Active and intentional giving should be part of the repertoire of every Christian leader, but creating the space and time to strategize and execute on that is frequently the roadblock to getting it done. Douglas Cobb, the managing partner at The Finishing Fund, joins Greg to discuss what investing together for the Great Commission looks like, and how The Finishing Fund helps leaders like you invest in reaching parts of the world that are yet untouched by the Gospel. Doug is joining us at Convene 2022, make sure to register soon to hear him speak live!
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The Great Commission And A Leader’s Work World With Doug Cobb
Welcome to the show, coming to you from Los Angeles and Louisville. Doug, welcome.
Thank you, Greg. It’s great to be with you.
A quick bio for those of our folks who may not know you as a lifelong entrepreneur. That’s important because you’re not a theology guy. You’re a business guy with a diverse background in media and technology. You were the Chairman of Chrysalis portfolio company Appriss, a Louisville-based innovative tech solution company that assists law enforcement efforts. You were the President and CEO of Greater Louisville Inc. You were the President and Founder of The Cobb Group, publisher of newsletters. You hold a BA from Williams College. You are a three-time Inc. 500 CEO and Kentucky Entrepreneur of the Year three times. You definitely don’t have that theology background.
I have been teaching a Sunday school class for twenty years, so that does come in as well, but my background is in business, starting companies, building them, and selling them.
How A Lifelong Entrepreneur Got Interested In The End Times
I’m just messing around here a little bit for our audience because it’s great if we have a theology background. We’re going to talk about some things that normally are things talked about by people with Master’s in Divinity and all that, so that’s why I think it’s so innovative and interesting. How did an entrepreneur from Louisville get interested in the end times and the Great Commission and write a book, And Then the End Will Come?
There are several bank shots in the course of this, but it begins in 1994 when I met Paul Eshleman, who at the time was leading the Jesus Film Project. He liked to grab hold of guys like me, take us to amazing exotic places around the world, and turn us on to what the Jesus Film was doing. He took me to Nigeria, Ghana, and Sierra Leone in 1994. Before that trip, I was like most American Christians, going, “God, I’ll do anything you want. Just please don’t make me go to Africa.” The first place he takes me is Nigeria in Africa. That trip was amazing for a lot of reasons and had a lot of impact on my life, but one of the most important was connecting me with Paul.
When he left the Jesus Film Project, he started a ministry called Finishing the Task (FTT) and began to focus on God’s kingdom on the task of engaging the world’s remaining unengaged people groups with the gospel. When he started FTT in 2005, there were about 3,500 people groups on earth that nobody had ever been to with the gospel. Paul’s mission has always been to see the gospel go everywhere. He became passionate about those groups.
He invited me into that as a volunteer member of his team. As we got further and further into that, my wife and I began to give toward seeing some of these groups engage. We were privileged to be the funders of some engagement projects, which is an amazing privilege, and what I’ve continued to do since then. It’s also through FTT that I came to understand the promise of Matthew 24:14. In Matthew 24, at the beginning of that chapter, Jesus’ disciples ask Him. This is my paraphrase, but it’s what they ask Him, “When are you coming back?”
He gives them a long answer with a lot of things people are familiar with, wars, rumors of wars, and all that stuff. In verse 14, He says, “This gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, all people groups, and then the end will come.” I became captivated by the idea that we might be the generation that could see the end of the Great Commission race. We could be the last runner in that relay and the generation that thereby opened the door to the return of Christ by completing the work that He gave us to do and opening the door to that promise of Matthew 24:14. That has become a compelling vision to me since that time.
Your wife, Gina, and you, as you alluded to, have been able to fund the engagement of hundreds of unengaged people groups. It’d be important for our audience to know there are unreached and unengaged people groups. Talk about those two words because they’re important as we go forward.
Let’s talk about three, in fact. There’s the reached world. That’s the world where there are plenty of Christians and plenty of churches. There’s the unreached world. Those are places where there are some Christians and some churches, but not very many. Think about the Arab world. Most of India would qualify for that category, and a lot of Asia. At the bottom of the stack, there’s the unengaged world. These are people groups that, as far as we know, have never had a single Christian or a single church. Nobody has even been to these places to tell these people about the gospel. What we’re trying to do, my mission is to eliminate that band. I’d like to go from three bands to two, unreached and reached. That will be a remarkable day when we cross that finish line.
The Finishing Fund is something that you established. I don’t want to take all our time to focus on that right at this minute of our time. The Finishing Fund vision is to accelerate the effort to complete the Great Commission, so that there are disciples in every nation by 2022. You’ve basically not just said, “This is important. I’ll pray about it.” You’ve said, “Let’s give to that end.”
It started with Gina and me giving out of our personal funds, but then God gave us the idea for the Finishing Fund as a way to invite other folks into that same mission. Over the course of four years or so, I’ve invited 140 partners into the Finishing Fund. Together, we’ve put up about $14 million and have helped send the gospel to about 500 people groups. The fund is a way to extend my reach beyond what I’m personally able to do and to invite others into this amazing mission. It’s a joy to be able to be the leader of that effort.
Biblical Clues About The End Of The World
There is this conundrum, this little sticky wicket that we’re going to jump into. That is that as soon as somebody reads your book, And Then the End Will Come, they’re going to realize that there are ten clues that Jesus and then the Bible talks about, unpacks, and says, “Watch for these things,” because those are signs. There’s that other side of the coin, the verse that we all can remember real quick, which is, “Nobody knows the hour or the day when Jesus will come.” Many people are probably resting in the camp of “Nobody knows.” Since nobody knows, there’s nothing that we can pin a time on, but you’ve meticulously gone through the ten clues and actually done a chart that is some pretty surprising work. Talk about that.
There’s a tension in the Bible around this issue of trying not to be too specific about picking a time of Jesus’ return. We’re warned against that. He said, “No one knows the hour of the day,” but within a few words of saying that, He also said, “Even so when you see these things occurring, you will know that the end is near.” There’s an understanding. The way I would process it is that we can’t know precisely about His return, but we can know generally about it, the season of His return. What we try to do in the book is point out that there are a number of clues that we are living in the season of Jesus’ return. We don’t try to pin it down to a year or a day, but I believe it’s close.
Could you unpack some of the clues for us?
The most important one is the one we talked about, which is the completion of the Great Commission. You mentioned that I believe that by God’s grace, we can start in all the remaining people groups by the end of 2023. We’ll have crossed a very important finish line in that Great Commission race of believers and disciples in every biblical nation. Even if you set the finish line a little further away, say the translation of the Bible into every language or a church being planted in every place, village, neighborhood, suburb, to other important goals, those goals are only a few years away from being completed. The Global Alliance for Church Multiplication says 2025 for the church in every place goal. ETEN, the leader in translation, says 2033 for the Bible in every language.
Even if the furthest finish line, we’re very close. We’re within ten years or so of seeing that work being completed. There are other clues as well. One big one would be the reestablishment of the nation of Israel, one of the most historically preposterous events that it has ever been. There is no other example of a country, of a people that have been forcibly evicted from their homeland, persecuted for centuries, and have held together as a people group. That’s remarkable. For them to be reassembled and put back into their historical territory, ancestral land, is preposterous.
It’s probably one of the most significant biblical apologies for the existence of God. There’s almost no other way to predict it to explain it. What’s amazing is that God said He would do this. He says He would do it all through the Old Testament. As far back as Deuteronomy 30, He promised that at the end, He would regather His people from the four corners of the earth and give them back their ancestral homeland.
I like the fact that we have a God who calls His shots. He points to the place in the stands where He’s going to hit the ball, and then He hits it there. He does it 3,500 years before He pulls off the home run. That’s important when Jesus linked His return to the reestablishment of Israel. There are a number of others. We can talk about as many of them as you’d like, but all interesting pointers to the soon return of Jesus.
How Leaders Should Prepare For The Second Coming
Let’s take this to the boardrooms, the shop floors, and the cubicles of some in our audience. They heard you say that some organizations would say it might be in the zone of ten-ish more years. Your book says up to maybe 40 more years in the season of Jesus’ return. Many business leaders would say, and this would be a great survey to do, “Since nobody knows when Jesus is coming back, since we don’t know, let’s just carry on.”
I feel like if somebody knew when Jesus was coming back, which nobody does, and they walked in my front door and said, “Everybody, I want to let you know Jesus is coming back tonight by 6:00,” I might run out to my shop floor and say, “Everybody, emergency meeting. There’s something I have to tell you.” Maybe we should accelerate our thinking even if it’s 10, 20, 30, 40, or 50 years from now, not sometime in the future. I’ll probably be dead. What are your thoughts for business leaders?
I’m highly motivated by the hope that my generation will be the one that sees this happen. Probably 40 years is more than I’ve got. I believe that it will be within the next ten or fifteen years. If you pin me down, I would say that. There are several aspects to this. One would be that as followers of Jesus, we want to be personally preparing ourselves to meet our bridegroom. A verse I love in 2 Peter 3, Peter begins that chapter by talking about the day of God coming, the coming judgment. In verses 11 and 12, he says, “What kind of people ought we to be given that this is coming? We should live holy and godly lives, looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God.”
He gives us four instructions. Holy, that means set apart, distinctive. We want to be different from the culture that surrounds us. That’s especially true as we see the culture circling the drain. We don’t want to be drawn into that. We want to stand apart from that. Godly, I think about that as more and more like Jesus, being conformed to the image of our Lord. The fruit of the Spirit is a good list. It is love, joy, peace, and patience.
We do not want to be drawn into a culture circling the drain. We have to stand apart from it and be conformed to the image of the Lord. Share on XWe want to invest ourselves and open ourselves up to the spirits, empowering us to be more and more like Him. Looking forward, the Bible commends people who are looking forward to the return of Jesus. In fact, think about the Lord’s prayer. The very first thing He asks us to pray for is what? “Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” That’s a prayer for the return of Jesus and the establishment of His earthly kingdom. That last part, hastening its coming, that’s the mystery.
What I think that is, at least the way I’ve interpreted it for myself, is that’s about this task of finishing the Great Commission. That’s about being very focused and purposeful in these last days about making sure we get this mission accomplished. Different people have different roles in that. Some people can give toward it. Some people are called to go. Everybody can pray. We all have a role in it, but that’s a big part of what God wants us to be doing.
There’s one more thing that comes to mind, too, if you don’t mind me sharing this. I’ve been thinking a lot about the parable that Jesus tells about the rich fool whose wealth increases. He says, “I know what I’ll do. I’ll tear down my barns, and I’ll build bigger barns.” The assumption is that he doesn’t know anybody, anything, and he’s going to be around for a long time to enjoy the fruit of his labor. In the parable, his life is demanded of him that day. God calls him, “You fool, you know you weren’t rich toward me.”
It’s occurred to me that one of the things we live with in our culture is that we don’t even have to build bigger barns. Our brokerage accounts easily can accommodate a seven-figure number as well as a six and an eight as well as a seven. It can keep getting bigger and bigger. It’s categorically true that whatever is left in those things on the day Jesus comes back will be worthless and useless to us.
If we’re leaning toward the idea that Jesus is coming back, we ought to be leaning into thinking about what God has entrusted to us, how much of that we need to keep, and how much of it we can put to work in his kingdom. For business owners and successful business owners, that’s something to keep in mind. Don’t fall into the trap of letting your barns get bigger because they do. Be conscious of that opportunity.
If we are leaning toward the idea that Jesus is coming back, business leaders must think about how they can put their resources to work in His kingdom. Share on XBe More Intentional About Your Kingdom Portfolio
That’s good. Talk to business leaders, and they’re saying, “I’m in. I’m buying this notion that I wasn’t before. I thought Jesus was coming back someday, but I hadn’t thought about it.” Maybe 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, 40 years from now, maybe in my lifetime, what ideas would you give them that they might do?
One thing I’ve learned in the course of my work in The Finishing Fund and talking to a lot of people about the Great Commission is that if you compare the level of care and thought that people put into managing their secular portfolios, and you compare that to the care and thought they put into managing their kingdom portfolios, there’s typically no comparison. A lot of people are spending their full time running their businesses, which may be a big part of their wealth.
They’re full-time engaged in managing that. If they have a portfolio independent of that, they have a manager, or maybe more than one manager, who is looking after that, structuring it, and advising them on that. Almost nobody approaches their giving portfolio, their kingdom portfolio, with that kind of intentionality. One thought might be to think about how you could be more intentional about your kingdom portfolio. Am I giving to all the things that I should be?
If I look at what Jesus commanded for human compassion, the Great Commission, and other things that He has called us to, my church as a key priority, am I balanced in the proper way? Am I taking advantage of the opportunities that are around me and bringing some of that same thoughtfulness that we spend on our stocks and bonds to our giving and the portfolio of our kingdom? The Bible teaches that we’re going to enjoy the fruit of those investments for a lot longer than we’re going to enjoy the fruit of these. We’re often not nearly as thoughtful about these as we are about the secular side.
“Earth is a test,” as my pastor and your friend Rick Warren likes to say. It’s a test. God is watching. There are rewards for performance. I don’t know about you, but I’ve taught Bible studies where you bring the rewards thing up. People go crazy, and not good crazy.
They’re unhappy.
They’re saying, “Don’t tell me that God laid out in advance that there are rewards.” I’m like, “It’s right here in scripture.”
Don’t blame me, right?
Yes. Don’t blame me. I would chime in a little bit. I was at Biola University for about thirteen years, having a lot to do with raising money. One of the things that I found true of many people with resources, and this is not a good thing, they would respond with a gift to the person who asked them most recently, who they liked, or who had a good donor event. We went fishing with the president. We rode dirt bikes in the desert with the executive director. They had a great two-day weekend at the Ritz-Carlton.
I would say, “How about instead of that, you look at the countries of the world and decide which countries God is calling you to? How about you look at the needs in the world, whether they be poverty, water, sex trafficking, or whatever the need is that you’re called to? You continued to drill that down and said, “For me, it’s crisis pregnancy centers in Philadelphia,” “For me, it’s clean water projects in Kenya,” or whatever the case may be. When the donor rep calls and says, “Would you like to come to our two-day fundraising weekend? We are about XYZ,” and XYZ has nothing to do with what you and your spouse, if you’re married, have decided you want to give to. You can easily say no.
That’s the very kind of intentionality I was talking about, figuring out what God specifically has called you to and pursuing that with the same vigor that you pursue your secular occupation. One of my favorite verses in scripture is Ephesians 2:10. I like it because it follows 8 and 9, which are, “Everybody knows, by grace, you’ve been saved through faith. This is not a work so that no one can boast.”
You have to be intentional in figuring out what God has specifically called you to and pursue it with the same vigor as you would your secular occupation. Share on XIn verse 10, having made the point that our salvation has nothing to do with works, the very next verse, Paul says, “For we are God’s workmanship created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God has prepared in advance for us to do.” I love a couple of things about that verse. One is, I love the idea that while works have nothing to do with our salvation. We’re saved by grace. Works have everything to do with our life in Christ. He has saved us, according to that verse, to do good things that He has prepared in advance for us to do.
I love this idea that God has a list of good works for Doug and for Greg. Those are the things that are designed for me, for you, or for whoever is tuning in to us. It is the fun adventure of figuring out what those things are for you. God’s kingdom is very big. There are so many ways to be active in it, but so many of us take a pass on that and don’t get fully engaged in it. That verse has been motivational to me to try to make sure I discover as many of those things as I can, pick them up, and take advantage of them.
It also takes the guilt away from feeling like you have to say yes to something that you are not called to.
When I talk to people about The Finishing Fund, I feel like it’s a little bit like evangelism. My job is to put this opportunity before them. The Holy Spirit will help them decide if this is the thing for them. They may already be invested in other things. They may have a calling, like you mentioned, to some other area of kingdom work. I’m like, “God bless. That’s great. Go with full speed toward what God has called you to. If this is not the thing, then that’s great. God will provide what we need as well.” It’s good.
I would add this from the other perspective. The pressure is off the donor representative from the enterprise. It’s basically, “Doug, I would love you to prayerfully consider my ministry X, Y, Z. If the answer is no, and you and Gina feel like you’re called to something else, we totally understand. There’s no pressure.”
The pressure for me is to do the best job I can of explaining the opportunity, always trying to do that better, but I don’t feel any pressure. I hope no one would. It’s my job to convince you that you’ve got to do this because that’s the Holy Spirit’s job. That’s not my job. My job is to share the opportunity with you.
Reaching Out To Unengaged People Groups
Let’s switch gears for a minute. Let’s say someone is saying, “Unreached or unengaged people groups sound like something I’ve never heard of before,” or to put it in my pastor’s terminology, “Let’s have a Bible, a believer, and a body of Christ in these places. I’m in.” What would they do to say, “Doug, I would like to talk further?”
They can go visit our website at FinishingFund.org. That will give them some more background about what we’re doing. If they’re interested in some of the other elements of the Great Commission, I’m happy to help direct them toward that as well. They can email me directly at DCobb@FinishingFund.org. I’ll be happy to help them any way I can get involved in this amazing work.
How does somebody get a copy of And Then the End Will Come?
At your bookstore locally, it should be there, and certainly at Amazon and Barnes & Noble. I hope people will check it out. I hope they’ll enjoy it.
If you’re a Convene member, that book is winging its way to you even as we speak.
Greg, thank you for making that possible.
You made it possible. We just helped the carrier pigeons get it to all of our members. What happens if somebody wants to be a financial partner so that they write you, but what would happen if they become a part of The Finishing Fund, a giving group?
They get to jump on this train that is racing down the tracks toward seeing every people group engaged within the next few years. The Finishing Fund works like a mutual fund. When you invest in the Finishing Fund, you own a piece of every project that we are involved with, the old ones, the new ones, and the ones that we’re currently doing. You get a ringside seat to seeing what God is doing to complete the Great Commission all over the world. We’re working in over 50 countries, 52 or 53. Today, the report may be from India. Tomorrow, it may be from China. The next day, it may be from Brazil. We are sitting there right at the frontier of what God is doing in the completion of this work.
Jesus Is Coming Back Very Soon
I love how in the book, and I don’t know if it’s every chapter, but it feels like it was every chapter, that you end with, “Jesus is coming back very soon.”
Our brothers and sisters who wrote a lot of those books in the New Testament said the same thing. It’s certainly true that it’s sooner for us than it was for them. A careful study of the Word says that it’s very soon. I’m trying to do the best I can to prepare myself for that because I want to be as ready as I can be to greet Jesus when He comes back. What a privilege that will be. Some generation is going to get to experience that, to transition directly from life on this earth to heavenly life, from our current bodies to our new bodies without having to experience death. Wouldn’t it be awesome to be a part of that generation? It’s a powerful motivator for me.
It’s such a big thought. Some people are focused on their business. That’s a big thought. It’s their only thought. Some people are focused on their spouse in marriage. Things are not going well. They’re being critical of each other. There’s a bigger thought. Jesus is coming back very soon. If it’s your business and you’re worried about your EBITDA, Jesus is coming back very soon. If you’re so focused on your hobbies that you’re spending all your money on your hobbies, or if you’re totally focused on your third house in the mountains, the pipes broke, and you’re trying to figure out how to deal with that, Jesus is coming back very soon. Once we focus on that meta thought, a lot of things fade, do they not?
I think so. One sad thing is that in the West, particularly, we have been undersold on what God has in store for His people in eternity. The very last chapter of the book is a survey through the promises God has made for His people, the amazing things that He has in store for us. There are things so amazing that the Bible says that you can’t even imagine how great they’ll be. They exceed even the power of our imagination. As I say in the book, I can imagine some pretty amazing things, but God’s promised it will be even beyond that.
Anything we can do to fix and move our gaze from the secular world to God’s kingdom will be good for our mental and spiritual health. Share on XI encourage people that no matter how good your life is, or how good you hope it’s going to be, it doesn’t even begin to compare with what one day and God’s eternal presence is going to be like. Understanding that better helps us a little bit to do what Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4. He says, “So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but what is unseen, because what is seen is temporary, and what is unseen is eternal.” Especially in these crazy days we live in, where a whole lot of things appear to be going wrong, anything we can do to fix our gaze and move our gaze from the seen to the unseen, from the secular world to God’s kingdom, is going to be good for our mental health and our spiritual health.
Get In Touch With Doug
We’re going to wrap up our time. Thank you so much for being with us. If you’re interested in finding more about The Finishing Fund, go to FinishingFund.org. If you’d like to meet Doug in person, he’ll be at the Convene conference. Convene Now, you can find out more about it there, or Convene 2022 on the web. You’ll find out more about Doug and his appearance at our conference in Ojai, California. We’re grateful that you took the time to be with us. We’re grateful that you have been steeped in God’s truth and steeped in figuring out how to do something about what you’ve learned, and given everybody who is tuning in a pathway to do something about it with you. Thank you very much.
Thank you for this opportunity. I am looking forward to being with everybody and talking more about these things.
Thanks, Doug.
