This Guy Isn't a Businessman

I'd picked David Green up at the airport and was driving him to Drayton Valley where he would speak at a gathering my wife and I had planned for business leaders. I was talking his ear off, as I tend to do. I had the undivided attention of a billionaire, one of the wealthiest Christians on earth, and I wasn’t going to waste a second of it. 

About twenty minutes into the drive, David smiled and looked at me sideways, the way a man looks when he's just worked out a puzzle. Like he'd caught me at something.He turned to Bill High in the back seat, grinned, and said:

"This guy isn't a businessman. He's an evangelist!"

It hit me like a defibrillator.

I don't wear that hat, I thought. I haven't worn that in years. Why on earth would he say that?

To explain why one sentence from a stranger nearly took my head off, I have to take you back twenty-five years.

In early 1999 I was twenty-four years old, walking a forested trail in Ontario with Dennis Wiedrick.

Both my parents died when I was young, and most of the fathering I've had has come through godly men who took an interest in me. Dennis was one of those — steady, wise, and invested in me in a way I hadn't earned.

As we walked he started talking about the fivefold ministry in Ephesians 4 — apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, teachers. Then he turned and asked me where I thought I fit.

I had no idea, so I started ruling things out.

"I don't really understand the apostle thing — sounds too big for me. I'm pretty sure I'm not a prophet, because I don't seem to hear God all that well. And I can't imagine I'd be much of a pastor."

Dennis chuckled. "No, Steve. You're not a pastor."

"I don't think I'm smart enough to be a teacher," I said, only half joking. Then, a bit sheepishly: "I've always liked evangelists best. They're my favourite to listen to. But I know I couldn't be one."

He raised an eyebrow. "Why not?"

"Well — I'm not a great preacher. I'm not that confident. And I don't win many souls. Evangelists are big personalities. Bold. Persuasive. That's not me."

He smiled and said, "Steve, you are an evangelist."

I laughed it off. "I wish. I love evangelists. But I don't have the gifting and I hardly ever win anybody."

And Dennis, who was always good at helping me see what I couldn't, leaned in and asked me a question I've never forgotten.

"Steve — is an apple tree still an apple tree in the winter, when there's no fruit on it?"

"Uh huh."

He patted my back. "The fruit will come, son. But you are an evangelist."

I shrugged it off again. It seemed too good to be true. "That'd be nice. But I doubt it. I just don't have what it takes."

And that's when his tone changed.

He stopped dead in the middle of that path, spun around at me with an intensity I'd never seen in him, and hollered loud enough to send a squirrel up a tree:

"Steven Holmstrom! In all my life — if I have ever met — a true — bona fide — New Testament evangelist — IT'S YOU!"

Something burst open in me. I stood there on a forest trail with tears running down my face while everything in me shouted back, of course I am! That's who I am! I was made for this!

From that day I aimed my life at souls.

I didn't have big crowds back then. Sometimes I preached to ten people, sometimes fifty. Didn't matter — I went after souls, and when there were no unbelievers in the room I taught the Christians how to reach them.

I even wrote a hundred-day devotional called Vitamin E. E for evangelism. The idea was simple: take a daily dose for a hundred days straight and watch God grow a soul-winner out of you. Churches took the challenge and whole congregations went through it, and people who'd never once shared their faith started leading their neighbours to Christ.

I still have a letter from a woman in a seniors' home. "My name is Doris. I'm 83 years old. I'm on Day 46, and today is the first time I ever won a soul for Jesus."

Doris sent me a hundred dollars too. God bless her.

Then, in my late twenties, my ministry fell apart. I went into a long dark stretch of heavy drinking and depression, and every gift I carried went on a shelf. I didn't preach for years. I figured God was finished with me.

He wasn't. In my late thirties, as I finally started surrendering, the doors began opening again — and I picked those old hats back up one at a time. I preached. I prayed for the sick. God gave me messages on the Kingdom and on intercession, and those became books, and somehow, by His mercy, I became a louder voice than I ever was.

But there was one stack of books I left in the corner of the garage.

Vitamin E.

The one hat I quietly decided not to put back on was the evangelist.

Here's the honest reason, and it isn't a noble one. People started calling me a revivalist, and I liked that better. It sounded current. "Evangelist" sounded like 1955 — a man in a wide tie with a bus ministry. I never announced a decision. I just stopped, and let a word I preferred take the place of a word God had given me.

The ministry grew anyway. God blessed us. Real fruit came. We saw miracles and healings and provision. We helped build a prayer movement, hosted gatherings, trained leaders, financed the rescue of trafficked children.

And if I'm uncomfortably honest — and I try to be — somewhere in all that good work, winning the lost slipped into the background. People still got saved in our meetings. I baptized dozens at a time, sometimes hundreds. But a soul saved didn't thrill me the way it once had. A sickness healed or a bankrupt business turned around stirred me far more than somebody being pulled out of hell.

We got busy with a great many good commissions, and quietly lost our grip on the Great one.

Which is how David Green ended up in my truck.

When I started planning our first Business Leaders Gathering, I wanted Bill Johnson, and then a second thought hit me: what if one of my speakers was the richest Christian on earth?

I had no idea who that was, so I pulled out my phone and asked ChatGPT. It told me it was David Green, the founder of Hobby Lobby. I'd never heard of either. Turns out every woman in my life is a Hobby Lobby fan, but I'm Canadian and I'm a man, so naturally I was last to know.

Then I thought — being the richest Christian doesn't make a man worth listening to. So I asked a better question: which Christian billionaire gives away the most money? Same answer. David Green, giving away no less than half his profits.

That stopped me. How is the richest Christian on earth also the biggest giver? Giving is supposed to take your net worth down.

I ordered one of his books, and two chapters in I was in love with the man. He wasn't just preaching stewardship. He was living it, fearlessly, about a hundred miles up the road from where I was standing.

By chapter three I came home and told Cara, "I'm bringing David Green to Drayton Valley!"

She looked at me like I'd lost my mind. "How are you going to meet a billionaire?"

I said, "Jesus is my very best friend and He gives me just about anything I ask. I'll keep asking till He says yes."

I prayed for three months. Then my friend Wes Reinheller asked me one day, out of nowhere, whether I'd ever heard of David Green — he'd been invited to a small, closed-door gathering at David's office in Oklahoma. When I told him I'd been praying about this for three months, he made a call.

There was exactly one seat left. I got it. I met him. I invited him to Drayton Valley. And he actually said yes. 

So there we were in the truck, and a man I'd chased in prayer for three months looked at me and said the same thing Dennis had shouted at me on a forest path a quarter century earlier. "You are an evangelist!” 

Different vessel. Same God. And this time He didn't use a preacher or a prophet — He used a businessman to call the soul winner out of me.

David spotted the thing I'd shelved beside a stack of devotionals in my garage.

When he spoke to our business leaders, he said something I haven't been able to shake since:

"There are only two things that last for eternity — the Word of God and a human soul."

He talked about the vapor life and the eternal one. He said he'd gladly pay to dig water wells, but only if the Gospel is preached while they're being dug — because if all he does is extend somebody's vapor life and does nothing about where they spend forever, he's wasted his time.

And then the line that went through that room like a knife:

"Anything you do that does not lead to winning souls can never be great. It can only be good."

The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life, And he who is wise wins souls. — Proverbs 11:30

An apple tree is still an apple tree in the winter. But it was never meant to stay winter.

I dug Vitamin E out of the corner of the garage and started refining it.

Every major decision now runs through one filter: will this lead to souls? A gathering, a book, a partnership, a business — if it doesn't serve the Great Commission, it doesn't cut the mustard. Good isn't good enough anymore.

At our next outdoor gathering, a few months after David's visit, over six thousand people came and more than a thousand gave their lives to Christ. That was a baptism service worth seeing.

How's that for irony — it took a businessman to make me an evangelist again.

So let me ask you what David's visit asked me.

What have you shelved? Not because you decided against it — because something else sounded better, or newer, or less embarrassing to say out loud.

And where has your life drifted into good? Your business may be thriving, your family blessed, your ministry solid. Fine. Is any of it pointed at harvest? At all?

Whatever's in your hands — money, influence, skill, a calling you've quietly stopped mentioning — don't leave it in the corner of the garage.

There are only two things that last forever.

This is from my book Dependently Wealthy — the story of how a broke, insecure preacher who knew nothing about business learned what God's money is actually for. Available in paperback and audio on Amazon.