Show Notes
We often think the only way to help the poor is to give them things, but what if the most powerful gift is an opportunity?
In this follow-up episode of Nuance, Case interviews Peter Greer about how small loans are restoring dignity and hope in some of the world’s most underserved communities. Peter explains the “math of the Kingdom,” where a single seed of investment can multiply a hundredfold, not just in financial returns, but in restored families and thriving churches.
Through moving examples, they discuss the difference between a “scarcity mindset” and an “abundance mindset,” showing how even the smallest act of planting a seed can lead to a harvest that feeds nations. Peter also tackles the tough questions about dependency and explains why savings-first models are often more effective than debt. This is a deep dive into how faith and finance intersect to create lasting change.
Watch Part 1 of this interview here: https://youtu.be/nI_01htXw-I
Episode Resources:
How Leaders Lose Their Way And How to Make Sure It Doesn’t Happen to You: https://www.peterkgreer.com/how-leaders-lose-their-way-2/
Peter Greer’s website: https://www.petergreer.com/
Learn more about Hope International: http://www.hopeinternational.com/
Episode Discussion Guide: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XNIdpcjhM00UOndp7e2V6rALsgqf0boBHqOGUyre4qk/edit?usp=sharing
Nuance is a podcast of The Collaborative where we wrestle together about living our Christian faith in the public square. Nuance invites Christians to pursue the cultural and economic renewal by living out faith through work every facet of public life, including work, political engagement, the arts, philanthropy, and more.
Each episode, Dr. Case Thorp hosts conversations with Christian thinkers and leaders at the forefront of some of today’s most pressing issues around living a public faith.
Episode Transcript
Case Thorp
Today’s episode is a little different. Instead of our traditional interview, this conversation is structured as a masterclass, a guided conversation designed to help us learn, not just listen.
So we’re going to slow it down. We’re going to work through a few core ideas and explore how leadership is formed through work and specifically through the practice of Christian microfinance. So this episode is for leaders, pastors, donors, board members, people that own their own small business, executives, anyone who wants to take faith seriously in the shape of economic life. Again, there is a one-page discussion guide for this program. You’ll find the link in our show notes, and it might be a useful tool to help you in your own prayer time or with a small group of others who love Jesus. So I’m Case Thorp, and welcome to Nuance, where we seek to be faithful in the public square.
Well today, this is part two of my conversation with Peter Greer, CEO and President of Hope International. Last time we talked about his new book, How Leaders Lose Their Way, co-written with Jill Heisey. And he shared that one third of leaders finish well, meaning that two thirds do not. And there is that drift in leadership that can be so detrimental.
Well, I appreciate that he’s thinking about this for his own work with Hope International. It’s tremendous work in the world of microfinance. So Peter, thanks again for being here with me today.
Peter Greer
It’s a gift to have the conversation. Thanks, Case.
Case Thorp
So I’m going to put something out there and then just give Peter time and space to really lead us in, especially now on microfinance. So Peter, tell us what is microfinance, why is it needed, and what kind of difference is it making in the world?
Peter Greer
Yeah, well, I think the best way to answer that question might be to take a journey back and look at one specific example, and this really is the founding of the organization that I work with, Hope International, as a way of describing what this tool is and the impact that it has, but after the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 90s there was a significant need and not many people know but there was actually a significant challenge that was even far greater than the Great Depression in the United States of America so economically it was a complete collapse and there was a church in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and I love this, they were reading scripture and had this radical idea. What would it look like if we obeyed? And they were reading through Matthew 25 and said, what would it look like if we actually did this in this particular moment of time? And so they saw the needs and so they started sending over food. They started taking trips. They started building churches. They started helping in any way that they could to meet the needs in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine. And that was good and it was beautiful. But after a couple of years, there was a pastor, his name was Pastor Petrenko and he said on one of these trips: Isn’t there a way that you could help us help ourselves? He said, your help isn’t helping anymore. And if you think back to that, why would he say that? They’re receiving food, they’re receiving supplies, they’re receiving all of these gifts. And yet he says, your help isn’t helping. And what he came to realize is that it was starting to have some unhealthy aspects of dependency. It was not unlocking the God-given creativity that was in the individuals at that moment. And it was creating all kinds of challenges of who gets what and how is it distributed and all of these pieces and what was so good in a moment of immediate disaster, long term it was not actually creating a long term solution. And so that comment from Pastor Petrenko really was the genesis of Hope International and what they found is that in that community there are all kinds of individuals with gifts, with abilities, with dreams. What they don’t have is some business coaching and training and access to capital. There’s one individual who talked about this idea about investment. It’s like God created this world, but unless you have the seeds to plant in the ground, you’re not going to be able to see the harvest. And so they started asking some questions of what would it look like to plant some seeds to invest in these entrepreneurs. And it was never designed to be a global ministry. It was always designed to help one church community in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine. And yet what they found is as these individuals started small businesses, they repaid these loans that were given. They started growing in relationship with each other and it has taken off to now where an organization that serves in 29 countries, and I have yet to find a country or context where you cannot find hard-working entrepreneurs that are ready to rebuild their communities, and I love this idea of investing in the dreams of families in the world’s underserved communities as we proclaim and live the gospel.
So microfinance, it’s a broad term that really means access to capital and we define that as a safe place to save, so helping people have a savings account to also having an investment, a small loan so they can start or expand a small business and then business coaching and training to make sure they’re using those funds wisely and that’s the broader microfinance movement. Most notably is an individual named Muhammad Yunus. He was given the Nobel Peace Prize for his pioneering work with the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, but now it really has become a global movement. There’s all kinds of different organizations that are using some similar ways of getting capital to hard-working entrepreneurs around the world. And there certainly are stories of how this has been abused, but I think there’s a bigger story about how this has been a tool that has been investing in the God-given capacity of individuals. And again, Grameen Bank, not from a Christian standpoint at all, but I love this new movement, which is trying to say, how do we have a Christ-centered worldview? How do we infuse gospel outreach into these tools as we are providing capital and a safe place to save to entrepreneurs around the world? So that is the very quick summary of the founding of Hope International and this tool, this approach of microfinance.
Case Thorp
It was when Yunus won the Nobel Prize that microfinance came onto my radar and of course for so many others but it had been a thing long before that. You’ve been in this space for quite a while now. Share with us how you’ve seen the landscape change, evolve for the worse or for the better.
Peter Greer
Yeah, I mean, I love that you said for the worse and for the better because there is both of that, whenever there’s a tool. And I would say a couple things. I mean, you’re exactly right, Case. When Muhammad Yunus won the Nobel Peace Prize, that’s when it got kind of global attention, but it really had been decades in the making. And that’s how I was actually studying in Moscow and had lunch with someone who asked if I’d ever heard of this new tool of microfinance and the Grameen Bank, and that would have been 1995, so a decade before he won the Nobel Peace Prize, and I just thought it was the coolest thing. And so I moved to Cambodia, where I did internal controls and fraud prevention, and then ran a microfinance institution in Rwanda, and then did microfinance in Zimbabwe trying to figure out in a hyper inflationary environment. So my career and then with Hope, I’ve been at Hope for 21 years. So that was most of my career. Before joining Hope, I was really trying to figure it out in the context and I would echo this idea of it is so powerful and it’s not the panacea. Anyone who says there is one tool that is going to be solving all of the world’s challenges, I think that might be a little bit overselling what the particular tool can do. And so if I were to say some of the major lessons learned, both positive and negative, I think that’s the first one is recognizing this is a tool, but unless the funds are invested wisely, it’s actually going to harm the person who is receiving the funds. And early on, there was this kind of blanket approach that anyone in poverty should just get a microloan and then poverty will be history. And that’s simply not true.
It’s just not true. It depends on what you do with it. You will be harmed if you do not employ this in generating more. You’ll be harmed if you, seems like a parable told a long time ago, if you dig a hole and put your one talent in that hole, that’s not gonna help you. And so I think the first piece is this recognition that it has to be targeted to the entrepreneur. It has to be targeted to the person that has some sort of a small enterprise and then this becomes the acceleration for them to help more.
That’s one tool. Second thing is I think we overemphasized loan and under emphasized a savings account and I think this has been a course correction of the whole sector. There is more and more work being done with savings accounts and creative approaches to savings groups as opposed to just this idea of everyone in the world needs a loan and my belief is that if you do not have the habit and discipline of saving small amounts of money you are not going to be able to effectively employ in investment well. Actually, savings first before having access to a loan is another thing that we have learned.
And then I think the third thing that we found is heart change matters. I remember early on as I was living in Rwanda, one of the first entrepreneurs that we helped, he was getting a microloan and he was starting this business and it was a gardening business and I was one of his customers and so I was all excited to help this individual start this small business and yet I dropped him off at his home several times and his kids were still bare feet and it still was a portrait of poverty and I remember feeling this disconnect because I was told about this new tool that’s going to eliminate poverty and here I am employing this tool and poverty is not being eliminated and what is the disconnect and it turns out he was earning more, his income was rising, but he was spending that on an alcohol addiction and on some other vices that were not making an impact, a positive impact in any way and I think that was a defining moment where I said I am not wanting to give my life to microfinance. I want to spend my career focused on Christ-centered microfinance with the ability to touch hearts and then to unlock entrepreneurial capacity and that results in a very different outcome and when we deal with the heart as well as the employment that’s where we see such significant change and I think there’s been growing awareness as well of the importance of addressing not just the economic component, but who we are as people and faith and sharing the hope of Jesus as we do this work has been really powerful and I’m so grateful for the opportunity to be on that journey with Hope International. So those are some of the ways that I think we maybe oversold the concept without really understanding there are these other components of training and savings and financial literacy and certainly heart transformation that are also essential ingredients to see full lives and communities being touched and transformed.
Case Thorp
Could you please give us two stories of success?
Peter Greer
So two that I, from recent trips, but one I was in Rwanda, I was back in Rwanda and met an individual named Joseph and Joseph lost his sight when he was two, had an illness. And if you lose your sight in a community that is challenge after challenge, especially where the jobs are scarce. That’s challenging anywhere, but especially in a context of where he was growing up.
And so he had this gift and he self-taught guitar. He loved playing music and that was actually his livelihood. He would go and he would play and he would perform and that was his livelihood. And yet his guitar broke and he didn’t have the money to fix it. So he got a $40 loan, $40 not too much, but $40 to repair and restore his guitar. And he was able to get back in business and provide for himself. And when I met him this was the thing that just stood out is he told his story and then he said, I play a song that I wrote for you, for Hope International, for the institution that we have and it…maybe he didn’t make Spotify’s top number this year, but it’s my favorite song of the year because it’s just such joy and he talks about this idea about being invited in and in relationship and restoration and hope for the future. And it just is this beautiful, beautiful song. And I just love, here’s him using his gifts to give a gift to me, to give a gift to us as we made an investment in him. So that is one moment that stands out from a recent trip.
Another one that stands out is I just love the idea about what happens when individuals not just have business success but also heart transformation. And so I ended up also meeting a woman and her name was Serena and she ended up having this business and she literally started by selling peanuts in the marketplace. Like literally started with peanuts and then started getting into agriculture and started getting into animals and then she has a painting business and then got into real estate. She has some rental properties and when I was with her, she has 50 employees and provides health insurance. She adopted six children into her family because she now had the financial ability to do it. And you just think about the ripple effects of the jobs that she’s created, the food that she’s grown, the animals she cares for, the impact in her community.
The impact in her, and this is what I love about her story, she started out not believing, because she was living in poverty, that she had what it takes, but she said, I came to believe that I was quite capable. And I just love that idea of her standing tall, recognizing the gifts, recognizing the abilities, recognizing that she doesn’t need to be dependent on someone else’s charity to make an impact. She is an incredibly strong and visionary entrepreneur in her community. And so anyway, those two stories, it’s beautiful and they never get old. At Hope International, we’ve served 3.5 million families around the world at this point. We’ve been able to loan out almost $2 billion of investment with a 98% repayment rate.
It keeps coming back and we keep being able to do it again and again and again and helping more individuals like those to start businesses and provide for their families and support their churches and reach others with the love of Christ as well.
Case Thorp
Talk to us about the logistics and infrastructure. Take the dollar a donor may give all the way through the system to the payback.
Peter Greer
This is going to be more than we have time for. But essentially with Hope International, we have these two different operating models. We have the microfinance institution, and then we have the church-centered savings groups.
And so the church-centered savings groups is basically, we have a staff of Hope International and then we also have 5,000 individuals that are church facilitators, essentially those that go into communities and train groups on how to be formed. They come together and then they start saving their own money and then that money is rotated and invested in different individuals and their businesses. So with that model, that’s where we train individuals to create almost like a mini credit union at the most micro level through church partners around the world and then they’re trained in agriculture and other creative business ideas as well. So the funds that come for the savings group is training of the staff and those 5,000 that go out to go and form these groups all around the world and then after three years is the best part is the groups themselves are self-funded.
They’re self-governed, they’re self-managed, so they continue to operate on their own and we can then redeploy and go and serve somewhere else. And that’s why we just get this multiplication of impact. On the microfinance side, there is also sustainability, but we do charge a fee for service. And so we’re able to cover our operating expenses. And so after we are launched, it takes between three and seven years for a nation to be fully financially self-sufficient, but once we get to that level we can just put more capital there and then it just continues to grow and serve more and more individuals. And so as an organization we’re pretty typical in that 85% goes to program expenses, so 15% for general administrative costs and fundraising costs. So 85% goes to programs and then the program expenses are built around those two different operating models of savings groups and microfinance institutions. Again, the best part though is with both models, once we start the system, it continues to go and operate on its own, which I just love. That allows us, there’s no way we’d be able to serve 3.5 million families otherwise. And it just allows us to continue to go to new places, serve new communities, and equip churches for outreach in their localities.
Case Thorp
That ongoing support system, the ongoing revenue is just wonderful. What do you do to shape the heart in and through the two programs?
Peter Greer
Love that question as well. And so we talk a lot about what does it mean to follow Jesus in this work that we do. And it comes down to three different levels and it’s very similar on both the savings group model as well as the microfinance model. But we first talk about who we are then we talk about how we work and then we talk about how we serve the local church. And so who we are first I would say at Hope International. I love that we have time set aside on payroll on clock for every single country to pray together, to grow together, to study scripture together. And hopefully everyone says when the time comes to leave this organization that this is a place that I grew closer to Christ. So who we are matters with the spiritual practices that we have as an organization. Second is how we work and maybe that was kind of the heart of your question is how do we build this into the operating model. And this is really when the groups gather they go through five W’s and we try to keep everything really simple at Hope International, but these five W’s of welcome, worship, word, work, and wrap up, in many ways this might be similar to what you and I do in our small group with the primary difference of we probably don’t do savings and business training in quite the same way but we want people to feel warmly welcomed. So welcome matters and then we worship together and then we study God’s word together in an obedience based approach to scripture where we read it, we retell it and then we ask some questions. What do we learn about God? What do we learn about ourselves and what would it look like if we obeyed what we had just read? And so we do the word section and that’s where there’s the savings or loans or repayments, business coaching, and then there’s the wrap-up. What are we going to do differently as a result of what we just learned? And so it’s built into all of our operating models. But then the third piece is then how we serve the church and our desire is that people do not know or remember the name Hope International, but they see this as their local church going out and serving in their communities. We have one friend who works here on staff and he talks about how we’re not the Bride of Christ, that’s the local church. But we’re the bridesmaids and we want to do everything we can to make the bride beautiful. And so these tools that we can equip the church to reach their communities, that’s a way of serving in a way that people are invited into, relationship, invited into the expression of the local church and able to grow long after Hope International has transitioned to a new area.
Case Thorp
I was mission pastor here at First Presbyterian Orlando. For over 10 years I got to work with the largest protestant denomination in Madagascar as we brought Biblical Entrepreneurship, a program to help teach the free market principles of scripture and developed into a business contest and then folks on the ground created a credit union and could account for about 450 jobs that came through that 10 years of work.
And it struck me how very different it can be in different places, the cultural view of money, the cultural view of work, or even capitalism. And I’m curious, what have you learned or seen in working in so many different countries about how different views of money and work can impact those things?
Peter Greer
I love that you identified that. Early on in my time living in Rwanda, I remember reading a book, I believe it was called Africa Friends and Money Matters. And it was the first time that I started to understand the cultural differences. And then I got to see that being lived out and the communal expectation. If you have a little bit more, there’s an obligation that you help in that moment of need. And there’s some beautiful parts of that, but it also makes it really difficult to accumulate capital for productive investment when there’s always a need being met. And so that was helpful. And some more individualistic, some more communal. And with our model that we were just talking about, sometimes it’s easier to form groups or to piggyback on top of existing groups, and sometimes that takes a little bit more, you’ve got to do it a little bit slower because there’s not the same level of trust in that context. So a lot of differences, but I would say the biggest piece is I just love God’s math.
And you can take away all of these other pieces and you can take one seed, you can put it in the ground and you can get a hundredfold return. And I love that level of math. And so I think it is oftentimes just maybe not even talking about big systems of commerce and more just looking for the way that it’s reflected in the way that God made this world. And literally starting with agriculture or animal husbandry and this idea there is possible to have multiplication. In some communities it’s like a scarcity mindset that we’re always going to be in poverty and I love that the very act of planting a seed shows that it’s possible to have more and so a lot of times it’s thinking longer term not short term it’s thinking about investment not just consumption it’s delayed gratification and some of these building blocks are so helpful and again the great way that I believe that God wired this world is agriculture has a lot to teach us about some principles that work about what it looks like to plant and to cultivate, to care for and to harvest.
And so, yeah, a lot of the families that we serve start with agriculture, and that oftentimes is the way that they provide for their families, but then it expands beyond that as they start finding other ways to add value and expand the different ideas of using what is locally available and also the gifts that they’ve been given to meet the needs of the family and their communities and their local churches.
Case Thorp
How does your work, if at all, differ from impact investing? We’ve done shows on that. I have a number of colleagues and friends here Orlando that are in that space. Would a donor to Hope International get return on their donation?
Peter Greer
Yeah, so we have two different sides of Hope and with the savings group, there is no return to investors. So that’s not possible. And it requires also charitable giving to get these institutions up and running. But at some point, once we reach a certain level on the microfinance side, we can access impact investing dollars to have more fuel for the mission of Hope International. So it’s a relatively small percentage, but a meaningful part of the work of Hope. And really for impact investing, that works best where there is this idea of missional impact and an opportunity for a financial model to provide a return to the investor. And so we do have that possibility and yet most of the funds that come in are able to be dedicated to the long-term impact in the communities where we serve. And we’re so grateful for our friends that have generously supported Hope over our 28-year history.
Case Thorp
Peter, thank you for guiding us through this master class, helping us to see microfinance, I mean, not just as a charity, but as a faithful work that forms people in every step of the process. I want to encourage our listeners to donate. Go to Hope International’s website. I’m sure you would accept that, Peter.
Peter Greer
I would say preemptive thank you to anyone that wants to choose to join us in the mission. Yeah, thank you.
Case Thorp
Well, thank you for being here. Let me encourage folks also to pick up Peter’s latest book, co-authored with Jill Heisey, How Leaders Lose Their Way. It’s published by InterVarsity Press. We will have a link to the book as well as Hope International in our show notes. And there you’ll find that discussion guide for this program and for last week’s. Well, if this episode deepened your understanding of faith and work, even capital investment around the world, which is an area of global mission that excites me so much, consider sharing this program with a colleague, a friend, put it on your social media. Maybe there’s some marketplace leaders that have never had their imagination stretched in this way that God can help to use capital to improve lives. You can learn more about our work at The Collaborative at wecolabor.com. That’s wecolabor.com. Sign up with your email and we’ll send you Zeitgeist, our journal on faith, work, and culture. I want to thank our many financial partners for making this episode possible. I’m Case Thorp, and God’s blessing is on you.
