With me today is my friend Kosti Hinn. Kosti, really stoked to have you here. Pastor of Shepherd's House Bible Church in Chandler, Arizona. Did I get that right? Yes, you did. Chandler, Phoenix, always in this. And then for the Gospel Ministries as well. And you have a book coming out soon on the Holy Spirit, correct? Yes, sir. What's the name of that? Knowing the Spirit. I remember God Greed Prosperity Gospel. That was like when we came back to the U.S. It was the third book that my son read before he went off to college. Anyways, I'm encouraged always with that. And you're also speaking at the Radius Conference. Yeah. Coming up in June 28th and 29th, you're going to be sharing, I believe you're talking about the true gospel. And true gospel, you're down here at Radius, we always talk about culture, language, but the time aspect of why the true gospel needs to be protected. Give me just a brief thoughts on what you're going to be sharing there. Yeah, well the true gospel needs to be preached and protected for a number of reasons. The most important reason of all is because that's what Christ commands us to preach, and so that is the number one focus, is what we're for. In the midst of that though, Preaching the full and true gospel would put you then against false gospels, things that set themselves up against the knowledge of God, and that deserves some level of attention and awareness for the church and for missionaries and really just, I think, the missiology world in general today, to be very careful of what we would consider fruitfulness in the church, growth in the church, advancement in the church. We are only advancing as much as we preach the full and true gospel. And so I want to highlight for people that there are advancements on the surface in so-called Christianity, or what appears to be the church advancing in different continents, in different countries, and places around the world. But there are false Gospels that are prevalent there. And so in South America, I talk to friends and people in the missions world there, and they say that the number one thing is the Prosperity Gospel, and it's one of their greatest challenges. And so I'll have friends over there, and especially, of course, in Africa as well. But South America and Africa are prevalent. They'll tell me, hey, don't be fooled by what you see. If you see explosive spirituality, and you see this renewal of, oh, the church is growing, and the church is rising. Listen, brother, a lot of it is, unfortunately, what you used to preach or what you used to believe or what your uncle or family or many of these famous prosperity preachers are propagating. So, when we preach the true gospel, I think it takes us back to what Scripture shows us and what we need to be preaching. And then when we highlight what the false gospels of, whether it's the Word of Faith movement or the prosperity gospel, are doing to the church, globally, it renews a little bit of our zeal, like Paul the Apostle, to go in and to reason, and to refute error, and to rebuke those that are preaching false Gospels, and to bring in the truth. And so I want to highlight those two things, and make much of Christ in it. Now, I'm so encouraged in that because we hear in missions so often, well, there's the rise of the church in the global south, and there's the rise of the church in so many other cultures. And there is, there are certain things that I would say, man, that's authentic, that's real. But Christians need to exercise more discernment in just not getting excited about numbers. And when we hear the rise of these big movements, there's a big fear that people don't understand some of this is counterfeit. Some of this is prosperity gospel on steroids. Some of it is word of faith. Some of it is just really emotionalism run amok. And so, yeah, I'm hoping that your message is gonna hopefully bring us back. And this isn't just admissions, like you and I were talking a little bit before this, what's happened with, the church in general and what people are excited about post-COVID. Talk a little bit about that. Yeah, so I would illustrate this in a couple of fun ways. I'm a church planter, so I'll go there first. Our church plant, by the grace of God and in His providence, has grown numerically in the first year. You've come, you've preached, and we want to put an emphasis on missions at our church. Okay, but we want to qualify this if the church is growing. And I say, oh, we're part of a growing church, Brooks. All right, Kosti. Okay, how? Okay, sure, you're wide, or you're big, or you're larger now. How deep are you? What's being preached? Who's being discipled? How do you even measure that? You know, we had 89 decisions. Well, hold on, how many of those people were and are being discipled when you baptize people? What was their profession of faith? What are they being baptized into? What kind of church are they? So even in the local church, first and foremost, I want to kind of put that up in the sort of maybe pragmatic, seeker-driven American church model, where we get big on numbers. Oh, we're growing. Oh, that's awesome. It must be God's blessing. Well, slow down. What is that growth and is it healthy? I'll use then now a nature illustration. I really like nature. I always watch Animal Planet. It's like a fun thing in our house. Okay, redwood trees, big interest point for my son and my kiddos. Redwoods, they do grow tall. They end up somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 feet. but they grow there about two feet on average, maybe two, sometimes five in big years or really moist climates, but in the right environment, in general, two to five. So do the math on that. That's a long time to reach the tallest peak in the height. So in the same way, healthy growth is going to exhibit this steady, what William Carey called plodding, P-L-O-D-D-I-N-G, along as you grow. So you wanna know, how healthy are we? Where are the roots? How deep do they go? Or how wide are they spread? So that would be another illustration. And then now let me pull this over into missions globally, the global church. We want to be so careful when we hear, oh the church is exploding, well the church is expanding, we're seeing the rise of the church. Okay, what is that and what's being taught? One more American illustration if I can. conservatism right now, conservatism right now post COVID. On the rise for sure in America. Not to get overly political, but you know what I'm talking about. And people will say, oh, we're coming back, we're taking over the churches, this, and what they're excited about is that Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson and some cultural figures are starting to use conservative language. We wanna be so careful. That is conservatism, not Christianity. So when we say we're taking over or there's going to be a red wave, it all gets political. We want to be so careful with that. That doesn't mean the country is going back to God. That doesn't mean anything is going to come under the church. Hold on now. Just because Jordan Peterson is conservative and Joe Rogan says things that you might agree with, doesn't mean the church, the remnant is rising. Jesus said the world will actually hate Christians, and they hated him first, and that this will be a narrow road, not a wide one. And so now think of that on the global scale. we really want to qualify, is this a movement of materialism? Because that, you and I could have some of the biggest churches in Indonesia, in Brazil, in Africa, we just go to Nigeria and preach the prosperity gospel, and I'll, or you, have a church of 50, 70, 80,000 people, and then we could have little outposts and multi-sites of this, that, and the other, and people are buying into the American dream, what we would call the prosperity gospel. So I think qualifying what is under that growth is so key. That's not popular though. I get it. Donor dollars will come in more if I say we are, and then this, or people get super impressed with numbers. I think we should just slow down and be content with plotting like faithful missionaries. Amen. Oh man. I mean, numbers and missions tend to sway the day way, way, way too much. But that faithfulness, that plotting, Let me ask you another question, just because we're talking about the prosperity gospel and you were part of, and still I think have ties to the American gospel, that video series that kind of came out. Why do you think young people in particular, because we have some Radius students who got saved through that and who ended up getting plugged into good local churches, growing in their churches and then growing in their heart for missions and ended up here. Why do you think that resonated with young people? Why do you think, especially people who are being sucked into prosperity gospels, sucked into aspects of that, why do you think that had such an impact on them? Well, first and foremost, God's providence. He chose to use that particular resource. I think the effort put in as well by the American Gospel Team and Brandon Kimber directing it did a phenomenal job. He's got this real deep passion for truth and love. And he wants to reason. It's very Pauline in the sense that he wants to reason and to all men become all things and sort of get on your level. So what did he do? He used media, which is an incredibly useful access point because someone is more willing to sit in their living room and watch it on Netflix or Amazon Prime. and hear hard things and analyze and assess and weigh it all because they're in the safety of their own living room or their own mind and they have no one saying, now you know you're a false believer, right? You know it's not, you know you're a heretic, right? It's like, no, no, I can now sit there while the Holy Spirit works in the heart. So media was helpful. And two, I do think a generation was primed for a very clear understanding of not only soteriology, so salvation, but also some level of ecclesiology. What is a church leader? What is a faithful church? What should I be looking for and being taught? And when you do that for a generation that, in my very limited and humble opinion, has been starved of clear doctrinal truth for some 30 to 40 years while we're in this American church bubble of pragmatism and growth, and, oh, you had fun today at youth group? High five, great. Look at how we're growing. And you go, are our kids even saved? They're 18, 19, 20. Why, when they went away to college and university, did they not really hold fast to their confession? We raised them in church. Well, yeah, you raised them in a social fun. exciting environment that was entertaining, but did they have clarity of truth? And now I think we're in an era where clear, dogmatic, biblical truth is actually what people are hungry for, because they've realized all the other stuff was a house of cards. in God's timing, American gospel comes in, and then lastly, in God's kindness. Men like John Piper said it was the best presentation of prosperity gospel takedown that he'd ever seen. Him and his sweet wife had watched it. I think you have these men who, in God's kindness, recommended it, and that allowed more people to go, okay, let's check it out. That's encouraging. I'm always encouraged by the resources that Yeah, I have come out of that and just the impact that it's had on young people in general. Speaking of resources, you're part of For the Gospel. Yeah. Explain to the guys in the Radius world what is For the Gospel, because I've been on that podcast, enjoyed it. I'm intentionally positioning a crocodile head through you. 100%. Yeah, we have a new set, kind of like this, like where we have our little studio and on the shelf you will see, right now there's a small croc head. That's from you. There will be a larger that's for Titus. That was that one was for my son. Yeah, Titus got his and you're like his hero He's like it's a real missionary. I'm like, yes, I just like the guys you've been reading about in history and So for the gospel the media ministry we started because the Lord had allowed some level of influence and I know that was through my testimony and a little bit of the noise because what I came out of and people were were drawn to that or quote-unquote attracted to it like whoa this is interesting and I never wanted to be a sideshow in Christianity or some spectacle of like oh and tabloid fare of what I came out of. I happen to be a pastor so I preach the truth and I refute error. It happens to be that because my last name is Hin and my uncle is Benny that the error I refute is a family member, which happens to look a little bit like Matthew 10, you know, when Jesus is like, your household is going to sort of turn against itself. So all that is fascinating, I get it, and also most of my friends and people I doctrinally align with happen to have been refuting Him for years, and we're sort of a lost cause. So when one of us gets saved, it's like, Wait, okay, yeah, this is a reminder, it's real and it works. Well, yeah, you guys, the gospel, I'm just a guy. God saved me, he'll save you, he'll save anyone. So in that, it brought with it opportunities to speak on the issues. And then more people started coming and saying, hey, I have a question, or hey, I have family similar. Oh, I got saved just like you. How did you this? Or what do you do with this? And as a pastor, I'm a man with a Bible, and I give God's counsel." So in that, others had come and said, like, would you write a book on this issue? And would you speak to this and to this? In the end, I said, all right, I don't want to start Costihan Ministries. No offense to anybody who names their ministry after themselves. It could be helpful. Like, I know good guys. Like, Vody Baca Ministries, you're fine, Vody. Like, good for you, man. Bring it. For me, personally, I wasn't going to be like, Kostian Ministries, and now fill out my speaker form, and I'm itinerant, and doing all that. I had a pastor in my life who was a disciple maker, and he looked at me and he said, yeah, two choices here. You can do that other thing, and that's fine. Leverage all the attention and whatever influence God's given, and go do your thing, and be Mr. Speaker, and you go be itinerant, and have a good time, live in your house, and grow old. Or, think about leveraging this for God's work, and maybe using media and some of that, and doing something that's a little different, and it won't be as much about you, you're a part of it, you can lead it, but... I don't know, I think it's important what men do and why they do it and how they do it. I'll leave it there." And he left it there, and I was haunted by this for years. So when it came to opportunities to do ministry, my wife and I sat down, and I got asked to launch a website for speaking and all this stuff, and we just said no. Here's what we're going to do. We're going to call it For the Gospel. The name was still available, which was crazy. And I said, why don't we get a group of people together who are faithful? Why don't we have people on the podcast? We'll use video. We'll use media. We'll use high-tech, high-excellence resources. Let's reach a generation and equip and encourage them, driving them to local churches and to help them get answers, because they're always on their phone. They're always on Instagram and wherever else. I'm not saying that's right. It's just reality. And let's have like Brooks Buser on to talk about missions, and let's have Nancy Guthrie on to talk about losing children and bereavement, and let's have pastors on to talk about issues. And why don't I take topics and break them down biblically, and let's do some video series on Mormonism, and have my buddy Michael Wilder come on and talk about how he left Mormonism, and let's have a guy come on and talk Roman Catholicism. Let's equip people. Marriage, family, all that. So it started that way, and the Lord has grown it in that way, and it has a board. All of our churches are very much involved, and there's accountability, there's clarity and transparency, but it's a media resource ministry that is meant to provide sound doctrine for everyday people. So we're taking the truths, like Chuck Swindoll always used to say, I'm trying to bring the cookies down from the top shelf. I'm trying to just bring truth in a simple way, and by God's grace, He's grown it, and thank the Lord that it's for the gospel, it's not for Costihan. That was never the goal, and so in that, I get to lead it, but like you at Radius, I'm just a part, and want to see the Lord use it for His glory. Yeah, amen. No, I've seen some of the guests you've had on and they're direct. They're able to say things that there's other, I mean, we all know of different outlets, some things that we are encouraged by, some things I wish we could reshape that. But yeah, I pray that it continues to have that edge to where then they're going to tell the truth, even if it's uncomfortable. So keep it up. Speaking of Radius, you've been down here now. You've had some of your church members that came through just a few weeks ago, potentially going to be students and some other of your co-pastors in the church there at Shepherds. Thoughts on Radius, just because you're seeing it in person. You and I have talked for years, but any thoughts on it? Just spend it a night. You had a band right outside your room last night. Yeah, what's the time limit on this part of the video? Because I can go. You're only talking about Radius. I got my merch. Exactly. Ready. You're staying warm. I got my pullover. Yeah, really, I'm just staying warm. Okay, a few thoughts. Number one, last night was awesome. We got to fellowship with missionaries, spent some time with some incredible individuals, and slept in a really awesomely cold room. There was a party outside, there was a lot of music, and it was outside the compound here. No, to radius and your credit, I would say seeing the focus on faithfulness is one of the most appealing things about Radius. There is the drive to reach people, yes. There is the drive to train and be knowledgeable, yes. There is the drive to see students come and churches get involved and all of that. It's fine and good and it's right. But at the core of all that, the why, the motive, the driver, the common denominator is we're trying to be faithful. And that's what I'm loving about Radius. I knew that about you anyway. You are an example of that because of reaching the Yembe Yembe and you're plodding along and the 13 years there and the seven you waited to build the teaching hut and to form the language connections be in the community before you were able to even teach the gospel with clarity and that fluency. You lived this, so when you now lead Radius, I know that it's going to reflect your convictions, but the team around you and the people here hold the same convictions, and it's faithfulness, and it's steadfastness, and it's that enduring ministry that's anchored to the hope of Christ and the gospel in his return. So seeing that excites me. It makes me want to see young people from my church come here and train to be raised up and then sent out to reach the unreached. That would be another element that is super appealing to me, is I've seen the the easy road of the American dream approach. I've also seen the easy road of international ministry and sort of that prosperity gospel way, but not heretical and not as crazy, but I would say to pick on ourselves a little bit, the ease of which we can create our own little ministry kingdom and sort of fly high above everything and go places and do our thing and look busy, but we're not really doing the hard work. And what I love about Radius is you guys are preparing people to do things that are very uncommon, that should be common, and they should be normal, and that is to reach unreached language groups. So it's going to be difficult. It's going to take a while. You're going to have to learn multiple languages. Yeah, you are going to suffer. You're going to need to persevere. Welcome to normal Christianity, not nominal Christianity. That fires me up. It is my love language. I get it because I came out of an extreme mindset. And so people said, well, now you're just, you know, you're a little more crazy because, you know, you were in such heresy. And now I'm like, no, this is what normal Christianity is. Brooks isn't nuts. He's not weird and crazy. Oh yeah. You know, you missionaries are weird. You go reach the Yambi Yambi. No, this is normal. And what I'm loving about Radius is you have defined normal as this. And now they're going to be a faithful generation of missionaries. When they suffer, they won't go, why is this happening? Why aren't we? It's like, no, this is what happens. And we plod along in faithfulness. Jesus did it. Paul did it. All the apostles did it except Judas and faithful Christians throughout all church history have done it. So let's do it. Amen. Amen. How, so the program, this is always something that we're encouraging. We find that better missionaries come from better churches, and the more we can attract good churches, there's a wide, I mean, you know the spectrum. In the English-speaking world, it's all over the map, but the better churches, that lane, we're always trying to get in contact with those guys. What would you say to better church pastors, church pastors that would have a careful ecclesiology, a careful soteriology, would take membership pretty seriously would take the idea of, hey, if you say you are a follower of Christ, there should be some evidence of that in your life. Maybe not immediately, but it should be something that we're going to see a ramification of what you say your mouth says you believe. What would you say to those types of pastors would be the benefit for them to send their members who they want to reached the ends of the earth, how would this program benefit those types of churches and church leaders? Yeah, so first and foremost, peace of mind. I think a lot of pastors of those churches, including me, are concerned about doctrinal fidelity, missions philosophy, what our people are going to be taught, will it be consistent, are you just some pragmatist trying to kind of do a thing, lead an organization, or are you going to be consistent? You are, and that's why. I mean, we're friends anyway. I love what you've done for the gospel and the glory of God, but also what helps our friendship, I think, be strong and what makes me go, yeah, I would want my own son, Titus, to come. If my oldest son became a missionary, any of my kids, I'd be like, yeah, you're going to Radius as part of your training and development and deploying. Why? Well, because I trust, you know, maybe by then he'll call you Uncle Brooks. I trust Uncle Brooks, and he's done it, he's been there, and he is anchoring that ship. It's going where it needs to go, and it's staying where it needs to stay. I think that brings a lot of peace of mind to pastors who are saying, we are sending you, that means we endorse what's there. So number one, you got peace of mind. But number two as well, I think of stewardship and accountability. We are responsible as elders in many ways, for the diversification of people and money, two resources that God gives His church. How you diversify those resources matters, and so for me, for us, our conviction is we want people and we want money going to places that are going to steward it well, so when we give an account to Christ, we have been found faithful as stewards. So that means I'm not going to partner with just any missions organization. It means that I'm not just going to send people anywhere. It's got to be the right fit. And I believe Radius is holding the line in that way. And I would say that whether we were sitting here at Radius, and I've said it a ton at our church and other places, and you're not paying me to say that. That's easy. I'll pay you to let me say it. I want people, money, resources, and focus going towards organizations like this because what's the goal? The goal is that the young missionaries and the older missionaries reach their goal and achieve the purpose that God has for them. And if Radius is willing to be a tool to get them there, game on, we're in. If Radius is about its little kingdom and just being a non-profit to raise some money and you can call yourself the president of what, well, I'm not interested in that, or give some fake numbers and have a newsletter that makes everyone get excited and send more money. No. There can be exciting things, but in the end, I know that you have a philosophy that whether there's 8 students or 80 students, this is the goal, this is why we do what we do, and this is how we're going to do it. And I'll say one final thing. I think it matters who leads missions organizations, and this would be the pastors. Just like for pastors. Who's leading the church? What's their background? What have they been through? And what's their resume? Why? because that's how God shapes them for leadership. You're leading Radius out of a 13-year journey of having done what you're now teaching. And so I think there's some credibility there for pastors to go, yeah, Brooks is one of us. And the MBMB now have their own elders, and you go back and visit, but you did a real church plant, you raised up real elders. And so you look at all that, I think pastors with solid ecclesiology go, that's the real deal. Okay, I want to be a part of that and be behind that. So those would be just a few of my thoughts. I have more, but I'll leave it at that. Okay. Well, brother, we are stoked to have you here. Yeah, it's been a long time coming, but I'm grateful. I actually, I'm gonna ask you, so you've got your son Titus, and he's reading To the Golden Shore right now. Tell me a little bit about that, or a kid's version. He's reading one of the Adam and Irem Judson novels. Okay. Yeah, I've gotta double check if it's To the Golden Shore, if it's a short version that they've made, but it's a novel, it's a book, yeah. Either way, like, Adam and Irem's life, and like, losing two wives, and losing a lot of children, and going through just heavy, so how come you're allowing him, tell us how old Titus is. Yeah, he's eight. And we have a few different resources. We have a missionary collection of books that are out. All those missionaries that are all these colored books. I forget the publisher. And then we have these novels. So, I didn't get to go. Late convert, a little bit of a late bloomer. But now I can send, right? And I can raise up. And I'm not forcing my kids to have to be missionaries or saying, you will do this, trying to live vicariously through them from some false sense of guilt. Just real simple. I get the choice of deciding whether I'm going to celebrate missionaries, or I'm gonna sort of just like live my life and do my thing as a churchman. And what we've done in our home is we choose to celebrate missionaries and the mission of God advancing. So what that meant was my wife began to buy books and put missionary stories in front of the kids and they would ask questions and then we'd engage their questions. So Titus was fascinated. I was calling him Eric Liddell for years. It's Eric Little, right? Right, or what do you call him? No, I okay. I've we went through the same thing with John Patton versus John Payton Yeah, so so I'm calling him Eric little I'm pretty sure that's the way to pronounce about the kids were like wait He didn't run in the way. He didn't but it's a race. He didn't train for how did he win? So they're fascinated. Well, Adam, I am Judson He's became my favorite American missionary to learn about him in seminary and Titus is just mind-blowing that Dad, did you know, this is the other day, did you know, like, he kept, his wives keep dying, and his children kept dying, and kids kept dying, like, it's, and it's, he's just marrying these women, and like, because they kept dying, and his eight-year-old mind doesn't yet understand, like, how amazing that, it's biblical remarriage, but he's just fascinated, he's not a polygamist, he's got wives that are dying on the mission field. And he's like, and then I think, it's like he didn't even get to see his baby, or like the baby died, and then, Mom, how did he die? How does the baby die? Just feed the baby food, right? I mean, but they couldn't feed the baby food, and she's explaining like, nursing infants, and dysentery, and what missionaries went through back then, and the suffering that he went through. He's like, all just like for the gospel. He's just preaching the gospel. going to these places. So for me as a dad, there's two things I ask of the Lord. I go, please, please, please, either let my kids, some of them or all of them or one of them, be missionaries. Let them experience what I think is normal and what's amazing. And now through tears and cheers, watch that and go, all right, Lord, now you're answering my prayer. or would you let me and help me and my wife Christine raise children who love, appreciate, celebrate, and grasp the mission of God, and a church that loves, cheers, and celebrates the mission of God, so either they will become those who go, or they will be the most amazing senders? possible. I know we can't make them all be one, or God does, but so if my son ends up becoming a businessman and one day he's watching this and he's wealthy, great. He better be the best sender and the biggest giver in the missions world for his ability. And if not a missionary, if he becomes a pastor or he's a Christian, he better be the guy cheering it on. So the mission of God is just what we want to celebrate. I can't guarantee salvation, only the Lord does that. But I can guarantee that he'll be raised in a household where we're going to be faithful to celebrate the mission of God through his servants. And so that's That's what we're enjoying, and thank God he loves it. It's wild. I mean, you know, he's got his crockhead from you, and he's really into it. Now he's mad that he can't come on trips. He's like, why can't I come to this trip? I'm like, I gotta go on my own on this one, bud, but I'll bring you to Radius another time. He doesn't get it. I think that passage, Romans 10, 13 through 15, and just The two parts that Paul brings in, first the sovereignty of God and salvation, that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. God does the saving. Humans don't save themselves. But then the means, these ones who go, how can they hear? How can they believe unless someone preaches to them? And then how can they preach unless they're sent? And those senders Man, I always like to think of them as one, faithful church members, two, people who let the Great Commission affect their lives here, and then they raise their kids in an intentionality that, hey, someday if you go, someday if we have to take you to LAX to get on that plane, We'll do it with tears in our eyes, but we'll be proud of you. And I mean, good senders, they raise their kids with that in mind. So kudos to you. Kudos to your wife, because that's a brave wife to think through that. She wins. Sometimes I go, what if he does become? Because we already know, well, what if they don't? But like, what if he does? She goes, then I will cry at the airport, and we will say bye to them. And maybe they'll be like Brooks and Nina and these other people who have done it. And it'll be okay, and I'm like, yeah, what if Grace, yeah, our little blonde-haired, blue-eyed daughter, I'm like, yeah, Brooks is blonde-haired, blue-eyed, these are California people. There's a sense of inspiration when others do it. You go, okay, we're not alone. That's the living cloud of witnesses, if you will. So, I'm grateful for your example, and just trying to do our best and trust the Lord with the results. Thank you, brother. Great having you. Appreciate you a ton.