CHRIS VESTER

Tell us about your background and why you founded Bible Belles.

ERIN WEIDEMANN

We've been married for eleven years and have two girls. We started our business in the car on the way home from church. We were having a friendly marital debate about what to get our niece for her birthday that year. Our niece could name all the Disney princesses, but not any women in the Bible. The more we thought about it, the more we felt God was impressing upon our hearts to create something that was engaging and would connect girls to Scripture through the stories of women. We wanted to do it in a way that could compete with Disney and Pixar and the non-faith-based brands out there that are doing entertainment really well.

We started by going to the bookstore and researching the cool books for girls to learn about the women in the Bible. We couldn't find any. We felt challenged in that season of our life to make something that was high quality, which is why we didn’t go the traditional publishing route. God told us early on that this was different than an entrepreneurial effort.

BRENT WEIDEMANN

We're on this crazy adventure. We're living in Montana right now. We've been in San Diego the past 10-plus years. We both went to Penn State at different times. We met at an alumni event during the middle of her first cancer diagnosis. We dated through that, got married and then went through four more battles with cancer. It was a challenging time, but it was also an amazing time. We grew so much. All we had was God. Men are fixers and when I couldn't do anything, that was a challenging time for me. I couldn’t eradicate the cancer, I could only make her life more comfortable. I had some great support, but I had to be able to lean on God.

CHRIS VESTER

Erin, what were your first thoughts after the doctor diagnosed you with cancer?

ERIN WEIDEMANN

I was 26. Thankfully, my mom was with me at that appointment. I was going in for a routine lump check because I had felt one on the back of my neck. I had it checked out by the team doctor at Penn State and he wrote it off as swollen lymph nodes. This time the doctor put his hands on mine and told me he thought I had Hodgkin’s Disease or lymphoma. I had to have an emergency biopsy the next day. I didn’t understand the gravity of everything, but my mom immediately knew how serious everything was.

It launched me into a season of pain and suffering. At the time faith was not part of my life. I grew up in church, but had walked away from the faith 10 years prior and made every mistake on the planet. I didn't have the foundation or the structure to pray through these things. I didn’t know God was working to try to pull me through to the other side to show me something and to reveal himself. I know all these things now, but at the time I had no faith to speak of. My life was rocked by that diagnosis. I entered a period of surgery and therapy. I had so much surgery I couldn’t move and then I had to do radiation. The recovery time was difficult. I moved back in with my parents when I was going through all that.

Then I met Brent, and it was an awful time to start a relationship. He wanted to take me on dates, but I was very sick. I didn’t think we should hang out. I thought it was a waste of his time. I wasn’t in the headspace to think about having a serious relationship in the future. I couldn’t see a future, hope, or any of God’s subsequent plans for me. Next week I will have celebrated 15 birthdays since my first cancer diagnosis. It’s been an interesting ride. I’m very grateful for Brent because he really walked with me during that hard season when I wasn’t open to relationship or thinking about God’s plan for my life. All I could see was my diagnosis. I was trying to be nice about it, but I wasn’t very nice during that time in my life.

CHRIS VESTER

Brent, where were you in your faith walk at that point in your life?

BRENT WEIDEMANN

I've always believed in God. I've struggled with it, but I've always believed in God. Walking with Christ is a different story. I grew up Catholic and there wasn’t a relational aspect to anything. I believed in God, but I was as immature in my faith journey as she was at the time. I might have been two steps ahead of her. I got to a point in my life where I got tired of not knowing the answers to my questions, problems, and obstacles. That’s when I did a deep dive and started to address those issues. We started going to a small group and I started reading like crazy. Christ came into our lives completely differently, which was interesting.

CHRIS VESTER

Can you give us some insight to your daughters, Rooney and Roxy?

ERIN WEIDEMANN

Rooney is awesome and full of life. She is hilarious. She has a huge personality. She likes to do so many different things. She can be a tomboy, but she has a girl side to her too. With her, every day is different and a new adventure. Roxy represents our daring life adventure when we uprooted from San Diego during COVID and moved to the wilderness in Northwest Montana. She’s a wild child. We call her our wolf baby. She has such a spark inside her and she is naughty. She's getting into everything. Rooney was so compliant. If I told her not to touch something, she wouldn’t. We were so happy to be able to start a traditional family after my cancer battle because we weren’t sure if that was possible.

We've watched God shock us at every turn. It's been wonderful to start the business and watch God intersect our professional lives with our personal lives. What we get to do in marriage and in our parenting is so connected to the impact we're making. Every time I look at them and interact with the girls, I think about the blessing of that. It's all intertwined and beautiful and something that we didn't expect.

SUZANNE VESTER

Erin, you said you weren’t grounded in your faith during your first cancer diagnosis. Did you have a moment of clarity, or did you gradually realize there was a bigger plan for you?

ERIN WEIDEMANN

I had a dark night soul moment during the middle of my three- day quarantine for radiation treatment. I was 12 hours in, and I got dizzy. From diagnosis through the first two surgeries, I tried to handle it like an athlete would, but when I got inside the radiation quarantine room at my parents' house, I did it in the bathroom, and I got so dizzy and scared and thought "I'm going to faint. No one can come in here."

I remember putting my face on the bathroom floor and praying even though I didn't believe in God. I had written God off a long time ago. I would've called myself an atheist in that season, but I prayed out loud and I said, "God, if you're real, I'm sorry. I have made a mess in my life. I've not been following you. This is too hard. I can't do this by myself. I'm stuck in here alone. If you're real, I'm sorry, and I need help."

That was the turning point for me because I had enough sense to realize I can’t talk to someone I don’t believe in. I was literally crying out for something or someone because I didn’t want to die. I didn’t want this to be the thing that kills me, and not get to experience all the things life has to offer. I wondered if there was a creator and if I could be open to something I had closed myself off from for many years.

Then I met Brent, and I started going to those small group sessions with him. I wasn’t even a baby Christian yet. I was just tagging along, even though I thought it sounded weird at first. I had never been in a home church before. I ended up going to the Bible study. It was for young adult men and women. They were working over the gospels and having a healthy discourse about what they thought faith was and what they felt Jesus was teaching. I was so convicted in that Bible study. Before that I thought Christians were judgmental and fake. I thought everyone was playing church while being awful in their day-to-day lives.

Then I walked into that environment, and everyone was so welcoming. They were praying for people and were accepting of us. They didn’t tell us we were living in sin and living life wrong. We were convicted about the way we lived in that Bible study through no person. It was only the Holy Spirit I saw, after watching Christians live out healthy lives week after week, following Jesus in a whole new light. This was not something I had experienced as a young person. I was radically changed by the people living out their faith in that Bible study during that season of my life.

BRENT WEIDEMANN

When I went to the Bible group, I laid all my cards on the table. I told them the things I didn’t believe in, the things that I struggled with, and the things I didn’t understand. I’m a history major, so I’m used to consuming large amounts of information, and that group came around me in an amazing way. It was like I was going back to school. I was on fire trying to figure out these different things. I wanted to have an answer instead of continuing to walk in the unknown. It was beautiful to see how that group came around us and supported us. They told us what books to read. We both had amazing experiences together and individually in that Bible group.

SUZANNE VESTER

Share with us how you went from small Bible studies to where you are now. How do you integrate faith into your everyday life? How has that fostered a sense of structure and community as you’ve grown your business?

BRENT WEIDEMANN

Our faith journey has been a progression. If we were writing a book, that chapter would be our testimonial coming to Christ, even though that moment was different for both of us. My real faith journey began when God called us to launch Bible Belles and then Truth Becomes Her. That’s when I leaned upon lessons I learned while Erin was sick. Looking back, I wish I had the spiritual maturity I do now to have helped me handle the challenging problems and obstacles we faced.

God always continues to raise the bar, and then sometimes we do it begrudgingly. It's been an interesting season of obedience for the past five to 10 years because the business has continually grown our faith. We’ve been challenged to quit our jobs and flush our retirement savings to start this company. We’ve worked with a lot of business coaches and have done a lot of personal work. We're in a neat position right now because the business is working for us. We are operating solely in our gifts. That allows us to have more margin than your average person.

That margin is to sow into our family. We have a giving portfolio and the easiest aspect of that to define is the financial. We support different churches, parent churches, and ministries. We’re using our gifts to grow our companies. We're a multi-generational family on mission. We are teaching our girls to be global citizens and to see the bigger picture that God is calling us to focus on. Obviously we can do a lot more with our seven-year-old than our one-year-old. It’s amazing to incorporate her into our business. It’s all about working together. We support a ministry out of Atlanta, called She is Safe. They rescue girls out of sex trafficking, and while she’s not old enough to talk about the sex trafficking side of the conversation, we do explain to her what slavery is. It’s something that really upsets her. We have decided as a family to support that ministry because it focuses on something we are passionate about and trying to solve.

I've been able to go in and help them do consulting for free. Erin spoke as their keynote a couple months ago and then Rooney was on stage speaking as well. Everyone in the family used their individual gifts collectively. That’s been a fun journey and we’ve been challenged by mentors and other people around us to double down on our intentionality. That’s the driving factor when I look out at the next 10 years and see what we’re working towards and trying to accomplish.

CHRIS VESTER

Rooney’s on your website and she is one of your participants. How is she participating and using her voice?

ERIN WEIDEMANN

We launched the company when I was eight months pregnant with Rooney. Then we went through a season figuring out how to make a book. We didn’t launch this brand with multiple resources. We knew we could make a book and then work on a second book. Then we had enough experience. She toddled through that early season when we were figuring out the first book. Then we sat down and read the book. Now she knows the books front to back. Now we’re doing video Bible studies together. She’s able to attend events and figure out what her part is in showing up and prioritizing the gospel, even as a seven-year-old. She knows how to be generous and how to look out for others before herself.

It's provided our family very sweet ways to incorporate her into the business, a business that she was born into. We sought out her unique gifts and cultivated them. She and I have had such interesting conversations about the word calling because I think people throw that word around. It's a very popular Christian buzzword. They equate it many times to the career you're going to choose, but your calling has nothing to do with your career. Your career can further your calling, but God's been very clear about what he's called us to do. We've been commissioned and called to do different things, to spread the gospel, to make disciples, or to live in a way that produces fruit that lasts. That equates winning of souls and making more Jesus followers. We can be strategic with ourselves, our business choices, our personal choices, and the way we raise our children to prioritize the gospel at every turn. It's fun and exciting to invite your children into that.

SUZANNE VESTER

If you were speaking to someone who is new to seeking faith, or a Christian who’s never explored their faith, how would you guide them to take their first steps into faith?

ERIN WEIDEMANN

I would tell people to start with their passion, but not passion in the cultural sense. The Latin word passio means to suffer. That's why it's called the passion of the Christ. I'm a firm believer in understanding that your passion is not necessarily what lights you up as a person. It's not the thing that makes you enthusiastic and excited. That's more of a worldly definition. Your passion is the thing that plagues your heart and is aligned with the heart of God. What is the problem out in the world that pains you and causes your heart suffering? Maybe that's where you're supposed to intersect with the bigger thing God's doing in the world to meet that problem.

People should understand the issues facing the world. I was teaching middle school and while I was coming home, I was so angry about what the girls were going through, how they were treating each other, and how they were treating themselves. It was the same for me when I was in middle school. It was the same for my mom too. From generation to generation, girls are plagued by certain issues including insecurity, comparison, fear, and not understanding themselves. There are so many issues there and it burdened my heart because it resonated with me. Then when I became a parent, I looked at my tiny person and realized I had to raise her to think differently about herself. I'm thankful that we were able to leverage each other's gifts and create a business from it. The point of the business is to be a financial resource that earns money that goes straight back to fund God's kingdom and the things that are close to His heart.

CHRIS VESTER

Brent, what can you add to that?

BRENT WEIDEMANN

There are so many problems, but people need to know what God is calling them to do. There are a couple reasons why we're adopting. One thing I found interesting is my daughter, especially three or four years ago, couldn't comprehend how someone couldn't have parents. We should all view the world that way. We’re wrong and jaded to think orphanages make sense and that is the way the world should work. We wanted to act that out, both in our family by adopting, and with the ministries that we serve. There's so much need and there's such a variety of different ways you can serve underneath what God calls us to do both with the great commission and serving widows, orphans, and the poor. We see so many Christians sitting in their salvation, but we’re all in. We’re doing whatever God wants us to do.

I'm upset about the years when we weren’t operating with that mentality in our gifts. Many churches tell us to tithe and be obedient, but that doesn’t make a generous person. We have different talents and skills, and there's such a need for people to get off the sidelines and get into the game. Things are getting worse and it's becoming harder. The need is so great, and we need more people to get on board with God's calling.

SUZANNE VESTER

Share with us a little bit about Truth Becomes Her, Bible Belles, and the mission of those two entities, and what else is in the works.

ERIN WEIDEMANN

Bible Belles has resources for pre-readers to early independent readers to engage with the stories of women in the Bible. It includes women from the Old Testament and the New Testament. The gospel message is interwoven throughout; devotionals, journals, and ways to dive deeper that make faith meaningful and practical in girls’ lives.

Truth Becomes Her is our online educational platform for moms and adult mentors who want to be strategic about how they're pouring into their pre-teen, teen, and young adult disciples, who have been placed in their sphere of influence and develop as leaders. Those women need to be developed as leaders too. Truth Becomes Her is a place to get resources and skills-based training to be the leader God made you to be.

I'm working on launching my coaching program. Women who have an idea or who want to write down their testimony reach out to me all the time. They want to get out there and share their story in a powerful way to draw people to Jesus. God's given me an interesting challenge over the last six years. He taught me how to share my testimony and how to leverage my personal story, to bring people to Christ. When Brent told me I was going to share my story, I told him I wasn't someone who liked to share. God continues to send women for me to pour into.

BRENT WEIDEMANN

We have a lot of other things going on. We have equity and revenue shares within other companies and other organizations that we're doing both individually and together. We'll always be doing something like that. I have a consulting company I run, and I enjoy coming in to help ministries create sustainability within their organizations. I like to help people who have influence work smarter, not harder, and to fine-tune what they’re doing. My daughter and I have two companies right now. One of them is a thriving yard sale business where we go to yard sales throughout the summer and fall and then we resell the good things we find. We buy locally and then sell nationally. It’s an excuse for me to drive around with my daughter in the backseat and talk to her. I’m teaching her about Excel sheets, how to take proper pictures, and how to negotiate. It’s amazing how much better at negotiating she is than I am, at least at the yard sale. They don’t usually care about me at the yard sales but when I send in my seven-year- old, she gets her way.

Then we have a dream of having a property in the next year or two where people can come to us and experience the intentional rest we have to offer – whether that's their key team or their family. We want to have a place with a lot of acres, so we can have some rental properties where we can bless people and they can experience what we have to offer. That’s something I’m talking to God about daily. Eventually, once our kids get a little older, we want to live abroad. Right now, we go somewhere each year for a month to get our girls out of the bubble we live in. That way they can experience what it’s like to live in other places.

Our daughters have seen extreme poverty in Mexico and in Peru. When parents tell their kids to finish their breakfast because there are starving children in Africa, it’s a concept kids don’t understand. When they're able to see it face-to-face, and experience what it's like to see extreme poverty, it's something they can tangibly understand. It's helped my daughter, even at a young age, become more compassionate and to understand how incredibly blessed she is.