Welcome to the For the Gospel podcast. For the Gospel is all about providing sound doctrine for everyday people. This is Costi Hinn, and I'm your host. And on today's episode, I want to tell you the story of how For the Gospel started. As we come to the end of the year, so many people are listening and we get a lot of feedback from you, which we're grateful for. And one thing that continues to be on my mind is the story, what God has done and where He has brought this ministry from its concept days to now. And so I want to share the vision and the mission and the strategy for the gospel as well. And note that when I say vision, I'm not talking about some preacher claiming to have visions and prophecy about what God will do. I know some of you are triggered by that statement because of your past like mine. I'm talking about a picture of where we want to be and how we ask God to do something and then we trust Him and we say, Well, according to your will, Lord. But on our team, we say a lot of times, man, imagine if, imagine if this, imagine if that. And so we started saying with For the Gospel, imagine if we put money and energy behind creative media and we put out loads of sound doctrine for everyday people. What an impact that could have. Imagine if. And then we say, God, please make that a reality if it's your will. Well, that's what I'm talking about when I talk about vision. But I want to share with you the history. How did For the Gospel start? Where did we come from? And then where we are and where we're heading. And I want to give you a financial overview as well. We promise to be transparent. That's something we value as a ministry. And so I want to make good on that promise before this year is done. But the idea for the gospel started before I wrote my first book. I'd gotten off a call with Zondervin Publishing, and they said I needed a blog or something as an author to connect with people, to put out writing. And generally for marketing purposes, that's what a lot of authors have to do. Well, I loathed the approach of my past life. The obvious solution for most people in that world was, you know, just name the ministry after yourself. You know, Costihan.com, and it's Costihan Ministries, and it's a nonprofit, and it's all about me and making money for me and whatever else. And again, no offense to those in reliable circles nowadays whose name is on their ministry. Um, I could think of several right now that are awesome people. I know them personally. And so again, that's not wrong to do, but my conviction was I'm not going to name something Costihin.com or Costihan Ministries. It needs to be bigger, it needs to be more bigger than me and beyond me, not just about me. And so the search began. I remember sitting with my wife one day and I was trying out blog names and thinking, man, I've got to find something. And you should have heard some of my ideas. They were terrible, or they were definitely in line with cage stage. The word inerrancy was thrown around. There was a lot of stuff about truth and fighting this and doing that and standing that. And it was, it was great. I thought they were awesome. And my wife then says to me, Well, what about for something? Like, I don't know, what about like for the gospel? And she says that phrase and I laughed out loud. Wasn't trying to be rude, but I was laughing and I said, Sweetheart, that's not going to be available. That's like a really cool name. And for the church is already a thing, and everyone's doing the for the this and for the that. But man, yeah, for the gospel is a golden name. Well, she goes, You should at least try it. So I plug it in and it's available. I could not believe my eyes. So I started blogging there for a few years, and all the while my wife and I would talk about for the gospel being something more about sound doctrine and furthering the gospel than sort of my little blogger platform to promote my books. Well, I wanted to see it become a media resourcing platform, but like all great ministry ideas, it needs a great team, and more than that, a great God to make it happen. And we've been in ministry a while in the local church, and you realize pretty quickly, team building is almost everything. I mean, that's what Jesus did. He goes out and calls disciples. You look at Paul at the end of 2 Corinthians 4, and there's this big list of names. Why? Because no one ever does ministry alone. No one guy is the guy. It takes a team to do these sorts of things. But then there was something else. You've probably heard, if you follow us long enough, me mention Tony Wood or Pastor Anthony Wood from Mission Bible. He was my pastor. Uh, still call him my pastor a lot. He speaks into my life in a big way, and he's a longtime friend. He was always pushing me with uncomfortable statements, like, you know, man, we'd be at breakfast. I remember him saying one time, what are you gonna do with all this costy hen stuff? I was pastoring with him at Mission Bible. And I used to be like, What are you talking about? I what do you mean? I'm just gonna write and tweet, you know, truth and one-liners and whatever. What are you talking about? And he's like, Well, what are you gonna be? You're gonna be like an itinerant speaker, you know, Mr. Famous guy on the road, like, fill out my my speaking form and you got your brand or what? Like, what are you gonna do with all this? Because and he would say, Momentum is a gift from the Lord when God gives you sort of the wind at your back momentum, and people are listening to you, and there's influence there, what you channel it into is a big deal. And he used to always go eternal, that's just how he is, and I appreciate it. But at the time I used to be like, Man, I I never even thought about this. It was so much pressure. He said, You're gonna live with what you do with your influence for the rest of your life. And of course, he's never one to mince words that Tony would. And so for the gospel became the thing that I wanted to channel my influence into, if you will. Uh, it is now a ministry I serve, it's a ministry that I founded. Um, let the secret be known and let it be out. My wife named it. She's smarter in a lot of ways with that sort of thing than I am, and and simpler as well. And so, and then Pastor Tony pushed me hard thinking through what are you gonna be? You know, are you gonna be like a reformed style Furtick and it's your vision and your speaking gigs, and you're Mr. Hotshot, or you're this, or you're that, and it's you know, Costihind.com, all that. Or are you gonna use that to highlight something more and something bigger and be a leader in it, but point to something that is even beyond you? Well, now we've watched for the gospel become this ministry, and there is a team that I lead, but to a greater purpose. And there's gifted people, but we're locking arms together. And I think of the guys that God brought along a year ago, you know, Reagan Rose from Redeeming Productivity, a good friend of mine, and Justin Bond, these guys said, okay, we're in. We'll do creative design, we'll whip some stuff up. Reagan built our first website uh for nothing, just as a friend, going, Yeah, let's do this. I believe in this sort of vision and think this would be a great idea. And then Brett Skinner was all in. And so with no budget, but a big dream and some good friendships with some solid brothers, we started working on the basics. What got wild was when God brought financial support from what seemed like out of left field, you know, someone knew someone who talked to someone and then the Lord used them to help kick us off. We took all those ideas and dreams and now we could fund it. And so we just started executing. And I think that's what our team really is. It's not a bunch of dreamers, but it's guys that love to execute. If funding is there, but even if it wasn't, we were gonna do this for free. We were gonna figure out a way to pay our $29.99 a month for our little podcast hosting, and we were gonna put something together because we believe that this world needs a media blitz and the digital world at that that competes with and takes back ground from the ministries like the you know, the Stephen Furtix and and like the Joel Osteens, and honestly, like just worldliness that looks appealing and is using creative media, but we've got sound doctrine, so why don't we do this with excellence? And so what you've just witnessed, if you follow for the gospel for any length of time, is year one. That's it. God provided an idea, a wife and a pastor friend pushed and encouraged in helpful ways, and then a team of amazing guys jumped in and said yes for nothing in return except what could be. Then God moved the hearts of generous believers to provide, and the rest is the beginning of our history. That is our entire history up to this point in less than 10 minutes. Now we have had now 50,000 downloads a month for the last several months from well over a hundred countries around the world. By God's grace, we reached four million people as of today's numbers, which went up still after we released our last end-of-year highlight video. God did all of this despite us only having one full-time marketing manager. The rest of our team is either volunteers, small contracted workers who are just humbly getting after it, or some part-time people that are just plugging away. We believe that with only a slightly larger team and a few full-time content creators, we could eventually reach 20 to 30 million people annually without demanding a big budget that costs millions and millions of dollars. You know, it used to be that you had to spend millions to reach millions. Well, times have changed in media. Now, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars or you know, even millions of dollars to get on traditional radio and television seems crazy when we could get on TikTok and Instagram for a fraction of the cost and reach millions of people in days, months, and in our case now in a year, reaching some four million people. And so when people give to FTG, one of our big vision and mission items was you know, dollars would go further to reaching people, and we'd keep overhead low, and we would keep resource outputs high. And so that became a huge launch point for us as we realized how much we could do with just a little. Uh, this year we produced two top quality series on marriage and another on dating, courtship, and sexuality. We actually hosted an in-person conference for that as well for college students, and then produced the whole thing, and that's our DTR series, defining the relationship. It comes out in just several weeks, and both cost us in the thousands of dollars to produce. We have an amazingly talented team, and those are going out now and blessing small groups, marriage ministries, and people who have been impacted by the teaching. The Fused series has reached thousands of marriages. We're getting emails every month from people who are blessed by that. And how many of you understand if we lose the family, we lose a lot more than we think? That's why the devil assaults gender and marriage and family over and over and over. And this is where our vision talk comes in. Pastors are swamped. Not all churches can produce content like we do. But imagine if more ministries helped produce excellent material for free and blessed churches. Imagine if a pastor had what one pastor wrote us and said, he feels like he has backup. You know, while he's preaching through the Gospel of John, FTG marriage videos were being watched in small groups that same week, and now marriages are being strengthened and the church is going through the Gospel of John, and they don't have tens of thousands of dollars or thousands of dollars in camera equipment like we do. Imagine if raising up people to help counsel others in the church included watching a series of FTG videos and learning in that way, then to serve and how to communicate truth. Imagine for me, if I raised money every year so that our team could produce amazing content every year, so churches could be given more and more equipping resources every year. That's how we think for the gospel. And God is now using those resources and answering our prayer so we are fired up and we give Him glory. Another few key points of what's happened this year, we produced almost 80 videos on doctrine, uh, and our why series was launched where we're answering questions that most believers and even new ones need answered. We hit topics like sin and sexuality, gender, how we talk, how we study the Bible, why we go to church, why Jesus hasn't returned yet, how to love your wife, how to be a godly wife, sovereignty, the gospel, the Holy Spirit, holiness of God, how to increase trust and intimacy in your marriage, raising godly kids, suicide, anxiety, and more. And that has been an effort that God has used so greatly. The podcast, this podcast, is regularly ranked in the top 100 of all religious Christianity and is peaked at number 13 in our first year. And so in this month alone, we are seeing some 50,000 downloads around the world. We've entered 160 countries globally this year, which means people are not just listening in North America, but we've got people downloading the podcast in China, Qatar, Iraq, Sudan, and countries that have underground missionaries. And so, by God's grace, in a real way, we're being used as digital missions as sound doctrine gets behind the lines, either ministering to the missionaries who are there and who are underground. And if some of you are listening right now know that we love you, we're praying for you, and we're so thankful that we are able to do this to encourage you now. But also it's being used to reach people who are newer to the faith or not of the faith as they listen or they get sent a podcast to listen to. This is a huge opportunity for us, and one that to be honest, I didn't see coming, but now I'm seeing very clearly God has chosen to use this podcast and our resources. And so at some point, language translation becomes a project for us as well as we seek to not just bless Americans with this material and Canadians here in North America, but people in churches and ministries around the world who are on the front lines. As we've grown, we've continued to assess how we're structured to ensure we stay strong and we stay accountable to our vision and mission. So some of you have asked, you know, how are you funded and how are you structured? Let me give you some back behind the scenes information. FTG is a nonprofit ministry now. We're fully funded by generous people who believe in the work we're doing. So this means our goal is not to make money and turn profits and to become sort of a business powerhouse to get rich. We respect the for-profit industry. There's a place for that. So many of you are in the business world, and that's great. Uh, and there is a place for people to sell music, of course, in Christianity and publishing companies have to charge for books, and there are commodities and other avenues of business. But our goal is to fundraise and put that money towards getting sound doctrine to everyday people. People don't give to FTG just to get a tax break, but being a 501c3 now allows us to provide that benefit. So all around it's a win-win as people step out in faith and obedience to support our labor. And we steward those resources and give an account to people and to God for how we execute what he's given us to do. Uh, as far as structure, FTG has a board. We have an annual budget we stick to and we publish an annual financial report. Our board serves as an accountability mechanism to keep financials and strategy and our mission on course. I'm the president and founder of for the gospel. So my job is obviously to lead the team and protect the vision and the direction, to provide leadership, to create content, of course. That's what I love to do. I love the Bible and I love people and I want to serve the Lord in that way. And I work with contributors and partners to expand our content. As far as how we're structured financially, we work with a third-party accounting firm who oversees our financial practices. And now that we've completed our first year of ministry and we're completing our reports, we are eligible to pursue ECFA regarding our financial stewardship. That's a really big deal to us and sort of a badge of integrity. Uh, good ministries, solid ministries utilize that option to let people know we have audits and we look at things internally, and third parties look at things internally to make sure that our business practices in the nonprofit world are above board. Another key FTG carefully selects contributors because people end up going to their churches and listening to more of their resources. We've seen this happen a ton this year. I just got a phone call the other day from one of our contributors who said seven families have joined their church in just the last two months because they heard material on for the gospel, then they saw him and saw that they were a local church. They went there, they were looking for one, and boom, great people, God's people, find a great church and God's faithful leader. And that is a huge deal, which means I have got to make sure, and our team has got to make sure that contributors are vetted, that people are contributors for the gospel who we would send our own kids to for advice. People that if they lead churches, I would tell my own children, go there as a grown adult. This year, those testimonies have been fun to hear about as people find faithful churches and reliable ministries. And so understand we take that kind of influence really, really seriously. And while on the podcast, we may have somebody on to discuss a certain topic, or we may meet and talk with an athlete who is glorifying God through their sport, or people in the apologetics world who uh come from different positions than us, maybe on eschatology or a secondary doctrine. When we say someone is a contributor, they are a video teacher, somebody that we say, listen to this person. And if they are a church leader or they are a disciple maker, some of them are great godly women who are in their churches discipling women and being faithful. We would say go to those churches and come under the godly qualified leaders there. That's what being a contributor looks like at for the gospel. Finally, what are some of our financial goals and where are we heading? Well, the Lord continues to open doors for expansive ministry opportunities. And so over the last year, we have assessed where we can go now, and we've honed it in on three particular areas. These are our primaries of what we plan to do in 2022, Lord willing. Number one, we're going to expand our content, and biblical illiteracy continues to be a huge issue. The amount of rock solid churches are in decline. Many have shut down. Some people weren't as solid as you thought, and they shut down, and now you can't find as many good churches in certain areas. And the thirst and hunger for theologically sound content has only increased. It's at an all-time high as people go to online media to get sound doctrine. And so we've begin con we've begun conversations with uh several Christian content specialists, really amazing contributors to add to our team. And we want to expand our digital network and keep pushing content out. Our goal is to increase our content footprint by 300% in the next year, which will allow us to saturate the market, if you will, with even more content, plowing TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and other platforms with biblical content focused on everyday people and getting sound doctrine in front of them. Another element is to enhance video, not just to expand our content. Online video continues to be the number one avenue of consumption for information here in the US. And COVID and all of the turmoil and disruption in the political forum has only increased the amount of use in the digital media space. And so we believe that showcases the importance of Christian digital media ministries. So we're going to continue to push into video and enhance it. We're adding full-time digital media specialists, we're adding expert level creatives who will increase our video production quality and allow us to expand the number of videos and the distribution of those videos on various platforms. Third, we're going to begin putting out what you could call curriculum resourcing or church resourcing. This is us taking the video productions we've done and pairing them with workbooks and more free video resources so that churches and Christian colleges and small groups and people could take a series and take a topic and then utilize it for discipleship. This is expanding what we call the pastor backup, backing up pastors and backing up churches with content. So if you don't have the money and you don't have the people, well we do, and we'll come get your back pastor, and we'll come get your back church leader, and we'll come get your back church member and support what you're doing. Because we're not about for the gospel becoming your church. We're about supporting you in the local church. That's what Jesus promised to build. And while he's been kind to for the gospel, we don't for a second sit around in board meetings and think, yeah, Jesus is building this. This is what he promised to build. No. When you give, you should be giving to for the gospel if you do, second to your local church. Outside of your local church. And if you're using our resources, that's great. But you should be using them in tandem, second to your local church. You should be gathering with the saints, being discipled, and then just use us, use us as a resource, but for local church work. Finally, when it comes to financials, our team is Committed to only spending what God provides in order to accomplish our goal. And so we do not bite off more than we can chew, if you will. Your generosity fuels our resources and projects. And so we look every year at what God provides and what he's given. And then we make a budget based on that. And then we set our goals and we begin to execute. And so this year, our goal is a budget of $341,000. And that allows us to expand what we've done in year one. Year one, we operated on about a $240,000 to $250,000 budget. And so we've upped that by a little bit to expand our goals and shoot for that. If God provides nothing, we'll keep doing what we're doing. If God provides all of that, we know exactly what we're going to do. And if he provides more, we have what we call ABC budgets: aggressive, baseline, and conservative. We operate right now in the conservative space, but if the Lord provides more, we move to baseline. And if he provides even more, we do have very expansive plans and we can move into that aggressive budget pretty quickly. Here's what's incredible. We've already raised 70% of our entire budget for the next year. And that keeps in line with our prayer that we would only ever spend what God provides ahead of time. We're not going to be that ministry that's living month to month, and we're never going to beg you to give big at the end of the year to dig us out of the hole we created by overspending. This is something that respectfully drives me crazy. As a prosperity gospel exile, now in the reformed world for many years in the conservative world theologically, I do not want to hear ministries getting on their radio program or on video and saying, We need you to give at the end of this year. We've we've got a $450,000 hole that we're in and we believe. And I'm going, what are you doing? If we have sound doctrine, do you not look at Proverbs and do you not look at 2 Corinthians 8 and 9? And do you not look at the principles of scripture and a biblical worldview on money and realize that it is not wise and not prudent to overspend all year and then just hit up everyone to dig you out of your hole. That's like me racking credit cards and then having to scramble for months on end to try to pay them all off and then just doing it again. That's exactly what we used to do in the prosperity gospel world. I'd rack my credit cards, we'd rack our credit cards, we'd spend millions and then go rip more people off and beg them to give and say, God will heal you if we do that. Now I'm not saying all those ministries that do that in the sound doctrine space are bad or sinful. I am saying when it comes to our generation and more specifically for the gospel, we just don't want to play that game. I'm not going to get on the podcast and we're not going to get on video and beg you to dig us out of our hole. Like I said, if the Lord provides nothing, I'm going to pay the $29.99 a month and we're still going to podcast. And our team is going to edit and we're going to put out videos because we believe in what we're doing, not for money, but for the gospel and the glory of God. And so understand that's the way we approach. God has already provided $240,000 for our budget this year, and that's still going to help us double our output. If we raise the goal of $341,000, we'll just do even more, we'll triple our output, we'll expand our team and go even further. But again, in the end, we're content with what God does at God's pace. And I think it's important that you who are listening know the way that we are operating this ministry. We're ready to do more, but we're relying on God's timing. And so far, we've not really asked our general audience for money, and we don't plan on making this a habit, but each year I want to put the vision and the mission in front of you in a healthy way. You should know again where we're heading, and it glorifies God to tell you the story that He's writing through your generosity. So many of you have given, I want to say thank you outside of your local church. If you feel like this is a ministry worth partnering with, you can go to forthegospel.org and all the info is there on our giving page. If you're a church that sees what we've called digital missions as a valuable option and you're benefiting from our free resources, consider partnering with us and help keep us going. If you can't and your church is strapped for cash and it's really hard, well, don't give. Just use. Use our ministry. Eat up the free resources. And Pastor, know that we have your back. Please continue to pray more than anything that God lets us keep going and that He enables us and empowers us to pound the digital world with gospel truth to invade screens and ears and minds of people around the world. We thank you for an incredible year. I want to thank our team publicly and praise God for them. And I want to thank you here and now for all that you've done as our FTG family to take a ministry idea and bring it to reality. But all of us know most of all, Jesus, we thank you for all you've done to make your own name great. You're the one that did it, you're the one that gave the gifts. All of this is for you and through you. And so we praise you, Jesus our Lord, for this and pray that you would be glorified in 2022 and that you would let us be a trusted ministry known for sound doctrine and spreading your gospel around the world. We'll be back next Monday with another episode. Merry Christmas, Happy New Year. We love you. We're thankful for you all. Hey, let's keep on living for the gospel.