We were lucky to catch up with Benjamin Cloud recently and have shared our conversation below.

Benjamin, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today So let’s jump to your mission – what’s the backstory behind how you developed the mission that drives your brand?

When you are nine years old, sitting in a pew with your parents, your mom scratching your back, and then God suddenly speaks to you through an old 1975 Baptist Hymnal during a song called “People to People,” saying, “I have loved you, and you will be the love of God for me,” what do you do?

For me, it started with a teary, vulnerable response: walking down the aisle in front of hundreds of adults, confessing my sins, asking to be baptized for those same sins, and then wondering what the heck “He” meant when He said, “You will be the love of God.”

At nine, I had no idea that one day, at 54, I would be recovering from a hernia, pastoring what can only be called a small, unimpressive, in some ways declining, multiethnic, country farm church committed to growing and giving away organic fruit, making the best locally crafted coffee, and providing free pregnancy tests, ultrasounds, and baby resources such as diapers, wipes, car seats, and formula.

I don’t think anybody knows what such a prophetic calling means, whether it comes at age nine or forty-nine. But our church is called “Amadeo,” which I believe in Italian or Latin means “love of God” or “beloved by God.” I have spent most of my life trying to understand what that means. .My path to “being the love of God,” begins with me swearing off dating at 16 to honor both God and women, and starting a Bible study in my home that grew from two to nearly thirty. In high school my commitment to this “vision of God,” got me voted most likely to become a priest. They were prophetically right as they responded to me declining going out to party with them and get drunk every weekend.

Because of the narratival arc of my life I stumbled into being an English major with a master’s in Applied Linguistics and it led me to playing metaphorical love songs in bars about my relationship with God. I didn’t get to exactly choose my own adventure, rather I followed the leading of the Spirit to various locations seeking to love the world I found myself in, and to try to learn to be loved as best by the creator of the universe as well as those I met along the way.

Thus, I have played on street corners in Flagstaff, Arizona, singing about the love of God, receiving with a shy smile “pot-doobies,” given to me as genuine thanks from the homeless guy, at least he looked that way (that I would throw out later when he wasn’t looking). I have spent summers working at Mother Teresa’s home for the dying and destitute and traveled the world wide from India to Africa, from Northern Ireland to Germany. I have been part of planting or strengthening churches in Tanzania, Arizona, Connecticut, Canada, and Northern Ireland. I have tried and failed more than I have succeeded or done anything impressive. And yet, I have been used by God to spark small but humbly meaningful prayer movements and to bring churches of various denominations together.

My most impressive feat to this day remains being married to my wife for thirty years, raising four kids who almost always seem to love me despite my flaws—or at least put up kindly with me. They are good people, better than I have yet to become. My kids are my mentors and my personal failures are my continuing adult education school yard. For that I am sorry and constantly pray God will allow them to forgive me. I want to be the Love of God. When I was raising them I wanted to be a good-good father, and for a good chunk of the time I thought I was, I wonder sometimes now. My humanities teacher called me an “existentialist-Christian.” I didn’t know what it meant at the time but now I know it has everything to do with being eternally optimistic while at the same time being unable to unsee my past flaws and current limitations. I feel them so deeply these days it grieves me all of the time. I try to remember my walk up the aisle and remember this path began with knowing God wants to forgive me and to use me for His good.

The thing I love most these days is arranging not-so-secret rendezvous between my parents and their great-grandkids. I love being a Papa. What joy it brings to be a father, a grandfather, a pastor, and a friend. I don’t want to screw them up, Lord help me be blessing rater than a curse to my wife, kids, and the Church that I pastor.

Benjamin, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

At nine I was called into ministry, at least in trying to serve my community with the means of fulfilling the call to be the Love of God. I didn’t think I would be pastor. I thought I would be a market=place minister and what I wanted to be was a rock star for the Lord, writing lyrical poems that if you had ears to hear and eyes to see you would know I was talking. about my greatest love, my creator, my father in heaven.

So, at sixteen my entrepreneurial spirit led me to ask my youth pastor if I could lead a Bible study in my home. I also asked my parents. They both said yes, “as long as they didn’t have to lead it.” And so at sixteen God showed me I could gather people around singing praise songs and studying the scriptures. I was Baptist born and raised so I knew the Word of God had to be a part of the equation of loving and serving people. Later I would learn about the Jesuit term, “being men and women for others,” but when I went to an orphanage with our community Church to Mexico I found myself begging my parents to adopt a little girl named “Ruth,” or “root.”

At seventeen I stared a band and we played our first gig in Mi Amigo’s Mexican restaurant, our band was called blue line. I then found I could gather people to start a band. Gathering people was becoming the schtick whereby I built community and in turn found a medium to serve the community. I started writing for our youth group magazine and found I wasn’t that bad even though I could care less for grammar or spelling – I was falling in love with words, communication, telling of stories, especially the great, great story.

My first job was teaching English to Navajos in Holbrook, AZ while at the same time planting a Church in Joseph City, the first mormon town in Arizona. On the weekends I was playing in bars trying to become a rock star, by weekday teaching Navajos and it was in this town that I met my wife – who was willing to move to Tempe, Arizona to become the next Gin Blossoms after a year of teaching.

In Tempe, I began teaching at McClintock Highs School and got involved in a local Church in Gilbert. There I served in young adults and in teen ministry and after five years teaching and not enough money from the rockstar world I left teaching to go into educational software engineering, and after a few years of learning software development I became of software developer and then moved to General Dynamic where I worked on software for the Army and later the Coast Guard. All the time I was serving in my local Church.

In 2006 I was asked by my Church to consider planting a Church and we did that same year as I kept working at General Dynamics. We began a new church meeting in a clubhouse, later a public elementary school, and a few years later we moved into a strip mall where we started a “community center” that a Church met in. We had a coffee shop, a food pantry, a pregnancy center and a drop in for kids. In 2018 we bought a farm with a fruit tree orchard and 1500 feet of grapevines. We had our own vineyard. We began offering social services like resume writing, ESL classes, and various theological classes. We conducted monthly potlucks in low income apartments and were serving the homeless. We kept trying to expand our services to the community and the giving away the food on the farm was a part of those services. In 2018 we got our first ultrasound machine and then a mobile medical unit that we could drive around to serve people at health fairs and in front of planned parenthoods, offering people a full suite of services to help women make informed decisions.

In January of 2024 we moved into our first building on the farm which we called the Vineyard Farmhouse. We have been there nearly two years now serving people through our coffee shop, farm. and pregnancy center. We have done missions in Germany, Northern Ireland, Mexico, and Tanzania Africa and Uganda, building bathrooms and roofs for orphanages.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

Part of our success as a community was entering into our community with humility. When we planted the Church we first met with all the other churches and told them we were coming into the community and we want them to pray for us, hold us accountable if they ever hear of anything goofy in our community, we wanted to honor and respect they had been doing work here before us and to learn from them as we could.

When we were here for four or five years we would intentionally welcome in new Churches that were planting in our area offering to help and to create a support network.

I joined a networking. group for about six years humbling attending before they asked me to head up the group.

When I had first joined the Church that planted us one of our first activities was picking weeds – and it was just. my wife and I with the pastor. We have always seen that if we enter into a community with humility there have been great rewards down the line that we weren’t even looked for.

One last story involves a lady in our coffee shop trying to get people from various churches together to have a worship and prayer night – it was so well attended and wonderful that all the people in our Church insisted that I get the churches together regularly to do this, once a month even. I said to them, “it will never work cause the big churches are too big and the smaller churches will be worried we will steal their people.” I felt like God directed my to go to the smallest church and ask them to lead a one hour prayer night for us and that we would come submit to their compete leadership of the night and not say anything other than prayers – a Church of 30 agreed to lead us. Then at the end of the night we asked them to consider joining us in submitting to another Church. and then a church of 80 led us the next month. Then, a third Church joined in – and now over 12 years later we are still praying at rotating Churches every last Friday of the month for one year.

Where do you think you get most of your clients from?

I wish I could say it was more exciting but A Frame signs on the street corners have been the best driver of people into our community.

However, coming in close second is the local coffee shop we have, now on the farm. Serving coffee we get to meet and know our neighbors and they become like family and then they join into our community for special events like first Friday on the farm and that has also led to them attending our Church community.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.amadeochurh.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kingandqueencreekfarm/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thirdplacecup
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ben-cloud-83a47621/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@amadeochurch6019
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/third-place-cup-coffee-queen-creek
• Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/user-747908157