- Mar 27, 2022

The Greens

(NOTE: The QR code associated with this "Down to the Wire" section on page 569, was improperly placed, and belongs to the section on the top of page 567 dealing with the Green family)

Many of western Oklahoma’s sons and daughters have risen from humble beginnings on its Southern Plains to accomplish mighty and far-reaching deeds. Few have excelled Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. founder David Green, who grew up in Mangum and Altus. Successful manager of a TG&Y department store at age 21, he founded Hobby Lobby at 29 in 1970 with his wife Barbara and a $600 loan.

Coupling administrative and marketing brilliance with the vibrant faith of a country pastor’s son and a selfless mother, David built the OKC-based arts and crafts company into a $3.5 billion company with nearly 900 stores across America by 2020. The secular press trumpeted him as “the greatest contributor to evangelical Christian causes in the world,” and as having given more than half-a-billion dollars in his lifetime.

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Mart Green, eldest son of David and Barbara, founded Mardel Christian and Education supply company in 1981. It has grown into one of the largest and most successful Christian book and gift stores in the world. In 2007, Mart spearheaded the historic rescue of faltering Oral Roberts University in Tulsa. This involved an organizational restructuring, dramatically improved financial stewardship, Mart’s seasoned institutional leadership for a time, and over $100 million dollars in financial support that he and the Greens provided. In 2008, he came alongside Bobby Gruenewald and Life.Church’s YouVersion Bible application to begin translating YouVersion into other languages—more than 1,000 by 2020. Mart’s Every Tribe Every Nation project, through which he has allied the world’s greatest Bible translation agencies, is well on its way to translating and digitizing the Scriptures into all 6,000 known languages in the world.

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Steve Green, Mart’s younger brother, has been president of Hobby Lobby since 2004. He is also chairman of the family’s eight-story-tall, 430,000-square foot, Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C. Dedicated to a scholarly, engaging, and technologically sensational presentation of the Bible’s impact, history, and narrative, the museum contains the largest private collection of antiquities in the world. In addition, Steve helms the family’s fruitful effort to include the Bible as a learning, though not pointedly theological, resource, “in every school in every nation in the world.”

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Mart and Steve’s sister Darsee Lett served as Vice President of Hobby Lobby Art and Creative. “She keeps a low profile but she packs a powerful punch,” Mart told the author. “She is the life of the party of our family for sure!”

We don't give out of our need, we give out of our surplus. 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.

—Barbara Green