Our History

The Beginning

Videre was born out of a vision for a sustainable evangelism and discipleship platform in the developing world. After significant research, microfinance seemed a promising opportunity. In April 2009, Videre launched its first pilot program in Yei, South Sudan. In partnership with the Evangelical Presbyterian Church, an indigenous church in Yei, Videre handed out loans to 89 loan recipients averaging $156 per loan. With this money, loan recipients grew their businesses and generated profits to feed their families, bought medicine when sick, and paid for school fees. Businesses ranged from selling fish in the open market to weaving sweaters to building mud huts. But even more important than economic gain is that 89 loan recipients heard the Good News of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. 

Problems Arising

As time went on, it became apparent that Videre’s goals were not being met. The problems were threefold: 

  1. We discovered that just because someone is repaying a loan, does not mean that they are doing so out of the proceeds of a successful business. We found that many entrepreneurs were repaying their loan even though their businesses were no longer operating. We were actually hurting the people we were trying to help! There were many reasons for business failure: including poor choice of initial business idea, poor operational practices, and poor cash management. 

  2. We found that our expectations that program managers would be able to share the Gospel with the program participants was unrealistic. It is difficult to manage a book of loans while at the same time trying to build gospel-bridges with loan recipients. In short, sustainable microfinance is “high volume, low touch”, while evangelism and discipleship is “low volume, high touch”.

  3. There is always a risk in mixing evangelism and money. This tends to create many false positives where people will tend to tell you what they think you want to hear. 

Business As Mission

After consulting with a well known Business as Mission expert, Mike Baer, Videre decided to halt its operations in South Sudan in 2010, and worked to implement a new model we adapted from Mike that we call Micro-Business as Mission, where Christian entrepreneurs are trained to start and operate small businesses through which Christ can be shared in their communities.  In December 2010, Videre restarted,  taking teams of business volunteers to Yendi, Ghana to teach a three phase business training curriculum. In March 2014, Videre expanded into another West African country in partnership with a church in Dallas. We got to see God do incredible things as our entrepreneurs were able to feed their families, send their kids to school, and share the gospel with their customers and suppliers.

A Divine Meeting

As our program in Ghana began to wind down in 2020, Videre began to ask God what was next. Providentially, in the fall of 2019, Videre’s executive director, Brian Walck, met with Lifeway Global’s founder, Dr. Aila Tasse, in a taxi on the way to a Church Planting Movements conference in Spain. Their conversation led to an exciting new partnership between the two organizations which commenced operations in January 2022. 

In the last 20 years, Lifeway Global  has planted 8,300 churches across 13 countries in Eastern Africa, seeing approximately 500,000 unreached people come to faith in Jesus. One of the barriers that their church planters face is finding a sustainable way to provide for their families and fund their church planting/disciple making efforts. This seemed a God ordained opportunity for Videre to step in and provide assistance. Videre is currently scaling operations to provide assistance to more than 1,000 church planters in the Lifeway network. In 2022, we trained and funded 17 businesses. In 2023, we will train and fund approximately 50 more. Our hope is to continue to grow to at least one hundred business starts per year by 2025.