David Green (Hobby Lobby) & Bill High | Building a Legacy Life: Faith, Family, and Eternal Purpose

Hey, everyone, welcome to this episode of Thinking Christian. I'm your host, James Spencer, and I'm joined today by two gentlemen. David Green is the CEO of Hobby Lobby, and Bill High is CEO of Legacy Stone. And I'm sure we'll get into a little bit of what that organization does as we go. But they've written a book, and they've written a book together. They've actually written several books together, but the one that's coming out this October is on the Legacy life, leading your family to make a difference for eternity. And so today we're going to be talking about some of the concepts of that book and looking forward to it. So, gentlemen, welcome to the show. Thank you. Appreciate it. Well, I wanted to start out and just talk a little bit about what you mean by legacy. I think one of the things that I enjoyed most about reading the, I got a pre-published copy of the book, and so one of the things I enjoyed most was the way you reframe legacy, that it's not something you leave behind, but it's something you look at going forward. Can you just talk about that a little bit? Yeah, I think that that is very, very important in our life, or at least in my life, I think, is what have we done with our life that God has given us something to do? He's given us all something to do. I think he's given us all purpose, and what are we doing with our purpose? I think our purpose is going to leave a legacy, and our legacy is a lot of different things. One, of course, is our family. You know, we have a family that serves the Lord. My family served the Lord, my mother and dad. They left a legacy with their family. They had six children that served the Lord. Our three children serve the Lord, so we need to leave a legacy to where that for generations to come, many generations, that we, it doesn't end with our life, but it also knows that we're, know that we're doing something in the future that's going to be a positive in turning people and bringing people to know the Lord. Yeah, James, and I would take off on that as well, is that idea that David talks about that purpose that you're instilling in your family, your kids, and the like, but it's that purpose that carries on, and that's certainly how we reframe that definition of legacy. Legacy is what you set in motion, and it's that day in heaven that we all gather around and we'll see the fruit of the work of our hands, whether it's the people, our immediate family, friends, family, the missions organizations we've invested in, and as we're looking forward to that day in heaven, some of why the re-framing around this years ago, I had a conversation with a guy who was, he was at that place where he's like, hey, I'm gonna die and someday, you know, I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna leave it behind. And there was a little bit of this notion in his life of him where he's like, you know what happens after I'm gone, it doesn't matter anymore. I'll let my kids all figure it out, but that's a wrong notion. The idea, no, no, you're someday in heaven, all of this will come to account, and we need to be ready for that day, and that's a different way of looking at legacy. Yeah, and I mean the book's structured, so you move from searching to purpose, to insight of heaven all the way through. And I think as I read through it, one of the things that kind of struck me was the views you all advance on retirement and how you begin to think about retirement. I think that that was one of the things that I learned most in the book. I kind of sat back and I said, yeah, I'm kind of working for retirement, although Kim always tells me I can't retire because I'm gonna be like a puppy at home chewing on the couch. So I think she's gonna keep me working till the end, but I think your book really re framed that for me and reminded me that it's not over at, you know, year 70 or 75 when you have enough to retire. Just talk a little bit about that concept and how you view the work that you're doing, not leading necessarily toward retirement, but reorienting it toward legacy. Yeah, and I think that can be different for all of us. I think God has a plan for all of our lives and it can be different. For me, you know, I tell people when I leave here, I'm gonna go be a greeter at Walmart. So I've got to go to work every day. And so I think for me, God has not released me from what I'm doing. I'm 83, but he hasn't released me. I have people that can take my place and do as good, maybe even better than I do, but I'm here because I think that's where I'm supposed to be. But I don't know about everybody else, but I think for sure we shouldn't leave something unless we're retiring to something. We need to retire to something. And I think what we retire to is going to have something to do with the ministry God has for us. So ministry is not just your finance, but it's your time. It's whatever you have to give back to the God that he's given you. So I think that could be different for each one of us. But for me, it's, I've just asked God, you know, the Bible says, delight thyself in the Lord and he'll give you the desires of your heart. And my desires is God takes me while I'm working. So maybe that will happen. I don't know. But anyway, we're having fun doing what we're doing and we're planning on continuing to do it for a little while anyway. Retirement is pretty short term thinking. And I do like the way David phrases it, that you've got to, if you're going to retire from something, make sure you're going to something. You don't retire from your purpose. And then if you think about this idea of family as being generational in nature, you're always going to have that. So I sometimes say, man, you've always got a job with your family. And so don't head to the Florida beaches and say, I'm going to play softball on, you know, every Saturday, Wednesday, whatever it is, and think you're done. Boy, you've got to continue to commit to and invest in your family because that's the generational work of your hands. And you see that coming out in the book in other ways, too, I think, that you have a chart when you're talking about the families and sort of where we've gone wrong. And one of the aspects of the chart is, you know, this idea that grandparents are still involved with their grandchildren as they go forward. I think there is a necessity to sort of reframe our understanding of family a bit. Can you just lead us through a little bit of how you think about family, what you think are the main problems with the way we are practicing family these days, and maybe how we could rethink it? Yeah, if I can jump in on that, I'll let David talk about it. I got to come in early and work with David's family, and I actually knew some of the family history and about how they worked together. I mean, literally where they'd go out to the cotton fields, pick cotton together so they could go buy a piece of furniture together. And that is actually much more of a biblical kind of mindset is that we work together. This Western view of family is, no, we raise our kids up and we kick them out and say, go to Seattle, go here, go be in this sports league. We hope you get in the best college, and then you're done and retire. But the Bible is really written from a Middle Eastern mindset. And that Middle Eastern mindset is that we are a collective. We're a team. The family is the first unit. And when you read from the lens of the family, you read the Bible very differently. It's not just about nuggets, but it's about context. That's why the genealogies are so important is that we need to know where you come from and the genealogy of Jesus. It's summed up in Matthew 1.17, and it actually takes that genealogy all the way back to Abraham, 42 generations, 62 generations back to Adam. And that's a different way of thinking. We tend to think about my generation and this moment, and then we're done. Not a biblical mindset. One of the things that Bill helped our family do is come together with a written document that says, this is our mission. This is our vision. And this is our values. And so once a year, we come together. And I think that is part of what helps us try to hold our family as a family. Not a lot of different families going a lot of different ways. Although we do go different ways because God has something different for us. But there also ought to be a unit. Now, I don't know how it happened, but there's 46 of us and all of us live in Oklahoma city. I don't know how that happened, but anyway, that has happened. There's 46 of us counting our great grandkids, our grandkids, but we have come up with a document that I think is really important to have a written document that says, this is our mission. This is what the mission of the family is. Gen 1 and Gen 2 put this together. We took the Gen 3. We asked them if they could accept it. They accepted it. They changed maybe a verse or two that we have scriptures for all of this. But we know what our mission, our vision and our values. What is our values? And so all of that has come together. And once a year, we celebrate. We bring together, we talk about this and who we are, what we are. And I think

Per month, we also come together relative to deciding where our giving is going to go, so we do the best we can to bring the family together and see ourselves as a unit. Even though God has a different purpose for all of our lives, we can still be united in one thing, and that is to tell as many people as we can the good news about Jesus Christ, and that's really the endgame for all of us is to do as much in that area as we possibly can. Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed? With inflation, market volatility, and ongoing global uncertainty, more families are taking a closer look at whether their retirement plan is truly built to hold up, and many are finding that adding a layer of protection makes a lot of sense. Sanctuary Metals is a Christian-owned company that helps families strengthen their retirement savings with physical gold and silver through a Gold IRA. During uncertain times, many people look to precious metals as a way to add stability when other assets may be under pressure. If you'd like to explore whether a Gold IRA is a good fit for your situation, Sanctuary Metals makes it easy to get started. Text GUIDE to 94878 to receive your free retirement defense guide, or call 888-958-6579 to speak with one of their knowledgeable team members. Again, text GUIDE to 94878 or call 888-958-6579. And I mean, Bill, this connects this idea of family and legacy and, you know, getting the mission, vision, and values down, the work that you did with the Green family. You're also now doing with Legacy Stone, correct? I mean, that's an aspect of that ministry. Yeah, the ministry of Legacy Stone is really how do we raise up family foundations for generational impact. And the idea is that if we help your families succeed for generations, we've done the math, by the way. We can take a look at your family. We've done the math on David's family. And if you extrapolate out six, seven generations, and you just look at the size of the family, you'll see that his family alone, by the time you get to the seventh generation, just, if you can imagine, a big conference room, they'll have 7,000 people at that conference room table, proverbially speaking. But then if you take the business, if you take all the vendors that they work with, they literally, because of the size in their case, there's a couple billion people that they'll impact in the world. We've done this for other families as well, though. And, you know, typically, you're going to be talking about several thousand people. But at the end of the day, our goal really is to help families think multi-generationally and then to equip them, just like David said, with vision, mission, values, code of conduct. How do they tell their stories? Those are the basics. And if you do those, you can succeed generationally. Talk a little bit about code of conduct, because I found that really interesting, and I can sort of envision it. So I'm part of more of a first generational Christian family. My parents were Lutheran when I grew up, and so I grew up in church, but I wouldn't say that they were really invested in sort of spreading the gospel and doing those kind of things. It just wasn't who they were. I don't think they were really raised like that. I was born again in college. And then sort of as I started my family, we were very intentional about thinking about some of these things. But when I think about a code of conduct and having that for my family, the unit that I'm in now, you know, my wife, my four kids, and then them having their own families, do they develop a separate code of conduct for that? How important is it for them to re-own that within their smaller unit while still belonging to that bigger growing unit? Does that make sense? Yeah, I mean, in David's family's case, you start out with a big picture, vision, mission, values, so it's the big tent that everybody subscribes to, but it doesn't mean that some of the individual families might tweak something and change something. And then within that vision, mission, values, you typically would have a code of conduct. It's really rules of behavior, and it's how do you manage conflict, because you're going to have it. Again, some of that I took from David. He has his own personal code that he lives by about how he prays. He's got a couple signs up on the walls here in the building about how he operates. But if you just have a system around how you do that, and all that is, frankly, just taking from the Old Testament this idea of how do you govern a family. That's what the Ten Commandments are. It's a code. It's a way of life. It's how do you govern the family with a set of principles that say we're going to honor God and we're going to love people. You know, I grew up in a pastor's home, so I don't know real well what you may have known. You may not have been grown up in that kind of environment, but I was growing up in an environment where the six of us kids knew that God, there's two lives, and one of them is temporal and one's eternal. So if you just start there about life, where are you going to put your assets? What are you going to be thinking about? Is it going to be just for this particular time that's nothing but a vapor? So that itself helps guide, I think, our family. Are you going to commit your time and your attention more to the temporal, which we all have to have a balance in our life, but I think that has helped our family to just know that there is two lives and one of them is eternal, and that's where we want to spend our time. Then the other thing that I think that helps us as far as being a unit is God's word. God's word is God's word, and we do the very best we can to understand it. That's why we have the museum, because the word is so important to us that we feel like it needs to be put on a pedestal. So when you're talking about family and different units within the family, I think when we all come in under one umbrella, and this is God's word, and this is what it says, and try to understand that as well as we can. So we kind of list a lot of those things in our family that we feel like this is what God says. There's only one way to heaven and that's to know Jesus Christ as our personal savior, and all of that that most all of us as Christians would believe, but doesn't tie you down so much that maybe you can't have a preacher that's a wife, okay? So we don't tie it down, because my mother, by the way, had a revival and my dad became saved with that. So, you know, sometimes we have different people see things different, but the important things that we see as a family, I think we all see together as this is God's word. We love it so much that we want to put it on a pedestal, and we've tried to do that with others that have come alongside us to make that happen. What I would say, having read Leadership Not by the Book, which was one you guys did together maybe last year, something like that. A few years ago now. A few years ago now. I guess I read it last year. But it was hard when I was reading this one not to see, you know, that God owns it all. We're just stewarding it, sort of creeping in around the edges, even in this book, that this idea of legacy really is rooted in the idea that this isn't ours, that we're to give it back. And part of the way that we give it back is by focusing on these things that you talk about in the book. Yeah, I think, and I like to think, too, that God owns everything, but he doesn't just own our finance, because sometimes that's where God has put us, but he owns our time, our talent. He's given us all that, and we have to give it back. So we all have a different calling that God has called us, but he's all called us to a purpose. None of us are here with no purpose at all. So what is the purpose? Whatever it is, it's your time, your talent. Give it back to the one that gave it to you. He owns it. And that scripture, the scriptures in the scripture that tells us that we don't own anything, that God owns us, has really helped us to say, no, no, no, we don't own it. A lot of times the Christian says God owns it, but he really doesn't, because they have total control of it. But when we say God owns it, we want to know God owns it. So in our company, no one makes a penny outside of their salary because you should get paid for what you do and the responsibilities. But in our family, it's earned. You either earn it or you don't earn it. So it really helps us to have a family together that if someone's not getting something they haven't earned, you've got problems with other family members, all sorts of problems. All of a sudden they don't work. So it's been real important to us in our business to say you get what you earn. You have a lot of responsibilities. So we come together as a group of the family that decides on salaries that everybody earns what they get and that works really well for us. And then the rest of it belongs to God. And so we enjoy just taking what God has given us and how he's blessed us and give it back. But it's just as important, by the way, our time, our talent, and other areas. Finances

And yet, throughout the scriptures, there is this fundamental theme of redemption and restoration. It's just like a heartbeat. Boom, boom, redemption, restoration, redemption, restoration. And so it's a theme throughout scripture. And that idea of repairing the brokenness and recognizing, how could God take anything good out of this? You take the story of David and Bathsheba. How could he take anything good out of a really a messed up relationship and a conspiracy to commit murder, and yet Solomon comes out of it and builds the temple. Now, the Solomon story, and great, no, but again, the whole theme continues on. And then from that line of David, Solomon, of course, comes the Christ, the one who will redeem and restore forever. And so that's just one of these things that we should be encouraged by that. No matter what the brokenness you experienced in your own life in this moment, God's gonna redeem it, and he's gonna restore it. And so then if you flip it back over to David's life, who would have thought that a guy that was, you know, running around barefoot and during the summers and, you know, small churches, small towns. I mean, I know your mom and dad had no concept that there'd be a Hobby Lobby, then let alone what's happening now into the next generation. Museum of the Bible, Chosen, things like that. Let's end Bible poverty. That's some of these great stories. Now, you had a good upbringing, but it was, you know, small by any concept of the word. Yeah, yeah. I just started teaching through 1 Corinthians, and one of the things that Paul does in the first couple of chapters is he really sets himself up as bringing the gospel with weakness, without heavy rhetoric, without eloquent words. And as I was just thinking through the book and what we might talk about, and one of the things that sort of struck me about just admitting and owning the brokenness of the past is that it really does allow God's glory to sort of shine through a family. It's a way of acknowledging God's work in a particular person or a particular family unit as opposed to trying to suggest that the family unit did it by themselves. And so I just found that to be, you know, there are multiple layers, I think, within the book that as I dip back into scripture, look at some of the families that you've talked about in one of the chapters, you have a whole chapter on, you know, families in the Bible and family legacy in the Bible. I think there's just so many layers to this. So I really appreciated that about what you all wrote. But I don't know whether you had any comment on, you know, that idea of how brokenness sort of allows God to work through a family. You know, I think it's just really necessary. I think that I had talked in one of my books about in 1985 where the bank threatened to foreclose on us. And we were, I found myself literally under my desk. I had a big heavy desk, so the world was falling in under me. And I thought, man, if I get under that desk, you know, maybe, but the phone calls kept coming. People wanted money that I didn't have and I needed more merchandise to get it turned around. You know, and it was like, this was an impossible situation. So I just found myself crying before God. And I think God wanted this time to break to have a broken person that I wanna, you know, I don't think there's any event that can help you through life, but one can maybe help you, but not totally deliver you. You have to die every day. And I think that's where God wants us. He just wants to, he just doesn't want you to get out of character and get too proud of yourself and doing things that he gave you everything you have, he gave you. He gave you breath, he gave you life. And so sometimes we take that on ourselves instead of saying, no, God, I can do nothing without you. And I think that's where God wants us. He wants us to know without him, we can do nothing. Now we can do some things and God, because of what God has given us, some talents, but we can really do things. And that's why I ask God every day. I try to do, I pray without ceasing, you know, and that means that we have problems every day, every hour, it seems like. So I think it's good to try to do that. Just ask God every day. And also know at the same time you're doing that, that he's right there. He's not far away. He's right there by you. So it helps me to pray without ceasing more often, to know that I don't have to pray to a God that's far away, but he's right there with me. And one of the other scriptures that helps me is just, you have not because you ask not. So what are we asking for is very, very important. So I think that in my life, I try to do my best to pray every day and to know he's right there with me and then ask him for things that I know that would be pleasing to him, you know? And that is to do more for him. Now, of course, you've always got those issues in your family, your health, things of this nature. But I think God loves it when we just call out to him every day, knowing that he is God and he created us and he loves us. And so those are the things that I think is important for us to know that without him, we can do nothing. That really makes a difference. Sometimes I talk about the book that talks about good to great. You know, I never read that book, but someone told me there's nothing great about it. There's nothing great about it if it doesn't talk about eternity. Everything else is just comes and goes. So how am I gonna take that book and really be excited about it? I'd rather take God's word. And that's a book that tells us about what is great and what's great is people come to know Jesus. And that's where hopefully we put most of our time and attention. It's really interesting you bring up the good great because I was thinking when I was reading through the chapter on family legacies in history and just the way that we sort of, I don't know, maybe as a culture, as a, you know, general rule, we look up to people that maybe we shouldn't be looking up to. We see these role models that maybe we shouldn't be looking to to say, oh, this is how I want to live my life. Celebrities and various things like that. But the families that you note in that chapter are actually really compelling and they seem to, while they had their problems, they really did seem to be trying to do something to establish some level of legacy that is sort of noble and inspiring. And so I'm wondering if you just talk through, like, what, how do we go out and find these sort of role models? Where do we see these sort of families operating in history, whether it's recent past or even today? How do we even look at them, identify them, and draw our lessons from these folks who are really doing some good things that may not be as sensational, right? They may not have the sizzle as some of the other folks that get more news time. Yeah, James, I think, let me jump in on this one because I do think you've got to come back to these first couple principles and first to recognize we do have to reset how we think the theology of family, if you will. And God's design really is meant to be multi-generational. And then second, if we see that, then we've got to come back to where you were earlier, which is we have this very short-term view, which is, you know, I'm going to retire. I'm going to raise my kids up and I'm going to retire and go sit on a beach somewhere. And we've got to dismiss that thinking because what that's really led to is this idea that if I do have a business or if I have a career, my job is to build it so I have enough so I can retire and be done. That's, we've got to change that view because unfortunately, some of these families in history, if you will, the role models that you have talked about, they are out there, but we're not looking for them today. In fact, we do need to be looking for them. Unfortunately, most of them are in European countries or in Japan or Switzerland. And that's where some of that theology comes into play. We're a collective. And so you do have families out there that are a thousand years or more. I don't know if you eat rice, but if you put soy sauce on it, that's Kikkoman. And you know, they're, I think they're getting close to a thousand years now as a family. And that's what David's talking about. It's this idea of what is your purpose that God's given you and do you want to perpetuate that? And it may seem kind of mundane, soy sauce, you know, but think about the idea of families gathered around, fellowshipping. I just was a little bit of an aside, but I had talked to a Chinese gal the other day and her doctor's like, hey, you got to give up rice, you know, so you can lose weight. She's like, I'm not giving up my rice. But think about that idea of families gathered around meals together and Kikkoman's been part of that, you know, in the same way that Hobby Lobby helps decorate homes for families. That's part of the idea. God gives you a purpose. Let's sustain that purpose and let's look for those role models as opposed to this very Western view of the beach is my goal. Yeah. And well, and I will say one of the, one of the highlights I've had in my life

I can't think of a time when I've had a better moment as a dad, where I'm like, we did something right. Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed? With inflation, market volatility, and ongoing global uncertainty, more families are taking a closer look at whether their retirement plan is truly built to hold up. And many are finding that adding a layer of protection makes a lot of sense. Sanctuary Metals is a Christian-owned company that helps families strengthen their retirement savings with physical gold and silver through a gold IRA. During uncertain times, many people look to precious metals as a way to add stability when other assets may be under pressure. If you'd like to explore whether a gold IRA is a good fit for your situation, Sanctuary Metals makes it easy to get started. Text GUIDE to 94878 to receive your free retirement defense guide or call 888-958-6579 to speak with one of their knowledgeable team members. Again, text GUIDE to 94878 or call 888-958-6579. Sure. That's great. Proximity matters. We say that inside of families, is that when this Western mindset of, hey, go off and live your life, this spread your wings and fly kind of mentality, it's actually, the Chinese proverb is that you should give your children roots and wings. So not just wings, it's the idea of roots. And so when David talked, he's made fun of it a little bit, but the idea of having 46 of them still here, that proximity matters because you, like your daughters, all those little moments, they're gone. You know, if you're not there for that birthday celebration or the high school graduation, they only happen once. And that, if you can be there, be there. How do you see, I mean, I know you work with a lot of families. How do you see them coping with the digital environment and environment where travel is becoming much more of a commonplace thing? It's been easier to travel, which is in some ways great. And in other ways, it seems like it could be really detrimental. I mean, I used to consult and so I travel a lot when I was consulting. And eventually it got to a point where we just realized, hey, we don't need to do this anymore. The money's not worth the trade-off of me being gone so much. And so we, you know, I stopped doing it. But I think that's a temptation for a lot of people. And then you get into that digital environment where there's just so many other influences poking their heads in to a family. How do you talk to families about managing their mission, vision, and values within this particular context? Sure. I think you have to be very, very intentional when you're thinking about family. You just have to be intentional. You have to give it thought. Sometimes when I have all my co-managers come into the corporate office, I talk to them about their family and how intentional they need to be about holding your family together and how important the family is. Now, the children shouldn't be so important that it's all about the children. It needs to be about the family. And so one of the things I ask them to do, I say, your family is more important than your job. A lot of us at our jobs are pretty good at it. In fact, sometimes we're better at that than we are our families, our marriage. And, you know, even Christians, sometimes the amount of marriages that don't even survive, it's crazy. And so we close on Sundays because of the family. We close at 8 o'clock because of the family. We work five days a week because of the family. So I tell them, maybe you're not supposed to do this, but I do. I say, look, more important than Hobby Lobby is your family. So I think when you're talking about family, you have to be very, very intentional. Am I going to be successful with family? And then that brings a lot of things into conversation about how much time they're on their phones, how many, all of this. Are we going to do things together? So a lot of things come into play when you want to talk about your family. And that's what I want them to do because so many of us can be successful. Most of us are successful at our business. And by the way, it's much easier to be successful at your business than at your family. Families just a lot of times don't work, but they don't work because we're not intentional, because it's not the most important thing. It needs to be the most important thing. And when it is, you'll know the things to do and not to do because there's a lot of things that will help us bring the family together. And then we see in today's world where we don't even have a meal together. So those are the things that I think that we're asking our co-managers to do. Your family is more important than Hobby Lobby. And as we learn that, because sometimes we think our job is the most important thing and the family suffers because of that. But I don't want that with our people. I want them to know their family is more important. And then a lot of these things that we're talking about today comes into play that this is not good for us. We're not together. So I think a lot of that comes into play when we really give it a lot of thought to, I want this family to work. When Barbara and I first got married, we said we had three goals. And one of them was we're going to have a great marriage. OK. All right. That's a good challenge right there. And then we were going to have children that serve the Lord. And then whatever occupation I wanted to be successful. So that was the three goals that Barbara and I had when we got married. We're going to have a successful marriage. We're going to have children that serve the Lord. But we were intentional and God obviously has helped us. But since then, I've added a couple of things. And that is, I want my grandkids and my great grandkids to serve the Lord. And then we want to tell as many people about Jesus as we possibly can. So we've kind of added to that. We weren't thinking that way when we when we were young, but that's where we hope that God leads us. That's an interesting question to sort of bring up, you know, as we think through legacy life, it's obviously sort of changed and expanded over time, I would think. I mean, even my wife and I have just gone through different stages, even in our relatively short marriage. We've been married, you know, 26 years or so. And we're going on 26 years. And we've changed and more from we've been in college and we've had, you know, entry level jobs and all these kind of different things. How does that legacy remain pretty consistent even while it expands and shifts over time? How do you manage that sort of malleability of it? Well, I think one of the things that we try to do as parents of of children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren, I think we come together fairly often and we meet and we talk and that helps the family just kind of bring a certain amount of unity. And there's always a certain amount because each one of us or a lot of us are going in different directions in our careers. But I think I think that is the most important thing. It's just to come together and to know that it's okay for us to have different different ideas and different different directions that we go. And so I think coming together like we do once a month and our giving helps us and bringing us the family together as much as possible, as well as our yearly time that we get together and say, this is who the Green family is. And we're someone that wants to follow after the Lord. So we put God's word really in front of all of that. And I think God's word really helps us in everything we do. And that, and we love it, even though we're not as good at following it as loving it, that we love it so much that God decided he wanted us to do the museum. And so along with a lot of other people, of course. But anyway, that's, that's been real important to our life is God's word. And we hope that we do the very best we can to follow it. I do want to jump in on this one too, James, because to your question, in the beginning, God actually spoke to Abraham about generations. And I think we've lost sight of that. And so what we are hoping for as a ministry is that we really can reset this theology around the family. Your family was meant to be multi-generational. So we need to know the generations past, where do we come from? But we also need to be thinking about the generations ahead. It actually makes our day-to-day life that become way more important. If I'm faithful in whether I lie or if I'm faithful with how I show up at work, I'm impacting generations. If I whine and complain about my job because I'm not happy with it, I'm not going to be great at what I'm doing. But if I realize my faithfulness in this moment is impacting the future generations to come. If Abraham never took Isaac to the altar, we'd have a very different story, but he was faithful in the moment. And God clearly spoke to Abraham about the generations to come. 400 years ahead. That's mind-blowing for us. If God came in and said, Hey, James, I'm going to talk to you about 400 years later in your family. Like, whoa, that's a big idea. But that's how God thinks. And we need to shift our thinking that way. Well, what a fantastic picture in that near sacrifice of Isaac of Abraham really demonstrating that the generations are the Lord's. This is his only son. He's willing to sacrifice

Yeah, it's a great question, James. And I think what I would say in that, of course, because we've spent so much time talking about family and family legacy, is what I see today in the church is there is still very much this individual focus. It's this idea that your individual salvation and your individual salvation are the most important. But the difference, the shift, and by the way, then, as a result, the focus becomes upon your marriage. And how do you satisfy each other in your marriage? All of that is a highly individualistic focus. And what Bill Bright said years ago, I think, was really wise. He said that we come to Christ as individuals, but we grow in community. Or another way to say that is we come to Christ as individuals, but we grow in our family. And I think that reemphasis of elevating the concept of the family that we belong together will change the very fabric of the church. Because if we have healthy families that say, no, our job is to live out vision, mission values, to live with a code, to repair the past, to tell the stories, the church becomes vibrant and the discipleship doesn't just become me focused, but it becomes family focused. I think that's how we reverse the curse, if you will, this hyper individualistic state, so that we can, again, see, you know, church attendance been on a double digit decline, but we could see it come back up if the focus is on the community and not just me. Very good. Thanks, Bill. I would like to say that I see the church kind of like I'd see the business and the business. I think God has helped us. I think because I think it's important to know what the main thing is. The main thing in retail is buying and selling merchandise. So I spend 90% of my time buying and selling merchandise. So I have plenty of people that do the legal and do the IT and do the getting the goods to the store. All of those things that are very, very important. But the most important thing is the main thing. And I could spend all of my time doing all sorts of different things. But I think that we have been successful because God has led us to make the main thing, the main thing. I think when it comes to the gospel, the main thing is the gospel and a church, the gospel that God has died for you. He loves you. He's going to forgive you of your sins. Now, you have to also include a lot of different things in the church that they have responsibilities for. But sometimes we get away from the main thing being the main thing. And the main thing in the church should be the gospel. That's what it's all about. And sometimes we miss that. We miss that while we're getting out here and we're doing a lot of things that's biblical, but it's not exactly what we should be doing. And we should do some of all these things. We're supposed to give people clean water and we do. But we also give it to them with the gospel. So we don't give people clean water and drill wells for them without the gospel. We don't feed people without the gospel. So sometimes you can get out and do a lot of good things, but they're not great. I think things are great when you include the gospel in everything you're doing. And I think sometimes that's where we might miss it in churches. We're doing the gospel, but we're not. I mean, we're doing the good things that we're supposed to do, but we're not doing the great things. And the great thing is the leading people to know Jesus as their personal Savior. So I think making the main thing, the main thing is where sometimes we miss it in our churches. Very good. Appreciate those answers, guys. And really appreciate you being on the show. I'm looking forward to seeing the book come out October release. We'll put a link to all the relevant links in the show notes. But Bill, where can they find information about Legacy Stone? If they go to legacystone.com, they can also find the book landing page there, legacystone.com forward slash legacy life. Very good. And we'll put all the relevant links, like I said, in the show notes. Gentlemen, really a pleasure talking with you today. Thanks for being here. Thanks so much. Thank you. All right, everyone, we'll call that an episode and we'll catch you on the next one. Take care, everybody. All right. Thanks. We'll see you. Are you concerned about tensions in the Middle East? Do you wonder where we're currently at in the biblical timeline? Are we really in the last days? Hi, everyone. I'm Dr. Carl Muller with the Inside the Epicenter podcast. Every week, my co-host, best-selling author Joel Rosenberg and I answer those questions and more. You'll hear inside knowledge of our meetings with leaders at the highest levels of government in the U.S., Israel and the Middle East, equipping you to filter the news with biblically sound insights. Find Inside the Epicenter on your favorite podcast app or go to joshuafund.com to listen and subscribe.