Episode 224 - The Hobby Lobby Decision with David Green
David Green founded the well known American retail company, Hobby Lobby, in 1972. He has continued to run the company with his family for 50 years, earning billions in revenue. Even through the financial success they experienced, the values of the Green family put Hobby Lobby’s future on the line when they refused to comply with the Affordable Care Act’s mandate to provide employees abortion-inducing drugs as a part of their healthcare plan. Hobby Lobby faced fines upwards of $1.3 million a day for refusing to comply. But the faith and convictions of the Green kept them steadfast through the trial season. This episode was recorded after viewing the Hobby Lobby Decision documentary video by RightNow Media. In a conversation with Faith Driven Entrepreneur Executive Director, Justin Forman, and Director of Operations, Sue Alice, David shares about remaining committed to the mission of God in business decisions and passing those convictions to the next generation.
All opinions expressed on this podcast, including the team and guests, are solely their opinions. Host and guests may maintain positions in the companies and securities discussed. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as specific advice for any individual or organization.
Episode Transcript
Transcription is done by an AI software. While technology is an incredible tool to automate this process, there will be misspellings and typos that might accompany it. Please keep that in mind as you work through it.
Rusty Rueff: Thanks once again for joining us on the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast. Our guest today is Hobby Lobby founder David Green. David once thought of himself as a second class Christian because he worked in the marketplace and not the ministry. You see, he grew up in a pastor's home and didn't fully understand how God would work through the business he started. 50 years later, David's story has become a testimony to God's calling on entrepreneurs and business leaders across the world. The retail giant has made billions in revenue. Employed nearly 50,000 people and has become a household name in America because of their commitment to the Christian faith. In this podcast, our Executive Director, Justin and Director of Operations Sue Alice. Talk to David about being a pioneer of Faith Driven Entrepreneurship and how leaders can pass on values and convictions to the next generation. Let's listen in.
Justin Forman: David, I just want to say thank you so much for giving us a chance to film that story. It's gosh, it's been a dozen years, probably since we first connected. And just what a treat and honor and privilege it was for us to come down there and film that story. So thank you for giving us the chance to do that, and thanks for being with us.
David Green: We're honored. We're honored to be here.
Justin Forman: Okay. So do us a little bit of a catch up. So we film that gush probably about seven or eight years ago, if you could maybe bring us up to date what's the reach of Hobby Lobby stores today, what's the team members look like? Just give us a stage of the scale of the business and kind of who is running the day to day.
David Green: Great. You're right. Well, we basically have the same officers in place because we did a survey the other day and we found out. The average officer we have here, that senior officer, has 27 years. So it's we're really excited about that. That obviously really helps us in our company. But yeah, I'm still holding on to the CEO job and I'm trying to hold on to it and do a better job every year so that I keep my job because I can't imagine what I'm going to do if I'm not coming to work every day. In fact, I tell my kids, If you run me off, you're going to have to give me a greater job or something because I got to work. So anyway, we are at 980 stores now and we're in 48 of the lower states. And yeah, we have about 45,000 employees and our campus here, we only have one campus and one warehouse and that's right here in Oklahoma City. And we have 11 million square feet and we're building another 2 million. So within the next 18 months or so, we'll have 13 million square feet here.
Justin Forman: Wow. It's amazing just to see how God continues to bless you guys and just fun to see that continued growth. Take us back a little bit in the video there. We talked about maybe kind of the early days and growing up, but if you could just talk to us a little bit about what was it like for you in those early days? Maybe didn't identify with that title back then of Entrepreneur, but in those early days of running a business. What was it like? What were some of the people that you looked up to? Were there people in the community, people in the church, other business leaders around you that you really looked after and looked to try to emulate?
David Green: You know, there was. But, you know, I really have to go back to if there's anyone that stood out in my life, it had to be my mother. You know, she was an incredible influence in my life, just the life that she lived and what was important in her life. And she really had her head on ride in terms of eternal versus temporal things. And I think that really drove me. And then the whole thing about being a good worker and your work ethic, that was driven into me then. And so I think also I've learned a lot just with working with people and I work for TG&Y for 13 years and I think I found a lot of things to do and not to do. No matter where you go, it seems like you got to learn to and not to. And it's just as valuable, I would say. For me, I'm not one that does a lot of reading. You know, where I am today is just by making a whole bunch of mistakes and learning the hard way. It seems like for me I really know it if I've experienced it in a negative way. And so for me it's been good to just the trial and error on working with other people in the company and together getting to where we are today, just working with other people and listening and learning from others.
Justin Forman: Are there others, as you guys have, achieve such scale and you guys are such a unique look to the company that's integrating faith and work in the ways that you guys go about doing that is certainly conversation of faith and work and Faith driven entrepreneurship has grown. Are there other companies or other businesses that you guys find yourself comparing notes with or sharing some of those, as you said, some successes and some of those mistakes that you've learned from?
David Green: Yeah, I think there are companies and we know the Chick-Fil-A people very well. We know other Christian businesses real well. In fact, about five or six times a year, there's about 20 individuals that are Christians that come here and we talk about what's work and what's not working and a lot about how we handle what God has given, how do we handed down and how we don't end it down to our children. And so we have a contact with a lot of other Christian businesses and business people to learn from, and we learn from one another.
Justin Forman: Yeah, one more question in and I am going to turn over to Sue Alice who's going to ask a couple of questions? It's about working together with family. But before we do that, I love the language that you, I'll never forget, the first time we met in your office, you talked about that idea of a second class Christian and that language really stuck with me, as you just said, that you had that kind of feeling. And in the video, we heard a little bit about that journey and just kind of what that was like. But was there an aha moment? Was there a passage in scripture, a book that you read, a conversation with somebody where that light bulb really turned on and started to kind of completely flip the paradigm upside down?
David Green: You know, there was that moment, in fact, I could say there's probably five or six times in my life that the Holy Spirit, I believe, had talked to me and it was an Aha. It was a now moment In my life and that happens to be one of them. And it was when I went to a huge convention where there's a lot of missionaries there from all over the world and I know they were taken up and offerings to get literature for these individual missionaries and I don't know what I gained, but it wasn't much. But as I flew home on the airplane, I remember the Holy Spirit just talked to my Spirit about giving $30,000. And we didn't have $30,000. So I knew something was wrong. I knew. But God ask us to do it, how do I do this? And so we prayed about it. I talked to my wife. We finally figured out that we could give 7,500 a year for four months. So we postdated the checks, we sent them in. And the moment for me that the Holy Spirit needed, that I needed confirmation of what I was doing because I did feel like a second class Christian, because my brothers and sisters, five of them were in ministry, pastors, pastors' wives. But I found out the day I mailed that, that for these missionaries stayed over and prayed because there wasn't enough money to give them literature in their area of work. And so it was important to me because I said, you know, this work together, this is confirmation that God can use a businessman in ministry. And so for me, every day from that day on, I know that I'm where God wants me and I know that He can use us no matter where we are. And it was very important to me, I don't feel like that second class Christian anymore, but it was important that that happened in my life.
Sue Alice: Amen. I see a few reactions popping up to that as well. Thanks for sharing that, David. I would love to hear more about what it's like working with family. So in the video, your family is a constant theme throughout that so many families we hear work together. They don't stay together. And we know life isn't without disagreements. But it seems like your family together has just an incredible thing for the kingdom and found a way to work together that's so unique. And so I'd love to hear, what advice could you give us for families working in business together? And what is the secret that you guys have found to stay so strong and connected as a family?
David Green: We have a company that has 100,000 items and 45-50,000 employees, and we have to make hundreds of thousands of decisions. But I think the more difficult thing is to get the family right, because that's more important. So there's a lot of wrong things you can do, and we're just trying not to do those wrong things. I mean, there's more wrong things to do then right things. And so we've spent a lot of time in prayer, really asking God how to lead the family. I think one of those things is that everybody we want them to go where God would have them go. If you want to come on board to Hobby Lobby, you can come on board, but that may not be where God's leading you. In fact, out of 18, I've got ten grandkids, eight of them are married, there's only three of them working in the company, but that's where God wants them. But everybody has the opportunity, but a lot of them are taking opportunity to do in different ministries are going into a completely different field. So everybody has an equal chance. But one of the things that we've never done is given people trust where they get money they don't earn. So it's real, real simple for us. Everybody gets what they earn. We have a group in the family that comes together to decide on the salaries. And so when you keep it to salaries instead of money that you earned and give to people and the part of the family that didn't earn it, I think that's where you can really, really get in a lot of problems. So there really are a lot of wrong ways to do this. In fact, when this thing got to where that it was pretty, I saw there was a lot of wealth. It scared me to death. And so I asked for outsiders to come in and help me. And the way they wanted to help me was the same way that someone outside of Christianity would do, and that is to give this company to my kids and then my grandkids. And right now I would be making my great grandkids that aren't even born yet millionaires if I'd followed their instructions. That was the toughest time in my life. All of my kids are serving the Lord, my grandkids, but I can mess that up by the way I handle the wealth that God has given us. And so that's what we knew that we needed to work with. We say there's three things that you really have to get right to have your family right. And that's first is how you handle the stock and you can do a lot of things with that stock will really, really mess your family up if you don't do the right thing. The other thing is salary and we do that by committee, comes together, decide on salary. There are no bonuses are not bonuses, but money that's given to people that don't work. You get exactly what you work and that's worked really well for us. And then the say who has the say, who sits on the commission? The committees, so the say, is important. The stock is important and the salary is important. And those are the three things that if you don't get right, you're going to really, really mess up a family. And God has helped guide us in those areas. And everybody understands that they get what they earn. So everybody welcome. The Bible talks about giving a heritage to your kids. I think the greatest heritage that we can give our kids is opportunity to work and for a salary they earn. And I think it's also good the heritage of following after Christ is the heritage that I want to leave to my kids.
Sue Alice: So much wisdom, may have to go back and rewatch this later and take better notes. Thank you so clearly you have such a passion for how your family does ministry and business together. In the film you said something like If it ever comes under attack, you'll challenge it all the way to the Supreme Court. And obviously that did happen. You did have to challenge it. We know how it turned out. What did you learn from that experience? I doubt that was something that you ever envisioned happening in the future when you started the first Hobby Lobby store. But what have you learned from that?
David Green: You know, I think here again, some of my greatest influences, my mother and my father. Not everybody doesn't have the heritage I have, and I understand that. So I have to start by saying I'm really, really thankful for the heritage that I have from my parents. And I think my mother and father are people that just didn't compromise. You know, in everything we do, we can compromise and we can figure out a reason why to do something. You know, I had people telling me on this abortion thing, board prescriptions. they said, you do a lot for mission and you can't jeopardize that. You've got to just go ahead and and go along. But I just don't think God ever ask us to do something wrong, to do something right. I just don't think that's the way that God thinks. So we try to make sure that we're not compromising in any way. And I think that's when God will bless us as when we don't compromise and put him first and try. And I like to underline the word try to do the best we can to follow after him.
Sue Alice: So good. There are a lot of people on the call today in our Faith Driven Entrepreneur community who are kind of an up and coming newer generation of leaders starting into the business world. We hear a lot about cancel culture and a lot of voices pushing back. Do you have any advice specifically for the next generation coming up as they're stepping into this world that you've already had to go to battle with?
David Green: I would say that the most important thing I think in our lives is just not to compromise. There's a lot of reasons and pressure on us to compromise. And I think. It's it's when we don't compromise it, when I just see God blesses us. And by the way, every time that I don't compromise, I can give you five or six the example that has cost us. I think God has it that way. You know, I was carrying Halloween merchandise as an example and we sold over $22 million worth of it. And I just felt in my spirit that God says, don't sell this. And so I got out of the Halloween business and I lost the sales. When we closed on Sunday. We lost sales when we sued the government. It cost us sales. So I find out when I don't compromise usually it cost, but in the bigger picture, in the bigger picture, God overcomes that and it makes those things look small to compare what God can do when you don't compromise. So I really think it's the right thing to do for us. It's been the right thing, even though every time that we take a stand, I can tell you that there was a cost. But we're thankful we've done that because here again, the bigger picture, God has blessed us.
Justin Forman: David, I want to come back to one of the things that you had mentioned specifically about just kind of that aha moment. And there was that aha moment where God spoke to you and there was a faithfulness in an act of generosity. And one of the things we spell out that everybody in the Faith Driven Entrepreneur community knows these kind of marks of a Faith Driven Entrepreneur some things that we just see that are characteristics and traits that we see in Faith driven entrepreneurs and one of those is generosity. We think that this is really a non-negotiable in many ways. It's kind of this preventative that keeps our hearts in line and helps us avoid greed and control and some of those things from taking root that shouldn't be there. Can you talk to us a little bit just about what you've learned from that? You shared so much of that already, just from the fact of the faithfulness to make a commitment to right check when you didn't feel like you've had it. But take us from there to maybe where things are today and what generosity means to you.
David Green: Well, I here again, I know I always go back to everything. It seemed like genesis of who I am happens to be in my home with faithful parents. And I saw it lived out. And so I go back there to where I was raised and I was raised in the forties. And when church members, my mother and dad were pastors, church members would not have money. They would bring in things from their garden or what they raised, and they would come in with vegetables and things like this. And I would watch my mother and dad list those things to pay tithe on them. You know, if they got carrots or whatever, they would pay tithe on that. So I saw an example. People that really knew that God says, try me. It's the only place in the Bible that says, Try me, try me and see if I will bless you. And they believe that God would bless them. They weren't legalistic about it. They just loved the Lord and wanted to pay their tithe. And I learned that from my home and my wife learned the same thing in her home. So when we started, when we married, we paid tithe. Then after we opened our business a short time after, we would pay tithes on our business. Then after a while we would do more than tithing, which we believe belongs to God. And then we would give. So there got to be a time when I was tithing and then I was tithing the business and I was given more than that. And then I would say, you know, you cannot out give God. And that was one of those other moments in my life that was pivotal, because when I said that, God just said to me, sort of like, it's not so hard to say, is it? You know, you can't out give God. And I knew that at that moment he was challenging me.
David Green: To see if I could out give God. So we came together as a family. I said, How do you out give God we've got to do it. Because I think God's challenge is to out given him. So my came up with the same idea I did and there's 100 ideas of how to do it, you know, because I never heard a message. Have you heard a message on how to out give God I had. And so we said, Well, we're going to give the largest amount we've ever given in our life. And then six months later, we're going to double it, and 12 months later we're going to triple it, and then we're going to not double it every six months, but add that same amount of the largest amount you ever gave. And we look down the road and we said, The amount of businesses we're doing. We said, you know, in about three years this thing is going to crash. We're not going to be able to do it. You know, that was 22 years ago and we're ahead of that schedule. So during that point, at some point we said we're just going to give half of what we earn. And we've done that probably for 12, 15 years. And God has blessed us in that we have no debt, we're very, very successful. And we thank God and we thank a lot of great people that has helped us to be where we are today. So that's kind of the evolution. But there was that moment that the Holy Spirit talked to us that, you know, you say you cannot out give me try and we haven't been able to do it.
Justin Forman: Thanks for that, David. I know some of you guys are messaging Sue Alice and into the chat. Some questions and I want to get to Alan's here about technology in a second. Sue Alice is going to take us through that? But for one last question from me before Sue Alice takes us through those, you know, you guys as a family have done such incredible things for the kingdom from the stores, the ministry, the generosity that you just because if you had to boil it all down, David, what's the thing that you guys want to be most known for?
David Green: Well, personally, I want to be known, most importantly, to be a good father, good grandfather and good husband. That's what I want to know most important, when Barbara and I first got married, we've made a lot of mistakes and we can write a book about mistakes. But we said that we really wanted to see our kids serve the Lord, and we wanted a marriage that last till death. And then we also wanted our children to serve the Lord. And so as we've grown older, then we've added some things there. And it's not just our children to serve God, but our grandchildren, which we didn't have at the time, and our great grandchildren, which I have 17 of. But then we also wanted to bring people, as many people as we know, to come to know Christ. So that's our big thing, is how many people can we bring to know Christ? We know Him and we know what it means to have a relationship with our Creator. And we just think that it's our job because he's been good to us to tell everybody that we can about him.
Sue Alice: Thank you so much, David. It's been such an honor to have this conversation. I have to tell you, when I told my kids today that I was getting to talk to a founder of Hobby Lobby, I have two girls and it is their favorite store on the planet. And what I love is that the store itself has allowed us to be generous as a family. It's the place we go to buy birthday gifts for friends. That's the place that we go to fill up our shoeboxes for Operation Christmas Child. It's where we go to buy gifts for other people. And so I love that through your generosity, you're opening the opportunity for the rest of us to be generous in a really unique way as well, and to do that as a family, just as you guys are serving as a family as well. So as we go to Q&A, I want to start with the very first question that was dropped in the chat bar. It's coming from Alan Clayton and he said, what is the future of tech and Hobby Lobby? Will there be robots running the warehouse or the stores become super automated? Like will the size of the workforce in the community have to be reduced?
David Green: You know, I'm not very good at tech and I just thank God for tech. It's like you can't live with it and you can't live without it. So I do have some rules and some of the rules are we don't want to be out in front. We're going to let the government we're going to let Amazon, we're going let someone else be way out in front. We're just not going to be there. In fact, if you know Hobby Lobby and we don't have enough time to go down this road, but we don't even barcode goods going out the front door. We ring up every item. So we're really old fashioned in that manner. And I'm the wrong guy to ask because I don't even have a phone. But I have is my pad. This is my pad. And we are running an $8 billion company this year and we run it with this I pad, my pad, not iPad. So thank God we have people that are really, really good at that. I have never accessed a computer. I had someone come and help put this thing up to date because I could never have done it. And he's sitting right out the door in case something goes wrong here. But I'm not good at that and I'm okay with that. But I'm the best merchant in the world almost because God gave me that. So I do what I do and I respect people for what they do. But as far as anything new in the future, we're not going to be have. And I noticed one of our big box had a machine that went down the aisle and they paid millions and millions of dollars for it's not there anymore. We'll let them spend the millions and Mega millions and then I might go to do that. So in our stores, we have 70,000 items in the warehouse and we have someone checking every item every week. And so we have reasons why we do what we do. And no one comes close to us as far I mean, no one that I know of is put into what we put on the bottom line. But we are a little bit old fashioned, but we do have a lot of tech in our warehouse as far as getting goods in the trucks. We're loading 40 trucks at a time. And so there a lot of technology there in different places, but I don't want to get in front. I'd rather let it work out.
Sue Alice: Great. Thank you. Brandon West has his hand raised. So, Brandon, we're going to let you unmute and come on and ask your question.
Brandon West: David, thank you so much for your time. I just want you to know that in the history of my company, my agency that I run, you've had a such a huge impact on me. My leadership, you've been such an inspiration to me, helped me grow and generosity help me grow in leadership and culture. So thank you. I had an interesting opportunity come up recently with my company where we were asked as a marketing agency to create content around somewhat of a similar Issue that. We felt morally unable to do so, and it's created the potential for legal intervention in the future. We've been in contact with Alliance Defending Freedom. And they've helped us a lot through this navigation and eventually the termination of the client. But I found in my heart more of a temptation to fear than I ever have in the past. So I really appreciated some of your transparency that you shared about the journey that you've been on through your legal challenges. I just wanted to ask for counsel. I just wanted to ask you to be a mentor for a minute and kind of speak to myself and other entrepreneurs on the call who have been through those seasons, are going through seasons, or who will go through those seasons and maybe a scripture or something that has helped you along the way to fight fear and to move forward with bravery for the Lord.
David Green: Just recently, our ocean freight has gone up from about $4,000 to container to 15,000, and we'll bring in 60,000 containers. So what you're talking about is 300 to $400 million. And so I found myself the same place you did fear. And I know what God gave me. He gave me a scripture and it's in my little my pad and it's be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or be discouraged for the Lord. Your God is with you wherever you go. So I just have to know that God is with me. In 2020, we closed this company down and we were shut down our rents over 40 million a month. We found ourselves morning, noon and night in our home, praying and then asking God to help us. And in 2020 we had the best year in our history. Now we're going into another year where we're going to have to pay 300 to $400 million more for freight. But I just know God has been faithful. I look at the past and I think I can pretty much I'm using the word pretty much can rest that God is going to. He's asked me not to fear and be courageous. So we're going to be courageous and we're buying a whole bunch more Christmas for next year saying we're going to sell it to make up for a lot of this. So that's how we're being courageous. He's going to walk with us. We don't know the future, but we just know the past. And he's always been there for us.
Sue Alice: Thanks, David. Becca Spradling, you dropped a question in the chat and you've have your hand raised, so we'd love to bring you off mute so you can come and ask your question directly.
Becca Spradling: Thank you so much for sharing, David. Just so great to hear from you. I had a question. I was just really curious from the employee perspective, how much of the kind of internal ambitions of that kingdom vision the Lord has given you? How much of that is your kind of average store level employee know about? How have you been thoughtful about how you communicate that down or how much of that is understood or needs to be understood at the employee level?
David Green: I think it's very, very, very important. As you would mention, there was a particular time that because I talk about maybe there's only six or seven of those when I know the Holy Spirit talked me about a particular thing about giving, about our stock, different things like that. But I remember one time I just knew the Lord, talk to me, you've got all these employees and I'm putting them in your charge. And so I tell people, if I only had $1, that dollar would go to those employees before missions. And now that may not sound right, but that's where my heart is, that I needed to be careful about them and care about them. We have a clinic here. We have an MRI machine. We have chaplains. We let people know in our newsletter what we're doing in our ministry so that they know they feel a part of it. No one has to work more than five days a week except maybe a couple of weeks around Christmas. We have shorter hours. We feel like that if my family's the most important thing to me, it ought to be important for those families, and I care about them. Our minimum wage is $18.50, and so we have a good four one plan. So we really think that we need to care about our people and I'm sure we can do better, but we really think it's important to have that relationship and they see that and they know that. And because of that, we believe that we keep our employees longer. As like I said earlier, our senior vice presidency average have been here over 20 years and we want the same thing at the store level. So getting it to the store is very, very important to us. And we try to do that in several different ways that we care about our people and we need to care about them, not just say it, but to do the things and follow up. I don't know how many retailers have a minimum of $18.50 that happened January one. But we try to stay up with cost of living and cost of living help drive that. Just I feel for the people that's got to pay six, 7% more for everything they buy.
Sue Alice: Thank you for that insight. All right, Ken Zhang, you posted it in the chat and have your name other just going in order. This is working out beautifully. I don't even have to choose. So let's bringing you off mute so you can ask your question.
Ken Zhang: Hi David. It's really lovely to meet you. I actually sit in London and have not really lived in the US, but I have at the time that I've gone there come across Hobby Lobby and I'm very big fan of that perhaps, but I am someone on this call that I will admit to not knowing a lot of Hobby Lobby's history or that you were a Faith Driven Entrepreneur businessman until logging on. But I absolutely love the documentary and so much to learn from it and the challenges. I will also admit that I work for Amazon, so you mentioned Amazone before. So I actually working on a start up on the side that or have launched several start ups and are involved in that world. I'm always trying to find the godly way to work both in the startup world as well as in Amazon. And so I actually have a couple of questions. The first is what are some spiritual or faith disciplines you have in your personal life, as well as what you've imbued in the company culture to make sure that you have this constant communication with that open because you speak a lot about God said this and God said that, which means that you have a very close relationship and you can hear very clearly like specific numbers, specific calling. So what are some of those social disciplines you put? And I don't know if you want me to just say both questions right now, but another one that I think is actually more important is I always find that there is a balance in this world of everything. Like when we try to do one thing positive or serve one community or something, there's a secondary impact, sometimes negative. So I'm just praying you speak a lot about serving your employees. And I'm just wondering, how do you think about other areas such as like your pledging partners, environmental stewardship? How do you decide like how to balance this? Because, you know, every positive is negative sort of thing. How do you balance the things that we steward and how do you prioritize?
David Green: Okay, let me try to answer your first question first. And I think for my wife and myself, prayer is real important in our lives. My wife, ask the Lord to wake her up in the middle of the night. I don't I try to tell God not to wake me up so that she can get up and spend time in prayer. And so she has dozens and dozens of journals. Our kids are already fighting over. And beget them one of these days of what she's praying about, whose she's praying for, the scriptures she's reading. And I don't have that kind of discipline, Barbara and I spend time every morning at breakfast with a devotion. And but one of the things that I try to do and because here again underline try because I don't do all this as good as I would like to do or even should do, but I try to go by a couple scriptures in my life. One of the scriptures says pray without seasons. So in a given day you can have different things coming up all day long and family and work. And so I try to do that. I try to have a sense of prayer in my life. And then the other thing I try to do in that prayer is I like to think about the scriptures. I got two or three scriptures that are just key to me that I think about every day or try to think about. And the other one is that God never leaves us, so we're not forsakes. He's always there. So I don't like to see him as this old man upstairs, as people would say, but I like to see him as personal and someone that's right there in the room, right by me all the time, and in other scripture that I like is the one that says you have not could you ask not so between the have not you don't have because you don't ask praying without ceasing the Lord's there. I tried to use those scriptures to guide me through the day to walk with him and try to walk with him every day. I felt obviously, as we all do sometimes, but that's the scriptures that I try to use to get me through the day. And he wants to be in relationship with us and I want to be in relationship with him. And so I want to do that better than ever.
Justin Forman: And I guess if I were to jump in here, David, just ask, have you wrestled with the question, what does it look like to take ministry down to the supply chain? Have you looked into, like your vendors or partners and explored what ministry or impact looks like on that end?
David Green: You know, when we go to China, we might be doing business with total people. Obviously, there's no way we could go do business with Christians, you know, when we go to India, when we go to China. But let's talk about China for a minute. With every home for Christ, we've been able to go to over a billion homes in China with the gospel. So some people would say, why are you buying from China? If you want to put a Christmas story and you buy from China or you don't buy at all. So those are not things that we're following our laws and our laws allows it. If you made it here, it would cost you four or five times as much. That's why no one makes it. Someone says, Why don't you make it? Well, why don't you make it? But when you don't, because you can't make it and be competitive. So sometimes we're doing business with all sorts of different religions that are out there, and that's what we have to do to do business. But then we want to take sometimes we just say we want to make as much money as we can to tell as many people about Christ as we can. So we don't think we're crossing a line by working with someone that's not a Christian in a business as an example.
Justin Forman: David, you've been so gracious and generous with your time, and we're so grateful for it. I think one of the last questions that everybody has here is can the my Pad be found in Hobby Lobby stores?
David Green: No, that's my pad. My daughter brought it. She buys art over in Europe and she brought me one of them. And I said, Darcy, why don't you buy one? She said, Dad, that's like a mom pin. And she said, that thing cost $80. This little book and so that's where she gets them. And every one of them, this one here says, My dad's bright ideas on the outside. And then inside is all the love notes that my daughter gave me. But you can't buy this in Hobby Lobby. You got to check with my daughter if you want one. And maybe she'll get you one. By the way, I don't know. She knows how to transfer money, you know, from pounds to dollars. I'm not really sure this cost $80. I just don't know that she knows how to change money. So, anyway, you know, my daughter is obviously the joy of my life.
Justin Forman: That's great. Hey, I'm going to close up, in a word, prayer here in a second. But before I do, just as a reminder for everybody that's joined us here, we're so grateful for the chance to ask these live questions. We'll continue to air this as a podcast and share other places, both the documentary. In this interview here with David. Next month, we're going to be spending some time with Bill Yergin, CEO of Nike Votes on the next unmuted event. But David, I'm just so grateful for you just to think about a dozen years ago that we had a chance to meet. And, you know, I know a lot of times growing up following sports and different things, you always sit there and say, gosh, who is that? That hero and that person that you were as a kid on the playground want to model your game after as a basketball or an out player or an athlete. But then when I think about in business and faith driven entrepreneurship you have been that and continue to be that for such a generation as Faith Driven Entrepreneur is out there so, so grateful for you and just the way that you pass it on and invest in others. So let me pray for you and then we'll wrap things up. God, we are so grateful for today. We thank you for the Green family. We thank you for David. Barbara. Just such the faithfulness in the ways that they have just been radically generous with their time and their passion. We thank you for the ways that you have called us all not to see ourselves as second class Christians, but to see the unique callings and the unique talents and skills that you've given us as a merchant, as other unique places where you have all of us today. So God, would we pray that you would just continue to use us? And would that be a continual daily conversation as we go about it? God, I pray blessings on the Green family as they continue to serve and impact the world in such mighty and impactful ways. And it's in your name. We pray. Amen.