Our Story
We believe in new beginnings.
In 2015, our founders Andrew and Lily DeCort discerned God’s call to return to Ethiopia. At that time, Andrew was completing a PhD in Theological and Political Ethics at the University of Chicago and teaching at Wheaton College. His dream was to help develop emerging faith leaders in Ethiopia with a passionate love for God, suffering people, and the common good.
The IFF board met for the first time in March 2016. Beloved friends gave generously toward our vision. And Andrew and Lily took a leap of faith back to Addis Ababa that August.
The morning after they landed, the BBC’s headline read “Several killed as Ethiopia police clash with protesters.”
It was an ominous sign of things to come. In the following years, Ethiopia was rocked by mass protests and state violence. Many feared this conflict would end in civil war or genocide. American citizens were summoned to the U.S. Embassy to prepare for an emergency evacuation.
During this time, IFF supported Andrew’s teaching and service at the Ethiopian Graduate School of Theology (EGST). From 2016 to 2018, Andrew worked as a professor of Christian Ethics and helped EGST develop a new M.A. program in Public Theology, a joint PhD program with the Vrije University Amsterdam, and the Ethiopian Journal of Theology. We were delighted to support outstanding theological education for some of Ethiopia’s most inspiring young leaders.
But in the face of the rising crisis in Ethiopia, we didn’t feel like we could remain safe in the classroom on an academic island. Once again, we felt God calling us to take a leap of faith and more radically pursue our vision of “nurturing neighbor-love culture, especially for the poor, hated, and forgotten.”
In 2018, Andrew resigned from EGST, and our vision for the Neighbor-Love Movement (NLM) was slowly born.
With NLM’s co-director Dr. Tekalign Nega, we observed that the root problem facing Ethiopia was “othering.” Othering simply means seeing others as unrelated or less than ourselves. This human tendency is often triggered by religious, ethnic, and political differences. It ultimately fuels dehumanization, violence, and death. Sadly, in 2020, it erupted into a devastating civil war. In the following years, an estimated 1.2 million people were killed, 5 million people were displaced, and 20 million people suffered extreme hunger in Ethiopia.
As rumors of war spread in 2019, the dream began burning in our hearts to inspire Ethiopia’s 30 million youth with Jesus’s radical invitation to see every person as our precious neighbor, especially the people we’re most tempted to see as enemies. Jesus boldly promised, “Do this, and you will flourish” (Luke 10:28). We wanted to live into Jesus’s promise in an incredibly dangerous moment in Ethiopian history.
Our team developed our Neighbor-Love Covenant, its seven Practices, and a call for youth to become Neighbor-Love Ambassadors across boundaries. In October 2019, we started traveling Ethiopia and inviting young people to join our movement. Initially, the response was overwhelmingly positive. (Our 5-minute NLM Celebration video offers a deeper look at some of these highlights.)
Senior religious and political leaders endorsed our movement.
We presented our invitation at dozens of events on diverse platforms.
Over 3,000 youth signed our Covenant and vowed to practice neighbor love.
Over 22 million people encountered our invitation to love others online.
We published the first video courses and the first book on neighbor-love in any Ethiopian language.
We produced an Amharic video curriculum on neighbor love with Ethiopia’s Ministry of Education intended for all 45 of Ethiopia’s public universities (see our trailer here).
Soon before the civil war erupted, we published our “Joint Declaration for Human Dignity and Nonviolence in Ethiopia,” which was signed by 300 Ethiopian leaders.
Still, the civil war continued escalating, and Andrew was receiving dozens of death threats in reaction to his advocacy for a nonviolent peace process. In May 2021, Andrew and Lily were forced to flee Ethiopia, and NLM went underground.
Through this painful transition, a new beginning was born. Andrew refocused his vocation on writing books about the ethics of following Jesus, practicing courageous love, and integrating honest faith with nonviolent action. His first two books were Flourishing on the Edge of Faith: Seven Practices for a New We (2022) and Blessed Are the Others: Jesus’ Way in a Violent World (2024).
His most recent book is Reviving the Golden Rule: How the Ancient Ethic of Neighbor Love Can Heal the World (2025). This book offers a groundbreaking introduction to the origins of neighbor love, how this movement has dismantled othering across history, and how we can continue it today. It also tells some of the story of our Neighbor-Love Movement in Ethiopia. Andrew hopes to write 30 more books in the coming decades.
On the ground in Addis, our co-director Tekalign Nega continues nurturing the Neighbor-Love Movement. His teaching at the Ethiopian Graduate School of Theology, his sought-after public speaking, and his insightful writing are planting seeds of a new future of human dignity in Ethiopia.
In 2025, Andrew and Tekalign launched IFF’s latest initiative Prophetic: The Public Theology Fellowship. This innovative program cultivates courageous faith leaders in the face of the heartbreaking violence in Ethiopia. We’re grateful to partner with inspiring faith leaders like Miroslav Volf, Munther Isaac, and Jenny McBride.
Our dream is to open a multipurpose center in Addis Ababa that will serve as the hub of our content creation, public events, and leadership training. We envision it as an incubator of deep relationship, learning, and peacemaking for all neighbors in the face of othering. A donor has already pledged $250,000 toward this daunting vision.
We warmly invite you to join our movement and become a partner in our unfolding story.
We believe in new beginnings.
We’d love to hear from you; contact us here.