John Vereecken with Pastor Venancio Hernandez and pastors from the Mezquital Valley.

John walking from village to village while carrying projectors, generators, lights and sound equipment.

Lidere (lee-DARE-ay) exists to create a new leadership culture in Latin America.

Lidere is the leadership division of Global Outreach Ministries.

​Lidere was created to meet the need for a new leadership culture in Latin America.
 
John and Karla Vereecken began working in the mountain villages of the Mezquital Valley during their first three years in Mexico. John traveled from village church to village church training leaders and encouraging pastors. It wasn't long before they realized that they could spend the rest of their lives traveling from village to village, but the impact would be minimal. If they could only find a way to group leaders together and bring them to a place where they could be trained and equipped, then they could multiply their influence and have a greater impact in Latin America.
 
That's when they were invited to help start a Bible training center in Guadalajara, Mexico….

Speaking to Bible school students in Guadalajara, Mexico.

Cristo al Mundo (Christ to the World) Bible Training Center, which opened its doors in 1992, provided John and Karla with the way to train and equip leaders in one centralized location. For the next 8 years, John and Karla enjoyed training men and women from churches all over Latin America. After completing the 2-year program, these young leaders would return back to their churches excited to put into practice everything they had learned, but it soon became apparent that there was a problem that needed to be addressed...an existing leadership culture that didn't know how to work together with these passionate young leaders.
 
So John began to look for ways to make leadership training available to those pastors and leaders right where they were at.

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John and Marcos training in Nicaragua.

John began to send out leadership lessons on cassette tapes (and eventually on CD) to pastors and leaders throughout Latin America through a program called LEA: Liderazgo en Accion (Leadership in Action). He also began traveling with Latin America's leading Christian artist Marcos Witt, who had just started a new leadership organization called Lidere. John continued to run Cristo al Mundo, even taking the entire curriculum to Cuba and starting 53 underground Bible training centers there, while traveling more and more with Marcos training pastors, Christian leaders, government leaders and even corporate leaders all across Latin America.
 
What John saw through all of his traveling brought him to the realization that it wasn't enough to just train a few leaders here and there. What Latin America really needed was a change in the whole overriding leadership culture.

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Left to right: John, Ron Luce and Marcos Witt.

John speaking to young people in Cordoba, Argentina.

John was seeing fruit in the leadership training that they were providing, but at the same time, when he looked at the reality of the situation, he realized the problem was much greater. He was trying to impact as best he could, but people still continued to live under a leadership culture that did not empower people to fulfill God's call on their lives.

That's when he decided to dedicate himself full-time to running Lidere and to building a team that would help him create the new leadership culture that Latin America so desperately needed.
 

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In 2000, John met John Maxwell, who was looking to increase his influence in Latin America. It was shortly after that meeting that John Maxwell and his leadership organization EQUIP asked John and Lidere to work with them in training one million leaders around the world, and more specifically in Latin America. That's when Lidere became the Latin America Regional Directors for John Maxwell and EQUIP in the Million Leaders Mandate.

Receiving a special leather-bound edition of 21 Laws of Leadership straight from the author's hand.

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That strategic alliance with John C. Maxwell and EQUIP has taken Lidere to a new level of influence in Latin America. Lidere now provides leadership training through the following programs:

Million Leaders Mandate (Un Millon de Lideres)

In 2003, Lidere joined together in a strategic alliance with Dr. John C. Maxwell, well-known author and leadership expert, and EQUIP Leadership to coordinate the leadership training initiative Million Leaders Mandate in Latin America.

"Through this initiative, we have been able to
equip and train over 500,000 leaders in the
Spanish- and Portuguese- speaking world."

Translating for John Maxwell at the Million Leaders Mandate launch in Chile.

Habitudes

In 2011, Lidere joined into a partnership with generational leadership expert, Tim Elmore, and the Growing Leaders organization, to bring their leadership curriculum for emerging leaders, Habitudes, to Latin America.

Specifically designed for youth, students and young teammates, the Habitudes leadership training curriculum is a fun, creative and engaging way for the next generation to learn and practice leadership habits and attitudes.

Transformation

After training 6 million leaders in 196 nations through The Million Leaders Mandate, EQUIP began to focus on mobilizing these leaders to transform their government, business, church, community, family and eventually, their nation.

The Global Transformation Initiative began in Guatemala in 2013 and in Paraguay in 2015. John Vereecken leads the current Transformation Initiatives in Guatemala and Paraguay. See Transformation.

Salt & Light

The key to real Transformation is through the power of relationship with Jesus Christ.

Salt & Light is an evangelistic outreach of EQUIP Leadership to engage leaders to become salt and light in a dark world.

The mission of Salt & Light is to partner with local churches around the world to help them mobilize their trained leaders to transform their community. Lidere leads the Salt & Light outreach in Latin America. See Salt & Light.

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