Seye Joseph with Forbes
With over 26 thousand staff on his payroll, one of his organisation’s building sprawling 5.5 million-square-foot distribution warehouse in Oklahoma City, with 520 superstores in 42 states, donation of former Ericsson plant in Lynchburg, which he bought for $10.5 million to Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University in 2004, gave an entire campus that worth $16.5 million to Zion Bible College in Haverhill, Mass. in 2007 and many others, David Green – foremost American Billionaire and founder of Hobby Lobby that turned a makeshift manufacturing operation in his living room for arts and crafts into a retail monster, with 520 superstores in 42 states has attributed all what he has God’s
property.
According to him, “If you have anything or if I have anything, it’s because it’s been given to us by our Creator, svgy o 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,” says Green. “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.”
Green 75, is a self-made billionaire that worth $6.5 Billion, ranked by Forbes as the 94th-wealthiest person in the US and among the world’s billionaires he ranks one place behind Sir Richard Branson with a wealth of a little over $5.1 billion.
He opened his first crafts shop in 1970 with a $600 loan. The company, which opened its 700th store in May, reached $4 billion in sales in 2015, expanding to the East and West Coasts and hopes to open its
720th store by year-end; it opened 68 in 2015. Green was 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.
Coming from a family of preachers, Green says that “you can’t have a belief system on Sunday and not live it the other six days”.
He has spoken many times about the Christian belief underpinning his businesses, and told ChristiaNet: “All the things we do, all our behavior, should let others know that we are living by, and operating in, Biblical principles. Principle and character are the highest quality traits on our list.”
Green has said he wants to be remembered more for his influence on people’s religion than for his business empire, and this is no more evident than in his vast funding for evangelical education.
In 2004 he gave a former Ericsson plant worth $10.5 million to Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University. He gave an entire campus to Zion Bible College in Haverhill, Mass. in 2007, and that same year bailed out the debt-ridden Oral Roberts University with a single cash gift of $70 million.
According to Forbes, he also put nearly 1.4 billion copies of gospel literature in homes in more than 100 countries, mostly in Africa and Asia.
In 2010, he joined the giving pledge with the likes of Gates-Buffett Giving Pledge promising to donate half his wealth to good causes by the time he dies.
On his account with CBN, Green said that his empire was built on Biblical principles – including setting up “tithes”.
“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.”
Green said he prefers to keep the total amount of his charitable contributions private, but Forbes has estimated that based on the information available his lifetime giving is upwards of $500 million.
In 2010, Green said: “I would like to know that we have brought as many people to know Christ as we possibly can. We hope to continue to just grow our company. As long as there’s someone on this earth that doesn’t know Jesus Christ, we have a job to do.”
The company stresses that the beliefs of its owners are not forced upon employees in any way, but says that it offers a path to religion for those who want it.
Hobby Lobby has three chaplains dedicated to ministers to workers, and Green said four years ago that “hundreds” of employees had been converted, including more than a dozen managers in a single year.
“We prayed a prayer with them, and we did have 15 managers come to know Christ in the business place,” he said.
Part of what he did that made his staff endeared to him was when Hobby Stores announced that it was increasing the wages paid to its full-time staff to $14 an hour, and the rate for part-time staff to $9.50.
It meant that full-time employees now receive almost twice the minimum wage, set in the US at $7.25 an hour.
Green said at the time: “We are very fortunate to be able to increase hourly wages for our employees, because we know our company would not be successful without the great work they do each day in our stores across the nation.”
“We know that if we reward our employees for their hard work, we will be rewarded in turn with their loyalty and dedication to their job and to our customers.”
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