Peter Greer
HOPE international
Prior to joining HOPE, Peter worked internationally as a micro-finance advisor in Cambodia, technical advisor for Self-Help Development Foundation in Zimbabwe, and managing director for Urwego Community Bank in Rwanda. He received a B.S. in international business from Messiah College and an MPP from Harvard’s Kennedy School.
As an advocate for the Church’s role in missions and alleviating extreme poverty, Peter has been a speaker at a number of conferences, and he has been featured by Christianity Today, World, Forbes, CNN, and RELEVANT. He has also written The Spiritual Danger of Doing Good (with Anna Haggard, 2013), Mission Drift (with Chris Horst, 2014; selected as a 2015 Book Award Winner from Christianity Today), Entrepreneurship for Human Flourishing (with Chris Horst, 2014), Stop Helping Us (2014), Watching Seeds Grow (with his son Keith, 2014), The Giver and the Gift (with David Weekley, 2015), 40/40 Vision (with Greg Lafferty, 2015), Created to Flourish (with Phil Smith, 2016), The Board and the CEO (with David Weekley, 2017), and Rooting for Rivals (with Chris Horst, 2018).
Currently, Peter serves as the entrepreneur-in-residence at Messiah College and as a Praxis Venture Partner.
Peter and his wife, Laurel, live in Lancaster, PA, with their three children, Keith, Lilianna, and Myles.
CONTRIBUTIONS TO FAITH DRIVEN ENTREPRENEUR
Winemaker Robert Mondavi pursued an alternative approach to Kroc’s cutthroat competition and cast a different vision. The opening line in his sales manual summed up his philosophy: “Your competitor is your ally.”
Though most of us aren’t bowing to statues or poles, we’d argue from personal experience that many leaders’ idol of choice is the idol of our own abilities: a good thing we are tempted to distort into the ultimate thing.
Waking at 2 a.m., I (Peter) heard Laurel rush to the restroom. Groggily, I entered the bathroom to rub her back while she bent over the toilet. “Can I get you anything?” I tenderly asked.
We were surprised to learn that just 17% of organizations have a documented succession plan. This is shocking, given that 100% of leaders will eventually transition!
We’ve long preached sustainable development over handouts. The pandemic forces us to change our approach—for now.
As an advocate for the Church’s role in missions and alleviating extreme poverty, Peter has been a speaker at a number of conferences and has written several books including an FDI favorite, Rooting for Rivals. Read his reflections on what it means to love particularly the vulnerable and those in poverty during the Covid-19 crisis.
The Church is beginning to combat extreme poverty in a more complete way. This is a movement where discipleship, job creation, training, and financial services are building on local relationships to empower communities to break free from poverty.
In this week’s episode, we’re talking to Henry’s long-time friend Peter Greer, President and CEO of Hope International, a leading provider of microfinancing for underserved communities around the globe. Peter helps us understand the multi-faceted aspects of poverty, that it’s about more than simply the lack of resources.
I will never forget the time when I first came to know about Hope International. God had started to bless Bandwidth with more success, and I knew that I wanted to get more serious about giving. I became fascinated with the concept of microfinance. God had placed a passion in me for marketplace transformation and I knew that entrepreneurship could create great opportunity for poverty alleviation in the US, but especially overseas. Mohammed Yunus' Book, "Banker to the Poor" had just come out and I couldn't get enough. I read everything I could find on MFI and eventually came across a podcast from Kiva that shared the stories of their member partners and what they did with MFI and where they did it.
Just as Hoyt Buck was unwilling to etch the Buck name into a knife until it had reached his exacting standards of excellence, God doesn’t ask us to etch His name on our shoddy craftsmanship