David Green started Hobby Lobby with a $600 loan from a bank and a dining room table. He and his wife Barbara were making miniature picture frames in their home in 1970. Four decades later, Hobby Lobby is one of America's largest retail chains — over 900 stores, 50,000 employees, billions in annual revenue. It is closed on Sundays. It is closed on Christmas and Easter. And David Green still says the same thing he said when it was just a dining table and a dream:
"This is God's company. We are just the stewards."
That statement is not a marketing position. It is the lens through which every decision in that business has been made for fifty years. And understanding it properly changes how you think about what it means to build something.
The Decision That Came Before Everything Else
Early in Hobby Lobby's growth, the Green family made a decision that preceded every other major decision: if God blessed this business, they would give it away. Not someday. As a settled orientation from the beginning.
That single commitment shaped everything. It shaped how they thought about profit — not as the goal, but as fuel for something larger. It shaped how they treated employees — not as resources to be optimised, but as people God had placed in their care. It shaped their non-negotiables — if you are a steward and not an owner, your decisions have to reflect the values of the one who actually owns it.
The Green family has donated billions of dollars to Christian causes, missions, education, and Bible translation. They funded the Museum of the Bible in Washington DC. They have funded the education of thousands of students through Oral Roberts University. None of that was possible without the original decision: this is not mine to keep.
"It is not possible to separate the management of a business from the spiritual condition of its management."
David Green — Founder, Hobby Lobby
The Non-Negotiables
Hobby Lobby has been closed on Sundays since the day it opened. When the business was a single store and every sale counted, they closed on Sunday. When they were competing with stores that were open seven days a week, they closed on Sunday. When economists calculated what it cost them annually — and it is a very large number — they closed on Sunday.
Green did not close on Sundays as a marketing strategy or to appeal to a particular customer segment. He closed because he believed his employees deserved one consistent day that was protected — a day for family, for rest, for God. It was a conviction about how people should be treated, and it was non-negotiable.
This is one of the most clarifying questions any leader can sit with: what are your non-negotiables? Not your preferences. Not the things you would prefer not to compromise but would if the pressure was high enough. The things that are not for sale regardless of the cost.
Hobby Lobby has been tested on this. When the Affordable Care Act in the United States required companies to provide contraceptive coverage that conflicted with the Green family's convictions, they took it to the Supreme Court rather than comply. They won. But they were willing to pay the cost either way.
Non-negotiables are only real when they are tested. And the Green family's history is a study in what it looks like to hold a line under genuine pressure.
The Jethro Principle at Scale
You cannot run 900 stores without delegation on a massive scale. The principles Jethro laid out for Moses — select capable people, give them real authority, trust them to carry the standard — are embedded in how Hobby Lobby operates. A store in Texas runs on the same values as a store in Pennsylvania, not because there is a surveillance system enforcing it, but because the people in positions of trust have been selected and developed to carry the culture.
Green said: "We're not building a company. We're building people." That is not a tagline. It is a description of where the investment goes. Every manager who carries Hobby Lobby's values into their store is someone who was developed, trusted, and given genuine responsibility. That is what makes a culture sustainable at scale.
Moses with Jethro's framework could lead two million people in the wilderness. Green with his stewardship framework could build 50,000 employees into a cohesive organisation. The principle is the same. The scale is different. The lesson is transferable regardless of where you are starting.
What This Means on the Sunshine Coast
I am not running a $5 billion business. I am part of a church that is influencing our community, a print company, a coffee operation that employs people with disabilities, and a health and income business. None of those are Hobby Lobby in scale. But the principles that govern them — or that should govern them — are the same ones David Green has been applying for fifty years.
Who does this belong to? What is it for? Who am I developing inside it? What are my non-negotiables? What would I be willing to pay rather than compromise on those?
3 John 1:2 says: "Beloved, I pray that you may prosper in all things and be in health, just as your soul prospers." That is a prayer for unified flourishing — soul, body, and circumstance aligned. David Green's whole story is an extended answer to that prayer. A man whose soul was settled in stewardship, whose body was protected by the rhythms he built into his organisation, and whose circumstances — by any measure — prospered.
You start with the dining table and the $600 loan. You start with the decision about who it belongs to. And then you build from there.
Thinking about what your business is really for?
If you are trying to build something with this kind of foundation — in business, in a network, or in community — I would genuinely love to talk about what that looks like in practice.
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