The Legacy Life

What am I doing in Oklahoma City? In the middle of America, well, I am at the world headquarters. Of Hobby Lobby. And I'm sitting next to the founder. A man of God who's written a brand new book, along with this guy here who he's written it with: David Green and Bill High.

And I'm telling you, David Green, it is so nice to meet you. I walked in to your world headquarters and I asked the lady at the front desk: Is there a David Green that still works here by any chance? And you should have seen her reaction. Yeah, I work here every day. In fact, I'm here six days a week because I enjoy my work, and I'm just thankful that God gives me the health to do so.

Well, this isn't your first book. In fact, you've written, I'm going to let Bill High tell us the books you've written already. But this book, they just keep coming and they just keep getting better, Bill.

Well, the first book, of course, was done without me, which is the inaugural book called More Than a Hobby. And that was really the beginning story of Hobby Lobby. And then we did a second book after that called Giving It All Away and Getting It All Back Again. And then the next book after that was really driven by business leaders who said, How does this business work when it shouldn't? And so that title of that book is called Leadership Not by the Book.

And then the most recent book that's getting ready to come out October 14th is called The Legacy Life: Leading Your Family to Make a Difference for Eternity. And that's what we're going to talk about today. And there's some just powerful thoughts and just Just inspiring stories about your family. And it's nice that you touch on some of the other things that are in the other books. David Green, I walk out here, I see this massive campus, sprawling campus with all kinds of a giant building for e-commerce advertising, for all the things, human resources, and all these things.

And people say, well, this is a business. Why are they talking about God here? What's this stuff about ministry? Let's get the elephant out of the room or let's address the elephant in the room. What's going on with Jesus and Hobby Lobby?

Can those two mix, and how has that worked out for you? Yeah, I think so. I think God has given us all a purpose. And what is our purpose? And so if He puts us in business, and our purpose is to tell more people about Jesus.

So that's how we see ourselves. We just see ourselves as God has given this is our purpose. We all have a purpose or should have. In fact, we do have. God has given us a purpose.

And our purpose is to do all we can to tell as many people about Jesus as we possibly can.

So that's what we do at Hobby Lobby. We earn a salary, we earn monies that we can tell as many people as we can about Jesus. And isn't that what we're all supposed to do, no matter where we are, whether we have money or not? What is our purpose? And are we fulfilling God's purpose in our lives?

And Bill, most CEOs, founders, Guys like him that I meet, their next level, in hundreds of millions of dollars, they're cranking out business. They're climbing to the top. What's it like to work with a guy who wants to just bring others to God, who wants to live this the whole point of the book, the whole title of the book, Legacy Life. What's it like to be with a David Green like that?

Well David's Got a pretty simple story, so he grew up pretty ordinary. His mom and dad were pastors, pastored small churches.

Some of this is mentioned in the book.

So I've always found David just a very down-to-earth guy, easy to be around. And he runs Hobby Lobby with a pretty simple principle, which is keep it simple. Close counts. Right, David? We got that right?

Yeah. That's the only way we can do it. Yeah, talk about that and talk about this guy across the table for you. He's got the perfect name for a lawyer. Yeah, exactly.

I kid him, you know. I kid lawyers, you know, because his name is Bill High.

Well, there's not a better name for a lawyer than Bill and High, because that's what they do. But anyway, we enjoy working together with each other, writing books, and just doing all we can to tell people about Jesus. That's as simple as it is. And that's how we try to run Hobby Lob. We try to do the best we can to keep it as simple as possible.

And by the way, that's a lot of hard work to do that. And so God has blessed us, and we love it, and we love that He allows us to come alongside Him and do all we can to tell people about the Lord. David Green, I'm other thing that just kind of blew me away as I'm reading your book. with Bill High that you wrote together called you know, leadership, not by the book. You're telling people your trade secrets.

You're telling people how to do business successfully. And it kind of goes back to what Bill mentioned. about doing things right, simple things, being detailed, focusing on things, not being above anything, taking care of the customer service, things like that.

Well, you speak about that and why would a successful business Man like you Tell everyone, tell the world what you've done to be so successful. I'm thinking, if I just give this book to other business young entrepreneurs, they're going to know what to do and how to build something special. Yeah, I think that uh For us, the simplicity of it is just try to do everything according to God's word as we possibly can. That's why we work together to put the museum in in Washington, D.C., because we love God's Word.

So, hopefully, what we're doing is just following what God says.

So, why would I keep that secret from anybody?

So, I'm just saying, you know, what he says helps us.

So, we try to make decisions not based on what's going to be most profitable to us, but is going to be better for us or to follow his will. Like, closing on Sunday isn't something normal people would do, and it costs money. It costs money to sue the government when you don't want to take the life of a baby. It costs them money when you don't sell Halloween anymore.

So, the whole idea is to find what God's Word does, and whether it costs or not, you've tried your best, and I want to use those words, to do what you feel like God would have us do. And this is all in the Bible.

So, I think all we're telling people is what does God's Word say and trying to follow that. I love it.

Now, we're going to get into vision, mission, values. We're going to get into the legacy life. We're not going to tell you too much because we want everyone to get a copy of this book and read it and buy multiple copies to share with your family, your friends. What a great gift, a must-read. I thoroughly enjoy reading my advanced copy.

Thank you guys for sending that. I want to ask this quickly in this who is segment of Truth Talk. Who is Bill High? You talk a little bit about it. Actually, he talks about you in the book.

You know, second person about your testimony. Tell us who you are and how you got tangled up with this fella, David Greene, over here.

So I'm the CEO of Legacy Stone. Our ministry is to help families thrive for generations to come and give them a roadmap on how to do that. I met David probably about 25 years ago, just in the ordinary course of work.

So he and I have been hosting these leadership events, which is what you're here for today. In fact, today we have about 125 leaders from around the country, actually other parts of the world that are coming in. But we've been doing these events for a long time.

So hopefully one of these days we'll get it right. But we've been working together for a long time, but it's all built around these themes of family, legacy, and generosity. Legacy Stone as a ministry has small group curriculum for the local church.

So we have seven week small group curriculums. We have two out that are out right now, including one which is how does the family thrive for generations, but then also how do you navigate family conflicts.

So those are a couple things that I do. David already mentioned it. I practice law for 12 years, big law firm. And we did bill high. Who is David Green?

Well, I would say I'm a father more important than anything, and a husband, and those are the most important things that I am, because I think the most important thing in my life is to have a family that serves the Lord. And so, second, I love to do Hobby Lobby. It's fun. God has given me something to do because I know that I'm doing what I'm supposed to do in Hobby Lobby, but I also know that He wants something more than us making a profit. And so, we're honored to be able to do that.

And Bill came into our life, by the way, to help us with our mission, vision, and our values.

So, we put together a document that this is the Green family's mission, vision. and our values. And so that's wh where he first came into our life. And so we're excited about every family needs to have a a mission, a vision and a and a values. And so we we have a document that that we put together to to make sure we have that.

And David Greene, Bill High, you guys have really blessed a lot of people with this new book, The Legacy Life. What's the big idea of the book? And I want to break it down a little bit, get a little more granular with it, but tell us kind of the big idea of this book. Yeah, the big idea ultimately is helping people think differently about family. Most people think about it from a very short-term perspective.

There's actually a really funny story in the book about David and his encounter with the trumpet player.

So I don't want to give too much about that, but it's kind of a fun story. I think he regrets telling me that story now. But ultimately, it's this idea that God really intends your family to last and to have an impact for generations. Most of us think about retirement. retirement as the end goal and I'm going to retire and sit on a beach, but that's not God's design.

He wants us to think about generations, our kids, our grandkids, great-grandkids, and on. And the word legacy really hits that. David Green, you talk a lot in this book about. Not looking down the road. Just to your kids, just to your grandkids, but like even 150 years.

Talk about, I mean, that's that's counterintuitive, even to a lot of believers who are just thinking, I just got to get through the day here. You know, I just got to get through the end of Monday. Yeah, and I think we have the same problem. Problems of everybody else, you know, from day to day. But I think bigger than that, we need to think about our legacy.

And that's what Barbara and I did when we first got married. We said, The most important thing is that our children serve the Lord in our lives. No matter what we do, it's important that we first serve the Lord, that our children do. And why would you not want your children's children's children?

So I've got. There's like 48 of us, I think, now, and I say I think because it's counting, you know, we keep growing. And What should be important to all of us more than anything is that we serve the Lord, our children, our children's, and our children's children serve the Lord. Whether we're here or not, do you want your great-great-great-grandchildren to serve the Lord? The answer is yes.

Well, what can we do our best to see that that happens?

So, I think we have to be very intentional with our family to try to live the way that the Lord would have us to live so that they would live the same way.

So, I think we have to be intentional to have legacy in our homes. One of those things that's kind of neat is a 16-year-old in the Green family at some point will get a Bible. Talk about that, just that small gesture, but what the deeper, larger significance of that is. Yeah, Bill got us to where we come together as a family once a year to celebrate who and what we are.

So, the document that we put together, and we have a document that this is our mission, this is our vision, and this is our legacy. And so, once a year, we give the person that becomes 16. They're part of the family group that comes together once a year to celebrate who and what the Greene family is. And the Greene family wants to be someone that serves the Lord. And so that's been very, very important to us every year to serve on that particular day and to give everyone that turns 16 a Bible.

It's all the same Bible. It has the same look. It's got the world around it. It's specially made for our family. And it's just one of the things that we give the family to let them know that you are part of this family.

And we want everybody to want to be part of this family because of the ones that live ahead of them. Not saying that they're Christian, but doing our very best to be who God would want us to be. And I want to use the word the very best because we're certainly not perfect at it. In our next segment, we're going to go into a breakdown of the chapters. Just a real quick kind of flyby: 5,000 feet, Bill High, David Green.

I'm here in Oklahoma City. Oklahoma is okay. I'm telling you, what an awesome place. I'm in the world headquarters of Hobby Lobby, and they've opened up. What they're doing, their mission, their vision, their legacy to so many other folks and say, hey, make a difference, make it count.

Bill High, let's just cut right to it. How How practical is this for other folks listening? In their families, in their businesses, to actually implement some of these principles that you talk about. In the legacy life? The idea of the legacy life is applicable to every single family in the country and around the world because it's the Bible, these are principles from the Bible.

Because if you think about the idea of the Ten Commandments, love God, love people, that applies to every single family. And the idea in Deuteronomy 6 is that you're supposed to repeat those ideas when you get up, when you lay down, when you're walking by the way, it applies to every single family.

So that's really the perspective. And you're asking about how the book is laid out. It is: we're challenging the perspective of people that long-term is retirement. We're saying the perspective should be think generations because our God is a generational God. Part two of the book is all about legacy practices.

What's the things that every single family can do? Having a vision, mission, values doesn't apply just because you're worth millions or billions. As the case may be, it applies to every single family. We all need to know our purpose, what God's given us to do, and how to practice that. And then the third part of the book is really about the legacy adventure, which are stories from the Bible of families.

We don't tend to think of long-lasting families. There are a lot of families in the Bible that have problems, but there's some great stories of families that made it Hundreds of years, thousands of years even. And then some families and history. And then what do you do if your story's not perfect?

So there's a whole chapter on there on the broken legacy. You're single, widowed, divorced. How's this apply to you? And the whole idea of legacy. All of us.

Have a legacy. It's not neutral. It's going to be good or bad. That's what the scriptures teach.

So that's what we point to in that legacy adventure. Truth to apply. Safe family and Integrity. Gratitude. generosity.

These are some of the key principles. truths that you'll find in this brand new book, The Legacy Life. By David Greene and Bill High. I'm honored to be sitting with them right now and I Please hope that you will download this whole podcast and share it. It's going to be broadcast on radio stations across the country.

It's going to be in podcast form so you can actually share it with someone. And we're talking about What is the legacy? I mean, let's just come out and say, what is the legacy of Hobby Lobby? If Hobby Lobby had a tombstone one day, and I'm not saying that in a negative way, but what would be written on that thing? What would be written on your tombstone, David Greene?

You know, we don't think of this as something that's just Hobby Lobby and selling it and making a lot of money. We see Hobby Lobby and the family bringing this thing and carrying it down as long until the Lord returns. And so we see it as long-term and not a short-term thing.

So, as long as we can, we want to tell as many people about Jesus as we possibly can, and we want to use Hobby Lobby as an instrument to do that.

So, that's what our goal is: just to continue on with our family. We want our great-great-great-great-great-grandson serve the Lord if the Lord tarries, and that's what we want to do with Hobby Lobby. We want to use it the best we can. But, as Bill has also said, it's not just someone that God has given them a business, it's all of us have a purpose in this life, no matter what it is. God has a purpose for our life, and we need to make sure that we're following His purpose.

And I think if we do, we're going to tell other people about Jesus. And your kids, you talk about in the book, They're doing some big things. With their hobby lobby. You know, obviously, they're dialed into the business, a family business. Family is important.

But they're doing some big things. Like there's a little bitty building about the Bible or something in Washington, D.C. There's some Bible translation work going on around the world. Talk about those things and how that excites Papa Bear here to hear about those things going on. Yeah, it's ex exciting 'cause my kids my two boys are all mostly involved in ministry and not Hobby Lobby.

Mart, Steve has a little bit to do with Hobby Lobby, but most of his time he's working with the museum and Mart's working with translations.

So it's all about the same thing, it's ministry.

So what would you have us to do is what we're asking ourselves, God, what would you have Hobby Lobby to do with what you own? God owns this, not us. We're just stewards of it. We're trying to steward in a way that God would be pleased with it. But we're excited that God has got us involved in several different ministries and it all is the same thing.

We want to tell people the good news. There's a good news. There's someone that died for us while we're yet sinners, and we want to tell as many people about that as we possibly can. Bill High, this stuff is so much bigger than just X's and O's. You know, what comes out of the cash register, foot traffic, you know, selling products, retail, hitting big numbers, Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4.

This is about souls. Can you talk a little bit about that? I mean, you're trained as a lawyer, a business guy, an entrepreneur. What is the next level here? And why is there so much more than just the business stuff and the material stuff?

Well, if you just take there's two levels of this.

So David would tell you that just in terms of the ministries that they've supported, one of them is an organization called One Hope, and they've distributed gospel literature to two billion children. Around the world.

So that in and of itself is significant, but I would say if you dial it back and just look at David's family. There are actually now six generations of believers in the family, but David's really started this, if you will, this great thing here at his level into the fourth generation now. If their family continues to serve Christ, get the gospel out, whether there's hobby, lobby, or not, for another five generations, if Jesus tarries. They literally, we've done the math on families like this, and a family like theirs, just their family, today they're 47, 48. But in another few generations, you literally could have a couple thousand people around the dinner table that all know Jesus.

And that's God's first design: the family would grow and expand, and we'd share the gospel with our kids, our grandkids, and they'd continue to know Jesus.

So, just at a family level, it's profound. But then, if you take and say, wow, there's 50,000 families that are employed here at Hoppy Lobby, and if each of those families are two, three, four, All of a sudden, you get to a couple million people that today this business impacts. Just with what they do. If you extend that out, again, three more generations, it becomes something like a hundred million. person kind of impact.

So, that's the power of thinking generationally. What's your vision, your mission, your values?

Well, and it really does start with family. David Green, you got a dad out there who's burning the midnight oil. He's on that phone all the time. The kids are crying out, begging, throw the ball with me, pour into me. You got a mom who's holding two little babies.

She's got a toddler about to fall off something. There's a lot of stress on the family now. There's a lot of you talk about the distractions in the book. You talk about we're so short-sighted.

Well, you talk about, talk to those people listening. About their hope and how they can, like you've done it here with your family, with the Green family, how they can build a legacy through the family to the glory of God. We just challenge and encourage those out there. A lot of folks are hurting, but they need to hear this message. Yeah, I think we have to be intentional in what we want our life to be about.

We all have the same things going on, especially when we have little children. And so we are at a different spot we are than Barbara and I than we were when we had a lot of family.

So I think if it's in our heart, we're going to move towards doing more and more for Christ. It may be harder when we're younger and we have so many things and so many distractions, but in the deep part of our lives, we need to know that God has created us and we're going to get there. We may get there a little bit slower than we would like to be there, but we need to have a purpose in our life. We need to know what it is. Slowly but surely, we will get there.

We're doing a lot more for the Lord than we did when we had three kids and they're real small.

So there is that time that we're so busy, but at the same time, we need to know that God created us for a purpose and remember that every day and work towards where God really wants us. God, what, was Christ 30 before we heard from Him?

So sometimes we're the same way. It takes a little while before we're really where God wants us to be.

Well, and David Green, I really just love your, just how transparent you are in this book. You too, Bill High. I mean, this book, The Legacy Life. I'm in Oklahoma City talking to these guys right now. You're going to love this book.

It'll bless you. But there's a transparency there because you even opened up a chapter saying, hey, You know, and I thought about it. I'm sitting in this nice conference room. I'm driving through Oklahoma City looking. I'm like, when does this campus end?

Me and my buddy Cliff are out here. It's like, this is massive. I thought if I just, I'm meeting with these guys who do it, we're broadcasting here on site in Oklahoma City. I thought if I just pulled into the first sign that said Hobby Lobby, It would take me like two years to find this office and end up in this conference room. But David Green, it didn't all start that way.

It didn't all start with 150 top executives coming here to learn about the green story and what God has done here and how they can have a legacy life. I mean, there was a little closet, there's a little garage, there's a little, I mean, you didn't have two pennies to rub together. I mean, people think, oh, these guys, oh, they got it all together. It's easy for them to talk about God when they've got all this millions of dollars. But give everyone a little snapshot into what it was like for you going way, way back with your sweet wife who stood by you all these years, you know, over 63 years married.

Yeah. We started with a $600 That we borrowed from the bank. And so we did a lot of crawling. But God had this for us. And I use the word crawl because sometimes I have someone to come in and they want a lot of money to do their ministry.

And I says, now this may sound bad, but I said, no, I just want to see you crawl for a while. Because if they crawl, I know that they're in it for the right reason, not the wrong reason.

Now, if someone wants to go into ministry and get a lot of money and get the start of money, I don't want to be a part of that. I want to be a part of something that I see someone, God has called them to do this, and he's going to get them there. It's his responsibility, but it's not our responsibility to help someone that we're not sure why they're in it. Anybody can get in ministry because they got a lot of money and they go and take off. But I'd like to see someone that's Barbara worked five years without a salary.

I worked two jobs, and that's what we did to get started with $600. But we give God and all the people that work in here, we give them credit for where we are. God allowed it to happen. And then during that period of time in the last 50 years that we've had this, we've had some very, very difficult times, but God always brought us through those difficult times. Bill High, there's times where this guy here crawled under the desk, where the Green family got on their knees, where they're like, it could be shut the doors.

I mean, we've got the government after us, we have all these things happening.

So there is some real nitty-gritty, but Ultimately, this whole idea that God gives to you to give through you. This idea of impacting way past yourself, generations. He talks about all these generations of folks in the Old Testament and good examples and bad examples. But speak to that, will you, Bill, and what you've seen firsthand working with the Greens in this testimony?

Well, I've seen David and the family be willing to take risk for the sake of the gospel. It didn't make a lot of sense to sue the federal government, as, for instance, because they didn't have a Plan B and the fines that they were going to incur every single day as a result of not obeying the government's mandate to provide drugs that would induce abortion, that was a significant decision. But the willingness to say, God, this is what you called us to, a principle to do what's right, and to follow through on that, just trust in God to do whatever he's going to do, not knowing the outcome. That's what I've seen consistently with David and Barbara and the family. And that kind of risk-taking tells us that the gospel is more important than me.

Yeah. Big takeaway challenge to people about why they should get this book and what you what the lasting impact you want the legacy life to have on people, Bill High. And then I'm going to ask the same question here of your co-your co-author, David Greene. Everybody wants to live a life of meaning and purpose, but we get lost in the day-to-day rush, and we wake up one day and it's like, wow, this all went really fast. But if you want to live an intentional life, if you want to live the kind of life someday in heaven where Jesus says, Well done, thou good and faithful servant, you're going to start today and you're going to start with the intentionality of that life built around what God's called you to do: vision, mission, and values.

I love it.

Website again for the book. The website for the book is legacystone.com forward slash legacy life. David Green, what would be your parting words? You know, you have a great section in there about sharing your story, which you've done that. You've actually laid your heart out there for people in this book.

You're very vulnerable about your family, the struggles within your own family and your kids and your grandkids, the struggles within the business. And then, of course, there's that. Really high point that the book ends on: a whole chapter about heaven, which I really love. As we get out of here, what are your parting thoughts, what you want to say about your legacy and what you want to challenge everyone out there in terms of the legacy life as we get out of here? Yeah, I think I would say that we need to be very, very intentional about our marriage and our children.

To have an influence, we need to have an, if we can't have an influence on our own family, then maybe that we have a problem.

So I think we need to be very, very intentional with our marriage, with our children. I want my children and my children's children, as I said earlier. I want them to serve the Lord, and I want to do everything I can to guide them and try to be an example that God would have us to be. And so that's what I would like. And then, secondly, that we all have a purpose, every one of us.

It's different than my purpose. You have a purpose. purpose in what God would God have us to do.

Sometimes we never know that purpose because we really haven't pursued it and God knows we're not going to go there anyway.

So pursue our purpose. You have a purpose that's going to make a difference and have a legacy in your purpose as well as. is ours is a green family. To the top one. I'm not sure if I can do it.