What if the most freeing financial decision you could make had nothing to do with your portfolio returns?
In this episode, host Justin Forman sits down with John Cortines, co-author of God and Money and True Riches and a generosity leader at the Maclellan Foundation, for a practical, spiritually grounding conversation about generosity, stewardship, and freedom.
John shares how his journey began at Harvard Business School with a banking password that read "retire@40!" and how God used a men's Bible...
What if the most freeing financial decision you could make had nothing to do with your portfolio returns?
In this episode, host Justin Forman sits down with John Cortines, co-author of God and Money and True Riches and a generosity leader at the Maclellan Foundation, for a practical, spiritually grounding conversation about generosity, stewardship, and freedom.
John shares how his journey began at Harvard Business School with a banking password that read "retire@40!" and how God used a men's Bible study, serious biblical research, and interviews with radically generous Harvard MBA alumni to completely reframe his understanding of wealth. What emerged wasn't just a new giving percentage. It was a transformation of the heart.
Key Topics Discussed:
- The wrong question most Christian investors ask about money, and the right one
- Financial finish lines: how pre-defining your lifestyle and net worth guardrails creates freedom instead of limiting it
- The four heart conditions that keep investors from true generosity (pride, coveting, anxiety, and indifference) and the gospel transformation for each
- Why effective altruism produces joyless giving, and what makes Christian generosity categorically different
- The rise of professionally managed giving funds, and why John believes they'll become as normal as index funds
- Practical steps for faith-driven investors to move from obligation-based to joy-driven stewardship
Direct Quotes from John Cortines:
"The right question isn't how much do we need to give? It's how much do I really need to keep." — John Cortines
"Giving is actually a source of joy and freedom and purpose in the Christian walk. And it's God's invitation where I can step into playing on his team to accomplish his purposes in the world." — John Cortines
"What if 10, 20, 30 years from now, it was as normal to think about professionally managed giving funds as it is to think about an index fund for stocks today." — John Cortines
Episode Description
John Cortines started his career in oil and gas with a banking password that literally read "retire@40!", a saver's dream encoded into every login. Then Harvard Business School, a men's Bible study, and a deep dive into Scripture dismantled his framework entirely. What he and co-author Greg Baumer uncovered changed not just how much he gave, but why, and the freedom that came with it.
In this episode, John walks through the framework from his books God and Money and True Riches, including the concept of financial finish lines that set guardrails for lifestyle and net worth, and the four heart transformations every steward must navigate: pride to gratitude, coveting to contentment, anxiety to trust, and indifference to love. These aren't abstract theological ideas. They're the architecture behind how faith-driven investors actually hold and deploy capital with joy.
John also shares his vision for the future of generosity: professionally managed giving funds that work alongside traditional portfolio management, bringing the same rigor, governance, and reporting to Kingdom capital that investors already expect from their financial advisors. Recorded live at Kingdom Advisors, this conversation is a call to bring generosity out of the shadows and into the boardroom, and the family table.
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