Fresno Mayor Jerry Dyer speaks at the Fresno-Clovis Prayer Breakfast on Tuesday, Feb. 17, 2026. Photo by Ben Hensley
About 2,650 business leaders, community members and church leaders gathered inside the Fresno Convention Center Tuesday morning for the annual Fresno-Clovis Prayer Breakfast, believed to be the largest prayer breakfast in the country outside of Washington DC.
The annual prayer breakfast started in the 1940s with five businessmen meeting at a Divisadero Street restaurant, and has evolved into one of the region’s highest-attended annual events. It calls to the faithful to pray for those in positions of power.
The event’s keynote speaker was Steve Green, the president of Hobby Lobby and the chairman of the board for The Museum of the Bible in Washington, D,C.
Green discussed the history of Hobby Lobby, and its beginnings in 1970 as a home-based frame manufacturer that expanded to a retail store two years later. Today, Hobby Lobby has over 1,000 stores across the country, including two in Fresno and one each in Clovis, Hanford and Visalia.
He spoke of a 1985 financial crisis that threatened the company’s survival and changed the way the family viewed the business and how God helped push the family through.
“Were it not for God intervening, we would not be here,” Green said.
Hobby Lobby tithes half of its profits for ministry efforts. Its other philanthropic efforts center on the Museum of the Bible, opened in 2017.
He described the museum’s three main content areas, the history of the Bible, including manuscripts and archaeological evidence; its cultural impact in fields such as art, science and education; and its narrative content presented as a unified story across many books and authors. He emphasized ongoing global Bible translation efforts and the museum’s role in highlighting them.
Green said the 430,000 square-foot museum takes nine eight-hour days to get through.
He added that the museum is designed to “invite all people to engage the transformative power of the Bible. That’s what we are striving to do.”
Amir Tsarfati, president of Behold Israel, a nonprofit ministry that provides bibles, will keynote next year’s event in March.