was. Yeah.

Okay, good.

It was.

When you listen to the Lord. Yeah. Proverbs 16:3.

We grew 400%.

Wow.

Total business over, over the trucks, over everything. 2022, we just exploded when we got How many households are you feeding right now? That's a good—

I mean, rough estimate? Close to probably 100,000. Wow. Households. Mm-hmm. Yeah. That's remarkable.

I know, it's amazing.

It's a testament to God. And how many farms or ranches does your meat come from?

Over 100.

Over 100. Yeah. So basically you're connecting these farmers with these families. Yeah. Like, like me, who has less, less than a fourth of an acre probably of grass.

Sure.

Yeah.

Well, you know, we, we want to connect the American farm, the American family to the American farm. And that's the way— I loved what you talked about when you opened up. That's the way it used to be. Yeah. And that's the way it should be.

Hey everybody, we'll get back to the episode in just a moment, but first, I wanna thank the patrons who make this podcast possible. Your support behind the scenes is critical to sharing these messages, so thank you. To become a patron, just click the link in the show description or go to johnbevere.com/patron.

Now, let's get back to the show. And, you know, I think what you were saying about Ezra, that that prophecy is just as true about the second coming of the Messiah, because—

I think that's what he was referencing. Yeah, that's what I was actually— when the Messiah returns. Okay. So he was referencing the second coming.

Okay.

That's the—

yeah, right. Because that's what I hear. Because you want to talk about over the last 40, 50 years, I mean, very recently, the— our food system has just drastically changed.

Oh, it's the processed food, the hormones, the steroids, the antibiotics, the just just the GMOs. It's literally destroying people's bodies. And I'm so burdened for it. I'm so thankful that RFK has come in and carries that burden because to be honest with you, so many people are going to the hospital, they're dying early, earlier than they should have because of what we're putting in our mouth.

And— Yeah, and the US, The USDA was established for a reason years ago, but again, we're just so far, the FDA, the USDA, we're just so far off from them actually—

The original calling.

The original, yeah.

Okay, let me, let me, yeah, sorry. Let me ask you a question that I think should be asked. You're from a family of ministers. You were in the church. I met you in the church. You were full-time in the church. Do you feel like you went backward in your calling by going into providing meat for people? Do you think you took a step back? 'Cause your wife kept saying, are we gonna start church? Are we gonna start church? Tell me honestly what—

Honestly, I did again vocational ministry at a church all through my 20s into my, mid-30s. And by year 3 of Good Ranchers, I remember telling my wife, I've done more ministry in these 3 years than I ever did in the church.

Okay, this is something that really lights a fire in me. I'm so burdened for all the people that are not in full-time vocational ministry who think they're not serving God as effectively as the people that are in full-time vocational ministry. I was sharing a story with you prior to us coming on this set, and I want to share it again. Sure. I think one of the most heartbreaking things I heard in the last 5 years is a friend of mine has a leadership conference, and it sells out every year. And a very well-known doctor was putting pamphlets on the seats for the delegates that were coming in the next day for the conference. And when My pastor friend saw him, he ran over to the doctor and said, "Oh, you don't need to do this. We've got volunteers and interns that will do this." And the doctor rebuked my friend, the pastor, senior pastor, and said, "Please don't take this away from me. Every year I take one week off my practice so I can help build the kingdom of God." My heart broke because I look at that doctor and 51 weeks of the year, What is he doing? He's in the secular, he's earning a living. That's not the way God sees it. That man's called to be a doctor. How many lives have been saved? How many single moms are now still raising their babies 'cause he's helped them not get something where they would pass away early? I think only the judgment seat will show how many people's lives were affected by that man being obedient to the calling on his life not being a pastor, not being a person who puts pamphlets on the seats, although I love the fact that he volunteers to do that. But it's the other 51 weeks of the year where he's in his real calling, I believe. Because I believe God has called us to all these different arenas of life. We've got the educational field, we've got the medical, we've got government, we've got professional athletics, we've got the arts, we've got all these different areas. God calls people to these areas and he gifts us. And I look at the gifts that he places in our lives. I mean, with me, it's speaking, it's writing. That's because I'm called to do this. But I look at the person who's a marketplace businessman or businesswoman. I look at the person who's teaching kids elementary. I'm looking at the stay-at-home mom. They have gifts in their life to do what they're doing and they do it well. And every bit of it is important to God. And I think we have done such a disservice by getting people to think the pinnacle of serving God is being on a platform, a worship leader, a preacher, a missionary, when in reality the pinnacle of serving God is actually doing what he's created you to do. And I'll never forget when I looked at a businessman and I said to him, because he kind of looked down on his calling, and I said to him, What God has called you to do is more important than what I'm doing. And he said, come on. I said, my Bible says the parts of the body that are not seen are more valuable than the parts that are seen. I said, I have a seen gift. You have an unseen gift. I said, yours we place more honor on. And that changed his life because you know his businesses from that point on, do you know how many times they went up? His business increased 50-fold. Wow. Because he connected the dots that he was called to do what he was doing, and he took it seriously. And that's why I love— I have such a heart for people that aren't in vocational ministry to tell them, please, you're, you're going to reach. I, I remember a friend of mine, and he started an accounting firm, and he had over 10,000 clients. And I said, "How many people have you led to the Lord in your business?" He said, "Hundreds." That's amazing. I said, "Hundreds?" He said, "Hundreds." He said, "Just last week, a Cuban man came into my office, had terminal cancer. He got saved and God healed him of cancer." And I'm like, he owns an accounting company. Here you are, you're ministering to more people than you were in vocational ministry by selling meat to families.

Sure. Well, I told you we started selling meat in parking lots out of trucks, right? But when I say we started, my wife was at home with our newborn and I was under the tent I was out in the parking lot under a tent and selling meat face-to-face with people. And I would talk to people and I would pray with people. And I mean, again, if you profess Christ, you are called into ministry, period. When you're saved, you are a minister. I mean, if you really wanna get biblical about it, we're all priests. That's another story for another time. But another soapbox of mine is that worship has become a genre. Worship is how we live our life. Worship is not music. Worship isn't singing songs. You can worship through singing songs. Remember, I'm talking to a worship pastor here. Our life is called to honor God in everything we do. If we profess Christ, then you are a priest, you are a worshiper, and you are in ministry. And we should be ministering. Like ministering is meeting the needs of the people. When Jesus like walked along, he was meeting the needs of the people and healing the sick, feeding the hungry. And when we meet those needs, that's ministry. And it's the church, you get about 2 hours of people's lives a week. The workplace, you get them for 40. So, you know, we need all of it. We need churches, we need pastors, we need ministry. I go to church every Sunday. I'm a huge fan of the church.

Well, what is the church's responsibility to equip the saints for the work of the ministry? The saints' work of the ministry. So it doesn't mean we're equipping the saints so that they can work more around the church. Now don't get me wrong, I believe we're all to help in different capacities. I mean, there are, I love it when pastors look at me and say, look, I've got this businessman over here, his job takes him away, he's on the road all these days. I tell him, don't feel like you need to really get involved in the church. You're away from home so much, be with your family. And that man's raised an amazing family. But that pastor understood there's people that I feel called to usher at church and work at the parking lot at church and do this. Then there's other people that they're where God has them predominantly ministering to people is like what you're doing. And to affirm what God said to you, I'll never ever forget this as long as I live. This was, mm. 20 years ago. Okay. Okay. So I can't remember where I was, but I remember the voice of God so well. And he said this to me, he said, worship is not a slow song. And I went, okay, Lord, I really don't know what worship is. Because, you know, back in those days, 20 years ago, we had our praise songs and our worship songs. That's right. Then we had our message. That's right. And the worship songs were the slow ones and the praise songs were the fast ones, right? So we both connect on that. So he goes, worship's not a slow song. I said, okay, I obviously don't know what worship is. What is it? And I'll never forget this. He said, go look it up. So I go to the Bible and I go to the first place worship shows up in the Bible because I think, okay, as an author, when I'm introducing a new term, I'm gonna give the definition of that term in a book, or I'm gonna use it in a way that people get the definition. So I thought, where's the first place that worship shows up in the Bible? Well, it's Genesis 22. When Abraham looks at his guys and says, Isaac and I are going up there to worship, and we'll come back to you. He wasn't going up there to sing a slow song. He was going up there to obey God's voice. God spoke to you and said, You do it. That's right. You obeyed God's voice. Do you know I didn't even want to be in ministry? Do you know for a year and a half I felt a tug at my heart? And finally one day I was in a church service and the presence of God came on me so strong and I started cowering in my chair. And it was a stern presence. It wasn't a happy presence. It was a stern presence I knew that loved me. But he, there wasn't, he wasn't coming on me in a, Oh, hey, son. And I heard His voice and He said, "I've called you to preach. What are you going to do about it?" And I remember that day, all the reasons why I thought I would not go into ministry. I said, "God, I don't care if I end up in Africa in a shack. I'll do whatever You tell me to do." That's worship. That's right. Is us saying, "God, whatever You've put me on this earth to do, I'm gonna do it." And you know what? That's where we find life. I was on my way to Harvard I was on the Dean's List at Purdue University as an engineer, and I was going to Harvard to get my MBA, and I was gonna go into corporate America and make a lot of money, and I was gonna tie it to my local church. That's the way I was gonna serve God. And that's when he said to me, "I've called you to preach. What are you gonna do about it?" And I, to this day, believe if I would've said no, he would've went to somebody else. I believe that. And because he will not strive always with man. And I just want to take this chance to take your story and encourage every one of you. There is a specific calling on your life. The Bible says that we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus, right? To do good works, which God planned in advance that we should do, not we would do, should. Should is where free will comes in. God has called me to do something. The question is, am I going to seek him to understand what I'm called to do, or am I going to just do what I want to do? Now, here's the good news. If you delight yourself in the Lord, he'll put the desires in your heart. So he puts his desires for what he wants you to do in his heart. I believe I would have been miserable. If I was in corporate America, I would have been miserable. I love doing what I do because I'm doing what God has called me to do. You love, I can see it. I saw it on you when we met today. You love doing this because God's called you to do it. And what I love about it is when God's not speaking, he is speaking. You know what he's saying? Keep doing what I told you to do. And when your wife kept saying, should we start a church? Should we start a church? Should we start a church? You're like, God told me to sell meat. That's true. So your reward, brother, is so huge. Your wife's reward is so huge. At the judgment seat of Christ, you're gonna see all the people you impacted. Not just preaching in the back of the trucks. I'm talking about by getting healthy food, extending their lives by not eating poisoned meat so that they could live longer and fulfill and reach more people. Jesus is one day gonna show you. And you know what I love? It's kind of like we're preparing for the millennium right now as far as what we're gonna be doing. And those that are obedient to God now in this life, in the millennium, they're gonna be entrusted with much.

Yeah, that's amazing.

It is amazing.

That's amazing, yeah. We're called to work. We are called to work until we go to heaven. I mean, honestly, and our work should always be committed to the kingdom. And I hate the dichotomy of this, of their ministry and their secular work. If you're in Christ, you're part of the kingdom, get to work for the kingdom.

The sacred is 24/7.

That's right.

And what we've done is exactly that. We have the secular and the sacred. That's right. Most people, they see the sacred, my 90 minutes at church on Sunday morning, my home group on Tuesday nights, and then the rest of it is secular.

No, it's all sacred. That's right. Yeah, one of the big, just a few months ago, one of the ladies who works in our customer service department, it's funny, she used to work at the church that I worked at, and she was part of the prayer ministry, but she was on staff. And she just walked by and she said to me, and she's never really heard any of these stories, like we're talking right now. But she walked by and she said, Ben, thank you so much for starting this company. Thank you so much for providing these jobs. She's like, this is a church. That's exactly what she said to me. She said—

I love that.

She said, this is ministry, what you're doing. And we have so many non-saved employees that that I hear all the time that this is the best job I've ever had. They want to come to work. They want to be a part of what we're doing. And, you know, we're— because what, you know, they don't know it, but it's because the Holy Spirit dwells in what we're doing. And I believe, as all business owners should, but especially Christian business owners should evoke an atmosphere that is Christ-centered, meaning the biblical principles should flow through your business. And it's not just like buzzwords like integrity, generosity, but those should be evident in what you do and in treating your employees right. I'm a huge advocate of your family comes first, not this job. Everyone works really hard. But I tell everybody, I'm still the last person that everyone interviews with, no matter where they're going in the business. I sit down with them and I tell them, you can believe whatever you want to believe and work here, but you have to understand who me and my wife are, what we believe. We'll never force anything on you. But I want you to hear it from me. There will be times that we might pray. There will be times where I will talk about the Bible. Again, never force anything on you, but you gotta know what you're coming into. And I don't know where I heard this from, but I stole it. And it's, but when I heard it, I was like, yeah, that's what we're doing. We're for-profit, but we're for purpose.

I love that.

Yeah. And you can do both. You can. Yes. It's not a one or, like you said, the sacred or the secular.

The Lord teaches you to profit. Hello, that's the book of Isaiah. That's right. I have a friend that he owns a pallet-making company and he's been a friend for years and they have over 40 factories in the United States. They make over 65 million pallets a year. That's a lot of them.

So we probably use a bunch of them.

You know, I would— I was actually going to say that right very next. But, you know, he started this company and he realized this is ministry. That's right. Just like your lady said this. So you know what he did? He hired a chaplain for every one of his 40 factories. Well, he started it when he had a lot less factories. And he said to the chaplains, I don't want you to preach. You're not going to walk around there and preach to everybody. You're going to visit people when their wives are in the hospital. You're going to teach these guys how to make a budget. He said, John, I've got so many guys that work for me that have ankle bracelets on, an ankle bracelet and parole, right? He says, you're just going to help them when they need help. And then when they start asking questions, I want you to share with them. He said, John, literally hundreds of men and women have come to Jesus in his factories. He's for profit, they make a good profit, but he's for a purpose. He's reaching so many people that the organized church is not reaching. Now when those people get saved in his factories, he wants them in an organized church. That's right. Because the church feeds us. It's the place we go where we get fellowship, we get strengthened by that fellowship, we get the word of God, we get strengthened by that word of God so we can go back out to our mission fields and continue being a witness for Jesus Christ.

Yes, we need to be crystal clear. I am for the church. I'm part of the church. My wife and our 4 kids, we are in service. Every Sunday that we can be, and in a community group. Like, there's— this is nothing that— we need the church. The church has a vital role, but we need Christians to be Christians and not just depending on the church to save everybody. We have to all do our part. Yeah, and you know what I— you didn't ask me, but I'm gonna say it. What I love about food is how it allows you to bring people together in what I call community, or what we all call community. And you don't invite people over to your house and not have any food, right? Like, you're either gonna grill, you're gonna cook, you're gonna at least put some chips or something out. But like, you invite people over and The food is what people gather around. The table is what people gather around. The kitchen is where people gather, and food is what brings people together. And I had this realization right after the COVID years, because if one thing it taught us is how painful isolation is. And if you think about it, the worst form of punishment in prison is solitary confinement. And COVID really showed us that we need each other. And we need air, we need water, we need food, but we need community.

Yes. It's not good that man's alone.

That's right. We need each other.

And can I say something about that?

Yeah.

God said it's not good for man to be alone when God was walking with him in the garden. Isn't that interesting? Wow. So somebody that says, all I ever will need is God, that's true. I agree with that. However, if God said it's not good for man to be alone, when God was walking with Adam in the cool of the garden, he created us in a way that we need healthy community.

That's right.

Because he delights in it. God didn't want one son. He wanted a family. And I think it's very interesting that Jesus looks at his disciples and says, I longed to have this meal with you. It's very interesting that Paul says, if you got a guy who says, I'm a Christian, but he's an idolater, he's an adulterer, he's immoral, don't even eat with him. Why does Paul say don't even eat with them? Something happens at the table when we sit at a table. And can you please say what you said to me earlier? I don't think you said it on camera.

No, I said empty tables are for interviews and interrogations. But a full table is where community happens. That's where life happens. So relationships happen.

One, one of the things I've had people ask me all over the world, how come you have 4 sons that love you guys and love working with you, love being a part of your family? What did you do? Of course, you know, there's the essentials. We prayed, we taught them the word of God, we brought them to church. But my wife is Sicilian, and my wife made this rule that I didn't realize how valuable it was. And the rule was they could never miss dinner. Sports practices, uh-uh, you can't miss dinner. They need to be, if the sports team is practicing from 5 to 7, we're gonna look at a different sport that practices before we eat between 5:30 and 6. You can't be at your friend's. You're going to be here and you're going to help prep dinner. You're going to sit down and eat dinner and we're going to talk as a family and you're going to help clean up dinner. I did not realize how tight, how tight that would make us as a family. Yeah. And that's what you're doing with 100,000 families. Sure.

And yeah, we, you know, it hit me a few years ago, I looked up and I went, man, when people started posting on Instagram or writing in and saying things like, just had Good Ranchers for our 25th wedding anniversary, like birthdays, meals, they're sharing a very intimate part of their life, which is the table. And we're responsible for that. So I take it very seriously, the quality that we're putting out there, because that is an intimate place in people's home, the table. And I say this regularly around the office, if we ever get reduced down to just putting meat in boxes, we're done. We're not putting meat in boxes. Anybody can put meat in a box. We're bringing people to the table. Because the table—

I love that.

Like, that's— that is our mission. Like, our mission is to bring people to the table, um, because Ronald Reagan said in his farewell address, all great change in America starts at the dinner table. So tonight, sit down, start talking.

That's what we need. Well, Ben, every once in a while somebody will invite me to shoot an elk, or I got a friend that likes to take me to Alaska fishing, but other than that I hope you guys are our, our, our food, our meat provider for our family, because we want to eat that healthy meat. We want to help the farmers of America. Yeah. So Ben, there's a lot of people are thinking the same way as I'm thinking right now. So how do they get a hold of your meat? Will you, will you tell them how to do it?

Sure.

Go to goodranchers.com. goodranchers.com. Okay, that's easy. And they can pick out the type of box because you have several different options.

Yeah, we've tried our best to curate every different possible option that somebody, you know, for every family size and needs. And you can customize, actually pick a box, you can customize it with different add-ons and different things. And as we continue to grow, because we are still a young company, as we continue to grow, we're adding more options, adding more features to be able to, to customize better and all those things. But, but yeah, we, we would, we would love the, the support of, of everyone listening because you are what you eat and food is fundamental. And, um, you know, you're gonna buy meat somewhere. You're gonna— you sh— you're everyone— if you're— unless you're a vegetarian, you're going to buy meat somewhere. So you should Spend those dollars with one you know you can trust.

Your prices are amazing. Thank you. I mean, to get it shipped at your house and not have the thing melting on your porch, it's pretty amazing. But Ben, more than that, I want to say, because I believe a lot of people are going to end up ordering from you, and when you do order, would you remember what Ben said about we're not doing an interview or an interrogation, we're bringing our family together, are friends together for a reason of koinonia, which means fellowship, which means intimacy, which is something that God created man to have. He created a need in us to have community. And so let your home be a place where people can come and get wonderfully fed and great fellowship and building up in the faith. Ben, I just want to thank you for what you and Corley are doing. I mean, keep going. My hope And I mean this sincerely, is that the next time I see you, well, I don't wanna say it like that, that one day you'll look at me and say, we're feeding over a million households. And I think that's an easy request. That's only tenfold jump from where you are right now. I believe that. And let's see you feed over a million households and let's see good food be, get back into the hands of Americans so they can live longer lives and fulfill what they're called to do. Thank you so much. What a pleasure to have you on.

John, thank you.

Hey!