“We try to do as much as we can, especially as we have rid ourselves of any debt,” he said. “We've always tithed. That's something that we always have been taught, but we've also been taught that that's not giving. Giving is above what we owe God, and that is our tithes.”
We aplogise for not following up
on this series; in the last 2 years, we have shared the story of three God made
billionaires; we started with John D. Rockefeller, Folorunsho Alakija and Jin Sook and Do Wong Chang.
Today we will continue with the
story of David Green who is the 86th richest man in the United
States and 246th richest man in the world. David Green is remarkable
and inspiring; he has done phenomenal work for the Kingdom of God. It was him
God used to bail out Oral Roberts University by awarding $70 million dollars
and restructuring the board, he is also the major investor behind the
YouVersion bible app amongst many others.
David Green is 73 years old and
he is the founder and CEO of Hobby Lobby; an organisation that retails miniature
picture frames amongst other art and craft antiques. David Green started the
business from his garage in 1970 and today it has grown to be one of the
biggest with 680 stores in the world.
David
Green comes from a family of preachers and he recollects the memory of his
parents’ putting their last dime on the collection plate. His father was a
small-time Assemblies of God preacher who bounced from one tiny congregation to
another, eventually landing at a church of just 35 attendees in Altus,
Oklahoma. The family subsisted on hand-me-down clothes and food donations from
the congregation, going weeks without having meat to put on the table but that
didn’t stop Green’s mother from donating to the church. Barbara Green, David’s
wife of 51 years, Barbara, recalls her mother-in-law with reverence. “David’s mother gave out of her need. She
would give stuff when she might not have something to replace that with, yet
she stepped out in faith.”
David Green is
described by Forbes magazine as “the largest evangelical benefactor in the
world”, and says that his entire $5.1 billion (£3 billion) empire belongs to
God. Mr. Green has been known to say; “We're Christians, and we run our business on
Christian principles.”
In his
words, “If you have anything or if I have
anything, it’s because it’s been given to us by our Creator, so I have learned
to say, look, this is yours, God. It’s all yours. I’m going to give it to you. I
don’t care if you’re in business or out of business, God owns it. How do I
separate it? Well, it’s God’s in church and it’s mine here? I have purpose in
church, but I don’t have purpose over here? You can’t have a belief system on
Sunday and not live it the other six days.” All 680 Hobby Lobby stores
close on Sunday.
Hobby Lobby takes half of total pretax earnings and plunges it directly
into a portfolio of evangelical ministries. Green keeps the total amount of his
charitable contributions private, but based on information received from him
and discussion with various recipients, FORBES estimates his lifetime giving at
upwards of $500 million.
In the U.S. Green’s wealth produces the physical underpinnings of dozens
of churches and Christian universities. It began in 1999, with a former
hospital building in Little Rock, Ark.
that he purchased for $600,000 and converted into a church. Green has since
spent over $300 million donating about 50 properties. He also supported Rick
Warren by letting him use his Saddleback Church a 170-acre ranch property as a
retreat.
Mr. Green’s gave a former Ericsson plant in Lynchburg, Va., which he
bought for $10.5 million, to Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University in 2004. He
gave an entire campus to Zion Bible College in Haverhill, Mass. in 2007, at a
cost of $16.5 million. In 2009 Green snapped up the 217-acre former campus of
Massachusetts prep school Northfield Mount Hermon for just $100,000, spent $9
million on renovations and plans to give it away.
It was David Green who bailed out Oral Roberts University with a $70 million
gift in 2007, Green replaced the college’s board of trustees. Today, Mr. Green’s
son Mart is chairman of the board of
Oral Roberts University and one of his granddaughters a new alumnus, Green
calls Oral Roberts a “healthy university.”
Mr. Green
has taken God’s word digital. He sponsors the YouVersion Bible app for mobile
phones, equipped to offer almost 300 different versions of Scripture in 144
languages–all available at the tap of your finger. It has already been
downloaded more than 50 million times.
Abroad, Mr.
Green is putting Scripture into the hands of nonbelievers. “People ask, ‘How are you going to get a
Bible to everyone in the world?’ We’re doing it,” Green says. Through
foundations he supports, he has already distributed nearly 1.4 billion copies of
Gospel literature in more than 100 countries, mostly in Africa and Asia. The
One Hope
Foundation targets children age 4 to 14 with Scripture tailored to them, while
Every Home for Christ sends evangelists with Bible booklets door-to-door in
some of the poorest countries on Earth. “It’s
not like you give them that but don’t give them food; you do both,” Green
stresses. But the priority is clear: “If I die without food or without eternal
salvation, I want to die without food.”
Mr. Green lives in southwest Oklahoma City with his wife Barbara,
they have three children. One son, Mart
Green, is the founder and CEO of Mardel Christian and Educational Supply and of
Every Tribe Entertainment while his other son Steve Green is President of Hobby
Lobby. His daughter, Darsee Lett, is Creative Director for the Hobby Lobby
stores.
Perhaps his
most personal mission yet is just gearing up. Mr. Green is creating a
permanent, public home for his collection of handwritten scrolls, rare books
and ancient cuneiform tablets the family has amassed over the decades. At
44,000 artifacts, it appears to be the largest private collection of biblical
antiquities in the world. Some of the most precious pieces are currently housed
in a modest temperature-controlled storage room in the Hobby Lobby warehouse.
It’s not much bigger than your average walk-in closet, but Mr. Green steps
lightly as he enters. He’s treading on sacred ground. “This isn’t just some book that someone made up,” Mr. Green says as
he gingerly takes one Bible down from the shelf. “It’s God, its history, and we want to show that.” He purchased a building in Washington, D.C. with the
hope of opening the Museum of the Bible, an expanded version of a current
traveling exhibition, within three years.
Yet Green
steadfastly believes that the success is not his doing. “I think God has
blessed us because we have given,” he says. Take Green’s account of Hobby
Lobby’s close call with death in 1985. On one hand, there’s the perfectly
reasonable, Business 101 explanation: He overleveraged the business and diluted
the inventory with off-brand, expensive products like luggage, ceiling fans and
gourmet foods. Then there’s Green’s explanation: “It was a pride problem, and I had to get rid of it,” he says,
describing his leadership style. “It’s
sort of like God says to me, because I was arrogant, ‘I’m going to let you have
it by yourself.’ ” The Business 101 answer was downsizing, cost-cutting and
pleading with creditors. The Green explanation: getting under his desk to pray
for help. Whichever version is right, smart strategy or faith, combined with
hard work, brought back profits.
Stores are closed on Sundays, forgoing revenue
to give employees time to worship. The company keeps four chaplains on the
payroll and offers a free health clinic for staff at the headquarters–although
not for everything; it’s suing the federal government to stop the mandate to
cover emergency contraception through health insurance. Green has raised the
minimum wage for full-time employees a dollar each year since 2009–bringing it
up to $13 an hour–and doesn’t expect to slow down. From
his perspective, it’s only natural: “ God
tells us to go forth into the world and teach the Gospel to every creature. He
doesn’t say skim from your employees to do that.”
No matter how big Hobby Lobby becomes–Green is adding 35 stores this
year, with a long-term goal of surpassing 1,000–its founder wants to make sure
the company remains faithful long after he’s gone. So far, Hobby Lobby has been
a traditional family operation: All three of Green’s children, Steve and Mart,
plus daughter Darsee, are executives, and several of his grandchildren have
already joined the company.
The ownership has been structured for the company
to continue indefinitely, but in the event of a sale or dissolution of Hobby
Lobby, 90% of the company will go to ministry work while the remaining 10% will
be shuttled into a trust reserved for the education and health of family
members. “My grandkids can’t say, ‘I own 5% and I own 10,’ and then all of a sudden
they’re sitting on a yacht,” says Green, who, despite enough wealth for a fleet
of Gulfstreams, still flies coach.
References; wikipedia.com; forbes.com; chritiannews.net
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