Podcast Transcript: Episode 11

INTRO 

COURTNEY: Welcome to the Women & Work podcast, the show that inspires you to confidently step into your God-given calling & view your work as meaningful to the Kingdom of God. 

I’m Courtney Moore.

MISSIE: And I’m Missie Branch. We want to introduce you to women who through their own unique vocations are seeing what they do make an eternal difference.

COURTNEY: We pray these conversations will inspire you in your own calling to honor God, image Him to the world through your work, and leverage your potential for His glory. 

MISSIE: Thanks so much for joining us today.

SPONSORSHIP

“Women & Work is grateful to partner with Elevate as the exclusive sponsor of this podcast and the entire Fall Podcast Season. Elevate equips and empowers families around the world by helping them create sustainable work through small businesses. 

Their leather products are beautiful and well-crafted. Please see the impact they are having and their products on their website at Elevatepeople.com! 

And when you make a purchase, be sure to tag Women & Work and Elevate @elevate.people on instagram and @elevate.ppl on Facebook.

Thank you, Elevate!

GUEST INTRODUCTION

MISSIE: Welcome to the show, everybody. We’re so excited today. We have with us Lauren Green McAfee. Lauren, welcome.

Lauren Green McAfee: Thank you. So happy to be here with you all.

MISSIE: Yeah. We’re so glad to have you. So Lauren is a speaker, writer and coffee enthusiast. Woman after my own heart.

LAUREN: Yes.

MISSIE: With a heart to engage others in the bible. While pursuing her graduate degrees in pastoral counseling and theology, Lauren worked for her father, Steve Green, as he founded Museum of the Bible in Washington, DC. My goodness. Today, Lauren, whose books includes Not What You Think and Only One Life, works at the Hobby Lobby corporate office and is pursuing a PhD in Ethics and Public Policy at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Lauren and her husband, Michael, live in Oklahoma City, and are the proud adoptive parents of their daughter, Zion, and soon to be adopted son, who right now we call, little E.

LAUREN: That’s right.

MISSIE: Welcome.

COURTNEY: Lauren, we are so glad you’re here. Thanks for joining us today. And Lauren, I have to tell you, you have such a soft spot in my heart, because when I very first was beginning to launch Women and Work, our very, very first initial introducing Women and Work to the world, you were so gracious to come on and be a part of our panel. And I cannot tell you the rejoicing… When I got that email that said you were coming, you would be on that panel, I cannot tell you the rejoicing that went on in my house. And so, anyway.

LAUREN: Oh. It was so fun. It was such an honor, and yeah, I still remember that event fondly. It was a great event.

COURTNEY: Oh. Well, thank you so much. Alright, well, Lauren one of the fun things we do on the show with every guest is just we ask them three rapid fire questions just to get to know you a little bit. So our first question is, as a kid, what did you wanna be when you grew up? 

LAUREN: So when I was a kid, I wanted to be either a veterinarian or a police officer.

MISSIE: Wow. Okay.

COURTNEY: Those were the two jobs that I thought sounded very cool. Yeah, I even shadowed a vet one time just to like, see… I was like 12. Shadowed a vet, and they were doing a surgery on an animal, and during the surgery, I passed out. And so I thought, that’s probably not the career path for me, and I never looked back, so I’m not a vet. [laughter]

MISSIE: Okay. Look at how the Lord can give us clarity.

LAUREN: Yeah, that was very clear.

MISSIE: At 12 years old.

LAUREN: It was very clear.

MISSIE: Well, then. The next question, which I can guess was not a vet tech. What was your first job? 

LAUREN: Yeah, not being a vet or a vet’s assistant or anything related to that. Nothing in the medical field, especially. So my first job was working at a Hobby Lobby store. So I… When I was… I was probably like 10, I would go with my dad, so my dad every Christmas Eve would go to the Hobby Lobby stores and count the Christmas gift bags to see how many were left, just is a very… Every year he would do that. And so whenever I was 10, I got to go with my dad and count bags, and he’d give me a row and he’d say “Count how many are here,” and then I’d report back to him and he’d write it down in his thing. So it was super fun. I loved it, it was like getting to go to work to that, but I actually did some work too, so…

MISSIE: Yes.

COURTNEY: Okay, Lauren. I feel like…

LAUREN: I have sweet memories of those times.

COURTNEY: Just as you were talking, I feel like I remember reading, maybe back when I had you on that panel, were you on… Was there like a Hobby Lobby commercial you were on? 

LAUREN: Oh, man. Yes. Hobby Lobby Magazine.

COURTNEY: Okay.

LAUREN: We did some photo shoots and they, for some reason, decided to have me and my sisters be like the models. The pictures, we look ridiculous.

MISSIE: How old were you? 

LAUREN: I hope people don’t find those pictures, although… Now it’s… Maybe it’s like good, it’s humbling, so if I have them, I’ll have to send them to you. But we looked barbarian.

COURTNEY: Awesome. Okay.

LAUREN: Good times.

COURTNEY: Okay. So here’s our last question for the rapid fire. What kind of work do you wanna be doing when you’re 80 years old? 

LAUREN: Yeah. Oh, I love that question. I want to be doing something to have eternal impact, kind of this thinking about how we invest our time in the life that we have by way of leaving an eternal legacy, meaning investing things that are eternal. I wanna be doing that, so I’m sure that will include discipling young women and young leaders, ’cause I really care about investing in next generations.

COURTNEY: Love it.

MISSIE: I love it. I love it. Well, Lauren, your life is big. Like every woman, you’re juggling a lot of things, you’re doing all kinds of things. So we wanna talk to you about different facets of your life, but we wanna start off with Hobby Lobby. Like, how can you not talk about Hobby Lobby, right? 

LAUREN: Yeah, that was my first job. Yes.

MISSIE: So tell us about your grandparents, David and Barbara Green. They’re the founders of Hobby Lobby, right? 

LAUREN: Yes, they are.

MISSIE: Yeah. Tell us about ’em. We read about your grandfather, and he didn’t come from a millionaire background, right? 

LAUREN: No. Not at all. Yeah. So grandpa came from very humble beginnings. He was one of six kids, and his father was a pastor, and his dad pastored churches that were all pretty small, like 100 congregants or less. And so you can imagine a pastor living off of a salary from a small church and having so many kids. It was very challenging at times. He recalls not having meat on the table for over a week or weeks at a time, just ’cause they couldn’t afford it. And so he came from humble beginnings. My grandma did as well. And so, they met at a local five-and-dime shop they were working at back when they were in high school, and so that’s how they first met. And then they got married and had a family really young after they got married.

And so yeah, they… Grandpa worked in… Started working at other retailers whenever he was first in his career after high school. And eventually, he wanted to own a business for himself, and he saw that there was a trend of small mini picture frames, and so he thought, “Maybe we could manufacture small picture frames.” And so that’s how he started Hobby Lobby, was manufacturing in his own home, in his garage, mini picture frames, and then selling them to shops. So he was the distributor. And then eventually, a couple years later, they opened up their first storefront, the first Hobby Lobby store, which was in 1972. And it was mainly small picture frames, as well as a few other things, and it was like 600 square foot space. It was small. And that was the very first Hobby Lobby. And that was almost 50 years ago now, 1972.

MISSIE: Has he ever mentioned to you how they came up with the name Hobby Lobby? 

LAUREN: [chuckle] Yes, actually. So it’s a funny story. He’s known for his business acumen, but he’s not necessarily the creative. And so, when it came to naming it, he just went with a name that he had heard another store called, that he liked. So there… So he founded… In Oklahoma, is where he founded Hobby Lobby. And there was a store in Texas that was like a car shop, I think is what he said, that was called Hobby Lobby. So he straight up just stole the name, and…

COURTNEY: Not thinking that it would grow into… Outside of Oklahoma.

MISSIE: Right, right. Wow.

LAUREN: And so, I guess it worked out okay, though, because the other Hobby Lobby in Texas ended up not lasting. And so…

COURTNEY: Praise God.

LAUREN: Eventually, it was just Hobby Lobby that we know today.

COURTNEY: Okay.

MISSIE: Not praise God the place didn’t last, but praise God it didn’t dramatic right? Yes.

COURTNEY: That definitely got in a little hairy there. So your grandparents both knew the Lord, grew up in a Christian home, and really have carried that legacy of Christian faith moving forward even into the way they conduct business in Hobby Lobby. And so, are there some… Maybe some operating principles through the business of Hobby Lobby that really are… That make it distinctly Christian? I just wonder if there are a few things you could think of.

LAUREN: Yeah. So as a part of the Hobby Lobby mission, it’s stated that they wanna do everything in a way that honors God. And so, even just within the company and the leadership mission, that’s very clearly stated. So all of the leaders at the company know that. And it’s very much a piece of the ethos of working there. Not all people that work there are Christians, of course, but for the founder and our family, that’s… It’s a part of our lives, and it’s the way they lead with… In a way that we want to be God-honoring. And then also, Hobby Lobby does a number of other things. We have chaplains that are on staff and serve all of the employees, so their… People can go to Bible studies on the clock if they would like to, and that’s offered.

MISSIE: Wow.

LAUREN: We also have had… We’ve come to be closed on Sundays, that… I don’t know if people know, but Hobby Lobby wasn’t always closed on Sundays. Hobby Lobby used to be open. And my grandpa recalls a time when he was starting to feel convicted that Hobby Lobby should be closed, but Sunday is a very profitable day. Weekends in general are profitable for retailers. And so he thought, “Well, we’ll close the stores on Sunday in the state of Nebraska.” He chose Nebraska ’cause there was one or two stores there. So it was not a huge… Seemed like not a big sacrifice. He was like, “We’ll test and see if it works to be closed on Sundays there. And then if it works, we’ll do that everywhere else.”

LAUREN: And it was like as soon as he said it, he realized that he was saying, “Oh, so I’m only willing to be faithful to this conviction that I’m starting to have if it works out for me.” And so it was then as he was kind of processing through it, he decided, “No, we’re gonna close on Sundays.” And so that’s to allow the opportunity for employees to be with their families and attend church if they wish. Obviously, not everyone does, but it does provide for that opportunity. And Hobby Lobby also donates 50% of its profits every year to Christian ministries and non-profits, just as a way of giving to the Kingdom.

MISSIE: 50%? 

LAUREN: 50%, yeah. So it’s…

MISSIE: Wow.

COURTNEY: That’s amazing.

LAUREN: Yeah. So Grandpa has just had a spirit of generosity all in his life. And it’s really cool to see that play out through the company.

MISSIE: My goodness.

LAUREN: If y’all could see Missy’s face right now. [chuckle]

MISSIE: I’m just like… Okay, wait. ‘Cause I had a cake-baking business.

LAUREN: Love it.

MISSIE: And this little cake-baking business made so many pennies, and I was like, “If I gave away 50%, I wouldn’t make a cake next week.” [chuckle]

LAUREN: I love it.

MISSIE: But that’s just… But so that just makes me really appreciate what that actually means to say, “I’m giving 50% away.”

COURTNEY: Yeah, it’s a lot.

MISSIE: Because I still have other things to pay for. It doesn’t just all go to grandpa’s pocket. You know what I’m saying? 

LAUREN: Yeah, yeah. And it took time to get to that. The company started its corporate giving back 30 years ago, and it started more modestly at 10 or 15%, and then it’s grown since then. So everyone will have to start somewhere. But I think the important thing was they started somewhere.

MISSIE: That’s awesome.

COURTNEY: Well, and just… You mentioned his spirit of generosity. He’s written a couple of books, and I’m just gonna read the titles of ’em for our listeners. One is called A Generous Life, one is More Than a Hobby, and one is Giving It All Away And Getting It All Back: The Way of Living Generously. Sorry. And so it just sounds like your granddad, and probably even instilled in you all, his children and now grandchildren, just this idea of stewardship that he really views this as not his own. So we’re just wondering, what… How did he pass that on down to you? How do you guys view this business as a stewardship? What have you learned from him? 

LAUREN: Yeah. Well, there’s so many things. I think just a high level theme, though, has been, grandpa is always reminding us and our family that what we have here on Earth is not going to last. The company, possessions, things are temporal, and that’s not gonna be what matters 150 years from now or even further. And so we see the things that we do have, though, as things that have been given to us by God, and so they’re not ours to own, they’re things that we are to steward well. So even the company, it’s a family-owned company, but actually, all of our family gave up our rights to ownership of the company, and so it’s owned by a trust that’s managed by a board. But that was just another way that we could practically say, “No, we see this company as something that is to be stewarded. I don’t own this company. No one owns this company. It’s God’s company. We wanna work hard for it, we wanna steward it well, we wanna continue to give towards kingdom impact through the way the family runs the company and gives generously.”

And so there’s just so many ways that grandpa’s modeled that. And we have conversations as a family, we gather multiple times a year and just kinda remind each other of the values that we have, and that that is the vision for our family and for our company, is to have…

COURTNEY: That’s beautiful.

LAUREN: This kind of eternal mindset in the way that we live out practically through our work, and the way we live alongside each other as a family.

COURTNEY: And really, when you think about people who maybe don’t know the Lord and they’re starting a business, it really is all about them and making money and accumulating for themselves or creating a large bank account or making a name for themselves. But it sounds like the way that your family has really let out… Just like you said, it’s all for the Lord, and he has really blessed that. You guys started with just a one tiny little store. And then how many stores are there now? It’s grown.

LAUREN: There’s 950 stores in 47 states.

COURTNEY: Okay. That’s just huge. And so, I was telling this to…

MISSIE: Who are the wackies that don’t have a Hobby Lobby? 

COURTNEY: Yeah, who are the…

LAUREN: So Hawaii and Alaska. And you know what? Actually, Delaware didn’t, but I think that Delaware just got one last year.

COURTNEY: Good job, Delaware.

MISSIE: Okay. Hawaii and Alaska, we can get it. It’s not like [0:16:04.1] ____ Okay. I get it, I get it.

COURTNEY: But even your… The corporate offices… My husband and I, we were driving through Oklahoma City this summer, and I was like, “Alright. We gotta ride by there.” Lauren, it is just… I mean, it seems miles and miles of just Hobby Lobby.

LAUREN: It is big.

COURTNEY: It is massive. It is massive. And I just think it’s such a testament to how good the Lord is. When you really follow his principles and trust him and say, “No, this is about Jesus. It really is. Even our money and business can be about him.” And he just said, “Here. Here you go. I’m just throwing blessing y’all… Your way.” And so it’s really amazing.

LAUREN: No, it’s… It is wonderful, and praise God for that. And it’s not to say that there weren’t hard times. The company has definitely had its challenges and been through seasons where grandpa didn’t know if the company would survive and thought that they might close their doors. But every time we’re up against one of those seasons, it’s been a constant reminder and opportunity to continually give everything back to the Lord and remind our hearts this isn’t ours. And so it is God’s, and he’ll do what he wills with it, and our job is to be faithful and to work hard and do the best that we can. So yeah, it’s beautiful.

MISSIE: Okay. So, Lauren. What was it like growing… There had to be a moment in your mind one day, fifth grade, tenth grade, whatever, something, like, “My family… Our situation is slightly different than that of my classmates,” right? 

LAUREN: We own Hobby Lobby. Yes.

MISSIE: So what was it like growing up as, “This is the family business.” Like, all my friend’s moms come here to where… [chuckle]

LAUREN: That’s funny. Yes. Yeah, it’s funny, people ask that, and to me, it was just my normal that… And I wouldn’t say my family talked about the company a whole lot to each other. It was just… It was work. It was…

MISSIE: Okay. Sure. Okay.

LAUREN: I knew that Dad went to work and that grandpa also worked at the same office. I didn’t even necessarily for a long time, put together, like, “Oh, they work at the same office, ’cause the family started this, and it’s like they… ” So I think I was honestly in upper high school when I realized like, “Oh yeah, not everyone’s parents go to work with all the rest of their family.”

COURTNEY: You thought it was usual.

LAUREN: And Hobby Lobby also… I’m more than a decade out of college, so… Back when I was in high school, the company was also smaller, and so it wasn’t necessarily as big. It was like half the size that it is today or even less than that. So it was a little smaller too. But yeah, I just honestly, I didn’t think about it. I didn’t know. I didn’t know better. I didn’t know that it was unusual.

MISSIE: I will say I grew up, and we didn’t have Hobby Lobby where I was from, and so I got married, and my husband was getting a degree in Dallas. So we moved to Dallas, and someone said to me, “Missy, have you ever been too Hobby Hobby,” ’cause I’m crafty. And I was like, “No, girl. I’m faithful to these other stores.” And then I walked into a Hobby Lobby. [chuckle] I was like, Yes, these people are Christians. Jesus shined favor on this place.

LAUREN: I love it.

[laughter]

COURTNEY: It is.

LAUREN: He is so cute.

COURTNEY: He is so happy. I just was in there yesterday actually, Lauren.

MISSIE: Oh, yay.

LAUREN: You go in, you hear the instrumental Christian music and you just… You are in God’s place.

MISSIE: Yes. It is awesome.

COURTNEY: Alright. Well, just out of curiosity… I’m looking at the… We’re recording a video right now. If you’re at the gym listening to this on your earbuds, we’re actually recording some video and Lauren is sitting in front of the cutest decor. Behind her is all these cute things. So we’re just wondering, do you currently decorate… Is your whole house decked out in cuteness from a Hobby Lobby? 

[laughter]

LAUREN: I do have a lot of Hobby Lobby things, yeah. And actually there’s two pieces of artwork behind me and they were each created by one of my sisters actually.

COURTNEY: Wow.

MISSIE: Wow.

LAUREN: I have very creative… I have four sisters and they all are very creative. One of them painted a beautiful mural of some flowers and the other one did an abstract painting and yes, their canvases were from Hobby Lobby, the paint was from Hobby Lobby.

MISSIE: Wow. See? I love it.

LAUREN: Yeah. People ask if we’re crafty, if our family’s crafty and stuff, and so many of us are not. I am not at all. Most of my family is not actually creative, crafty people. They’re business people selling crafty stuff.

MISSIE: Right.

LAUREN: I do have some sisters though that are actually very talented artists and so I love having their art or things from Hobby Lobby in general in my house.

COURTNEY: Love it.

MISSIE: So you currently work at Hobby Lobby headquarters as the ministry investment coordinator. Tell us about this role. It clearly doesn’t require being crafty, right? [chuckle]

LAUREN: No. Thankfully not, thankfully not. So I mentioned earlier Hobby Lobby donates 50% of its profits and so there’s a department that manages some of the corporate giving and that’s… We call that our ministry investments office ’cause the company sees the ministries that we partner with as an investment in the kingdom. And so it’s a ministry investment and I have the privilege of working in that office and it gives me the opportunity to have a connection and relationship with some of the organizations that are partnered with through the company, so it’s a lot of fun. I absolutely love it.

COURTNEY: It sounds really perfect for you since you have such a huge heart for ministry in general.

LAUREN: Yeah.

COURTNEY: This is a perfect combination for you to…

MISSIE: Yes.

COURTNEY: Put the both of those worlds together.

LAUREN: I’m definitely very happy in it, yeah. It’s incredible.

COURTNEY: Well, we mentioned when you first came on that your family created, founded from nothing, the Museum of the Bible. You guys love Jesus, you love his Word, the Bible is just obviously a huge part of the Christian faith. And so it opened, what, in 2017? 

LAUREN: Yeah.

COURTNEY: Okay. And so how did the idea even come about? Tell us, take us there.

LAUREN: Yeah. So my dad, Steve Green, he’s the president of Hobby Lobby, but he’s also now the founder and board chair for Museum of the Bible. He was, so a number of years ago, having conversations with someone who had the idea of a Bible museum and dad thought that was a really cool idea and the family really cares about the Bible and some of the projects that the company’s invested in is Bible translation or Bible distribution, getting the Bible available to people or the digital Bible, so YouVersion is a partner that Hobby Lobby’s been connected with. So things around… Related to the Bible, it’s been a theme for the projects that my family has cared about.

And so this idea of a Museum of the Bible was thrown out and dad thought it was cool and he thought, “That should happen, someone should do that.” And through a series of events, came to see that there wasn’t someone else doing it and actually he needed to be working towards it. So he was like, “No, there’s no way.” So he just started taking small steps to see if doors were opening and he had a friend who was looking at some real estate options and they found a great building in DC that just happened to work out even before it was on the market. So doors has continued to open and dad famously says that he feels like he got tricked into being the founder ’cause he wasn’t… It just wasn’t his intention. All along, he was never thinking like, “Oh, this is gonna be a thing that I do.” He was like, “This will be something someone else does.” But eventually it was what it was and he’s the founder and board chair and he absolutely loves it. It’s definitely a passion project of his.

But the museum for a number of years while it was being built in Washington, DC, had a traveling exhibit called Passages and so that went to five or six cities in America and then the artifacts in the collection then found its permanent home in Washington, DC, at the museum when it opened November of 2017. So it’s been open for a number of years now and it’s just an incredible space. It’s incredibly well done, top notch, uses latest technology. It’s a stunning space. People will really feel like the Bible was honored well, I think, when they go through the space.

COURTNEY: Wow.

MISSIE: So you worked there as well for a time.

LAUREN: I did, yes.

MISSIE: What was your role at the museum? 

LAUREN: Yeah. So my first job out of college was actually working for my dad for the museum. I was one of the first employees and so I got to actually manage… I was a curator managing the collection of artifacts and then I was managing the team that did the traveling exhibit. So any time there was an exhibit opening, my team managed the logistics for the transportation installation and care of the artifacts. So it was super fun. That was an amazing first career that I had. And so I got to do that for a number of years up to the opening in DC and then I started doing some of the awareness. The final year before the museum opened, I was traveling around and telling people, “Hey, this museum is gonna be opening.” So it was a lot of fun. Yeah, it was very fun to be a part of a brand new project and get to share about it with people.

COURTNEY: And just so people are aware, the museum is literally three blocks from the capital. So you are in the heart of DC.

LAUREN: Yeah, it’s a block away from the Air and Space Museum, which is one of the most attended museums in DC. It’s right there in the midst of things. It’s the third largest museum in Washington, DC. So it’s big, it’s right there at the heart of things, and yeah, there’s a coffee shop inside it, there’s an amazing gift shop, there’s a kids area, there’s a digital ceiling in the entry way. Yeah, it’s like lots of really fun aspects to it. It’s very cool.

COURTNEY: So people should really, if they’re planning a trip to DC and everybody goes to all the museums, like put this on your list, basically.

MISSIE: Right, you gotta do it.

LAUREN: Yes, you got to go.

COURTNEY: So, your husband Michael, he’s recently launched… Is it a non-profit called Inspire Experiences? 

LAUREN: It is a non-profit.

COURTNEY: Okay, he’s kind of even allowing through his non-profit, he’s incorporating some experiences with the museum, correct? 

LAUREN: Yes, exactly. So Michael used to work for the Museum of the Bible.

COURTNEY: Okay.

LAUREN: And the museum is considered non-sectarian, so that means they partner with people that care about the Bible, so they have Catholic partners, Protestant partners and Jewish partners. Israel Antiquities Authority has an exhibit in the museum. And then the Vatican also has an exhibit in the museum. They have a gallery. And so, it’s really neat to see all of these different groups coming together and saying, “We have our differences, understandably, but we all care about this book, the Bible, and believe in it,” and so it’s really been a joint effort of all those groups saying, “We wanna celebrate the Bible in this way,” and the mission of the museum is to invite people to engage in the Bible.

So that’s kind of their mission. And then Michael, he’s been a pastor since we’ve been married, and he works part-time as a worship pastor at our church now, but then he founded Inspire because he saw the opportunity to take what the museum has and that vision for inviting people to engage in the Bible, but taking that a step further into more of a discipleship experience opportunity. So Inspire Experiences is a non-profit, and Michael does experiences in Washington DC for groups, whether it’s a church or a pastor’s group, or even our family.

Our family actually went to… On Michael’s side, went to an experience just last month that Inspire put together, but the hope is to use the resources like the museum and do personalized tours and really make the museum come alive through personal application for the group that he is giving a tour, but then also going outside the museum walls to like the Jefferson Monument, and talking about his life and how the Bible impacted and influenced his life and the convictions that he had, but also recognizing he wasn’t perfect. There’s a lot of issues and we should talk about that and some of the challenges with a lot of founders who may believe in the Bible or that there was a God, but didn’t always have, maybe their actions line up, but they did have some level of impact from the Bible.

COURTNEY: Sure.

LAUREN: Or go to the Martin Luther King, Jr. Monument and talk about his life as a pastor. He is not referred to as The Reverend Martin Luther King… Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. At the monument, and there’s no reference to the fact that he was a pastor, but he was a pastor.

COURTNEY: Right. You’re right.

LAUREN: And so, that was a significant part of his life, and obviously, the Bible influenced the way that he led and the way that he did his activism. So he kind of makes these experiences and ties them together in DC, so it’s a lot of fun for groups.

MISSIE: So the impact that this museum has to be having, especially so you see other things being born from it, the non-sectarian idea of it, the impact has to be huge. Do you and your family have a way of tracking some of that, even just the number of people who come in there or how many… The ripple effects of what this incredibly huge investment, I mean incredibly important one is? 

LAUREN: Yeah, there’s lots of really cool numbers that I could share and hundreds of thousands of people have gone through the museum now. Obviously, last year with COVID was a challenging year, ’cause the museum had to be closed for a number of weeks in DC, and they still are, DC is still somewhat limited. We’ve had people from over 150 countries come through. There’s been leaders of countries that have come through and toured the museum. Really, just really cool numbers that I could share, but I think that the really special thing or just the individual stories.

LAUREN: And so, even just last month, Michael was leading a tour at the museum for someone, and that person who was an adult, sent him a message afterwards and said, they considered themselves a Christian their whole life, and they attend church, read the Bible, but their experience walking through the Museum of the Bible, and having Michael give a tour, opened their eyes to the beauty of the Bible, in a way they had never known, and they said, brought them in a deeper relationship both with God and His word.

LAUREN: And this is someone who has been a believer, and so it’s beautiful to hear those stories and just the real impact that the museum has on people that go through its doors, and that’s from people who are even non-believers, who are just learning something new about the Bible, its impact around the world, to believers who have read the Bible many times through and are still gaining something new. So the impact is just, I think, immeasurable. So it’s a really special… It’s a really special museum.

MISSIE: That’s so beautiful.

COURTNEY: Well, this love for the Bible, we talked about your grandparents and your parents and your husband, and of course you. You and Michael actually wrote a book called Not What You Think: Why the Bible Might Be Nothing We Expected Yet Everything We Need. It sounds like the point of the book, the mission of the book is so in line with the Museum of the Bible. Just share with our listeners about the book you and your husband co-authored.

LAUREN: Yeah, so we wrote that book… We were writing it right after the museum opened, and so much of the idea for the book came from our experience. We both worked for the museum, traveling, raising awareness about it, kind of leading up to the opening, and so we were… We’re both millennials and so some of our audiences were millennials and Gen Z. It’s kind of the younger audiences we got to go meet with. And so we were getting to travel around the country and have conversations about the museum, but that often led to conversations about what our generation thinks about the Bible and what’s their engagement with the Bible been? 

LAUREN: And we saw some common themes, and so we wrote this book just… A lot of from our experience, but wanting to encourage our generation to engage in the Bible itself, ’cause we saw through our conversations, and then we also went through Barna’s research and looked at what they have found and saw that many in my generation and younger don’t necessarily know what’s in the Bible from personal engagement, but their knowledge about the Bible is through what culture or experiences have told them.

LAUREN: So if you’re taking a cultural view of what the Bible is, it’s gonna be fairly negative and it’s gonna be sound bites from media and experiences that you’ve heard others say. Or if you’ve had a personal experience, oftentimes, you’ve been hurt by someone who claims to believe in the Bible or says they’re a Christian or maybe is a church goer, and so my generation was not very interested in the Bible because of some of those things, and so we, through our book, try to encourage our generation and Gen Z that don’t take those experiences or what culture says about the Bible and believe it. Actually read the Bible, read the Bible for yourself, make your decision based on what it teaches and what it says and what the life of Christ shows, because we think as the subtitles said, “We think it’ll be not what they expect,” So it’ll be actually something more than that. And so much beautiful. And so we try and also then give a high level view of the Bible and give some understanding of how God works through scripture and through Christ, and the… Kind of the beauty of it. So that was the hope for not what you think. And that’s kind of how we got to that book.

COURTNEY: Love it.

MISSIE: That’s beautiful. So, okay, so I’ll hear you talk about that experience, being able to write this book because you’ve researched. I also know… It’s not related, but you’ll see how it comes back around… But I also know that your family went through a huge season that was kind of hard with Hobby Lobby and the Supreme Court and… So but then now you’re getting a PhD. What was kind of some of the things that said, “This is why I’m studying ethics.” Was it because of what you’ve seen in your research with the Bible? Or is it because of experiences with… That your family has gone through with Hobby Lobby and court… You know what I’m saying? What was it that pushed you to get your PhD? 

LAUREN: Yeah, so I… I’ve always enjoyed learning. It’s why I pursued some of my master’s degrees while I was working full-time. I just like my hobby… [laughter] On the side. So that was kind of already in me, but then it really was at the Supreme Court journey in which you mentioned… So when our family went through the Supreme Court journey of 2012, 2014, Hobby Lobby sued the government because the government was saying, “You were forcing… We’re gonna say you that you have to, as a company, privately held company, we’re forcing you to provide and pay for abortifacient drugs and devices.” And our family said, “That goes against our religious… Deeply held religious convictions and what we believe about honoring all of life, and so Hobby Lobby was in a court that… Court case that ended up going all the way to Supreme Court.

And that experience was really formative in that I… There was obviously a lot of conversation and culture, and so much of it was out of our control of what people were saying about the case and about our family that was really hurtful and hard, but it was also interesting to see many believers not know how to talk about it in the public square and why convictions about this would matter and why that would affect a business. And so I kind of… This public theology, this theme of public theology and the need for being able to articulate a faith lived out in the public square became a theme that I was very interested in and enjoyed trying to grow in, and so that led me to looking to… At PhD programs, and I found the PhD Program in ethics and public policy, and so I did. I started that and I’m over halfway through the program now, so it’s been a challenge to navigate that… I’m doing it part-time, but I absolutely love it. It’s been a lot of fun. A lot of work, but a lot of good work.

MISSIE: Yes, that’s awesome.

COURTNEY: So tell her… This is your PhD. What was your undergrad? What d’you study in your undergrad and then your masters? What were those degrees in? 

LAUREN: Yeah, so my undergraduate degree was in the letters, which people probably have never heard of. Letters means history, literature and philosophy, and I got a minor in religious studies, so I study at the University of Oklahoma, so it was not a Christian school, but really enjoy just the classics and so I got kind of that philosophy and religious studies going on, and then my master… My first masters was in pastoral counseling. And I got that when I was working in youth ministry with my husband, he was a youth pastor, and just saw that as a way to serve the church, so I was discipling women and wanted to be able to disciple on a deeper level. And then I got my second masters… Was in theology for lay leadership. And again, I just loved theology and so got a masters. Why not? 

COURTNEY: Yeah, why not? 

LAUREN: And then, yeah… And then that led to the PhD program I’m currently in.

MISSIE: That’s awesome.

COURTNEY: Okay. So you got a lot going on. There’s quite a bit going. On top of all this, we haven’t even talked about the aspect of you are now a mother. Congratulations. Let’s talk about that. You’ve been public about your struggle with infertility for a while, and the Lord… It sounded like a challenge to even get to the point of finally the Lord is giving us our little daughter to adopt, so how long? When did you adopt Zion? And how’s she doing? I know she went through a cancer situation, and so give us a little life update about motherhood.

LAUREN: Yeah, so Michael and I, we actually… We started pursuing adoption first before we knew we were gonna experience infertility, so adoption was our plan A, our option A for starting a family, and so we started pursuing adoption when we were 25 years old, and…We started with an international adoption. My sister was adopted internationally through China, and so I’d kind of always had a desire to go that route, so we started the process, and it just ended up taking a lot longer than we even… We knew it’d take a while, but it ended up taking seven years, which is unusually long.

So we had lots of hurdles, lots of challenges, so in that time, while we were pursuing that, we did start trying to have children biologically as well, and found that infertility is our experience. So we have, for many years, had a desire to have children and we’re pursuing that through all the things that we knew, both biologically and through adoption, and none of them were working out, and so it was a really painful season, and then… So after seven long years of pursuing adoption, we did finally complete an adoption through China, and we went and traveled to China and brought our daughter Zion home. She was a year and a half old when we met her and brought her home, and so we were so thrilled after many, many years to finally have a sweet baby. She’s amazing, and we were home with her for seven weeks, and then she got diagnosed with cancer, and so it was quite a roller coaster of emotions, both of finally having something, this child that we had longed for for years and years and years, and then having… And having fallen in love with her instantly, and she was our daughter, and then having this diagnosis that was life-threatening, so…

It was… It’s hard to put into words how… Just how challenging it was on so many… In so many ways, but she had an emergency surgery, it was a tumor on her liver, we had an emergency surgery, we were in the hospital for many days, and then we had to do two rounds of chemotherapy. And so we were in the hospital for that. So we were having to be kind of in this quarantined life. If I went out, I was wearing a mask. This was back in 2019, so it was before everyone else was doing this, so we were ahead of the curve there and quarantining because her immune system was very low from the chemotherapy, and she went into remission, praise God, in January of 2020, and so we were like, “Oh cool. We can finally live life, we can not weak masks when we go out, we’re gonna get to do normal things like parents,” And then a month later, the whole world went into quarantine and masks, and so it was like so much of basically our parenting journey has been in a quarantine or mask season, so it’s been interesting.

MISSIE: Wow. It is crazy how these babies don’t… They’re like, “Oh, look, there are people without these things on their face.”

LAUREN: Yeah. Yeah. Kids are resilient, man, they’re just amazing.

MISSIE: Yes. And Lauren, you guys had no clue about the cancer prior to her coming home? 

LAUREN: No, we did not know. Yeah, so that was not a part of her medical history that we received… Yeah, the doctors in China were not aware of it, and it was an incidental find. So we were doing a scan to check on something else related to her kidney, just to make sure things were okay, and things were fine with that, but in the scan that they did, her liver happened to be in the X-ray shot, and so the doctors… While what they were checking was her kidney and everything was fine with that, they incidentally found this large tumor, ’cause it was in the picture that they had taken, so it was a shock to everyone.

COURTNEY: Well, thank God that…

MISSIE: Wow…

LAUREN: Well, thank God that we caught it early.

MISSIE: The lord.

LAUREN: Yeah, he helped people find it, yeah.

MISSIE: So how can we pray for you as you’re finalizing your next adoption? 

LAUREN: Yeah, yeah, so we’ve had a baby in our home for all of… What is this? 2021? All of 2021. So far.

MISSIE: Wow.

LAUREN: So yeah, we love our sweet son, and we… Adoption is always complex, and that is still showing to be the case with our second adoption, so we’re waiting on all of the legal process, there’s been a lot of slow down because of COVID courts were closed for a while and so right now we’re just waiting. We’re waiting for things and we unfortunately just haven’t been able to talk very much about him in the case since it is in the middle of the legal process and we’re just respecting the process, but people can pray for us, pray for us as we care for him, pray for him. And pray for all of the parties involved. We love his sweet birth mom, and have a great relationship with her, and so you can pray for just all the parties that are involved as we’re in this limbo. It’s like a hard phase for everyone.

MISSIE: Absolutely.

LAUREN: So, yeah, just for peace and for the best for our baby E.

MISSIE: That’s just so sweet that you get to be with him now. That’s not like Zion where Zion was so far away when you knew, but you get to be with him now, so it’s really sweet.

LAUREN: Yep, he’s precious.

COURTNEY: Well, as we wrap up, Lauren, this is a question we ask every woman who comes on: Is there one piece of advice or warning or encouragement you would wanna leave with women who want to honor God through their vocational calling? 

LAUREN: Yeah, there’s so many things that come to mind with that question, but I think… I think of the theme though that I’ve just seen in my grandpa’s example, which is to just have a kingdom mindset and an eternal mindset with everything that you do in your calling, in your vocational calling. And so whatever that looks like… That’s gonna play out in a million different ways, but as you’re making decisions, as you’re leading others, as you’re interacting with clients or as you’re interacting with people that you work with, just have that perspective that what we know to be true is what we find in scripture and things that are gonna matter eternally are the most important, and so invest how you can in to make a difference for eternal purposes rather than things that won’t matter once our lives are over, so I think that that perspective really, at a high level, can just really have a beautiful impact and ripple effect.

COURTNEY: Sure.

MISSIE: That’s beautiful. That’s beautiful. That’s a good word.

COURTNEY: Well, Lauren, thank you so much for coming on and really just sharing your life with us, sharing us with us a little bit about what it’s like to be you and all the things God has, how he has used you and your family to really be such a… Make a great impact on the culture for him, and so we appreciate you coming on and I know this will be an encouragement to our listeners, so…

LAUREN: Thank you so much. It was a lot of fun. You guys are great.

MISSIE: Thanks, Lauren. 

CONCLUSION

MISSIE: And thanks to our listeners for joining us today. Be sure to check out our website at women work.net for today’s show notes. There will be more information about today’s conversation there.

COURTNEY: While you’re there, take a look at the Women and Work podcast discussion questions. We’ve provided those so that you can lead your friends from work, your neighborhood, or your church into useful conversations that will encourage you as you take  *your* next step of faith into your calling. 

MISSIE: If you enjoyed today’s show and don’t want to miss an episode, please subscribe in Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. We’d also love for you to take a minute to rate and review our show so more listeners can find us.  

COURTNEY: And with that, we hope you’ve been inspired to more confidently step into your God-given calling and view your work as meaningful to the Kingdom of God. 

See you next time!