Investing for Eternity
Naperville Christian Church
David Limiero, Lead Minister
July 28, 2002
*How Are Your Investments Doing? (Part 1)*
Remember the old hymn "All to Jesus I Surrender"? (sing/speak the words of verse 1)
Well I’ve taken the liberty to re-write the words from the standpoint of the average person in our society today:
All to Dow Jones, I surrender
All to it I sadly give
I will ever watch and worry,
In it’s presence daily live
I surrender all . . .
INTERACTIVE/PARTICIPATORY QUESTION: Turn to your neighbor and ask them: "How are your stock market investments doing?" (Going up, going down, or staying the same?)
That’s a silly question isn’t it? Stock market investments everywhere are headed down, down, down. Tuesday morning’s Chicago Tribune carried this ominous headline:
“Dow slides below 8,000 to ’98 level: Triple-digit loss for 3rd day in row”
The story continues:
The Dow Jones industrials plunged below 8,000 Monday for the first time in nearly four years, as investors remain too preoccupied with scandal and earnings fears to shop for bargains.
In a seesaw trading session, the blue-chip index fell 234.68 points, the third consecutive triple-digit decline, to close at 7784.58. The last time the market tumbled to such levels was mid-October 1998, when it finished at 7968.80.
The drop continued the brutal sell-off of the past two weeks, punctuated by Friday’s 390-point fall, the biggest one-day point drop this year.
Investors have coined a new phrase for the relentless declines: "irrational depression," a play on the famous phrase "irrational exuberance" uttered by Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan to describe the stock-market surge of the late 1990s.
The bottom line of the story is this: if you’d invested $10,000 in the basket of stocks that compose the Dow Jones Industrial Average in October 1998, your investment today would be worth $9,768.
Of course, you could be doing a lot worse.
• If you’d invested $10,000 in the NASDAQ last August, today your portfolio would be worth just over $6000 today. That’s a 40% loss.
• If you’d invested that same $10,000 a year ago in an S&P 500 index fund, that fund would be worth just over $6700 today. That’s a 33% loss.
• If you’d invested $10,000 in WorldCom in 1999, when the share price was $60, your $10,000 investment would be worth about $28 today. That’s a 99.75% loss.
• If you’d invested $10,000 in Enron last November, today your $10,000 investment would be worth just nothing. Zero. Zip. Nada. Nothing. A 100% loss.
Perhaps that’s why Jesus uttered these prophetic words:
Matthew 6:19-21 (NIV)
19 “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. 20 But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
Let me ask you again: How are your investments doing?
*How are Your Investments Doing? (Part 2)*
Just for fun, I calculated what a $10,000 investment in the “Naperville Christian Church Spiritual Index” would have returned. How would your investments be doing if you had given $10,000 in charitable contributions to Naperville Christian Church?
The results are pretty impressive:
• If you are in the 15% tax bracket and itemized your deductions, you would have immediately saved $1800 on your combined federal and state taxes – an automatic 18% return.
• If you are in the 28% tax bracket, you would have saved an immediate $3100 on your combined federal and state tax – an automatic 31% return.
I don’t know of too many investments today that can boast those kinds of numbers!
Of course, that’s a completely ridiculous illustration, because you can’t measure the value of investing your treasures in heaven in temporal things like dollars and cents. When you invest in the Naperville Christian Church Spiritual Index, your return on investment is measured in a completely different way. It’s not measured in dollars and cents, but in changed lives.
And the timeframe on your investment is also different. It’s not measured in months or years, but for eternity.
So, on a more serious note, what does the prospectus look like for investing in the Naperville Christian Church Spiritual Index?
BAPTISMS
One way to measure the return on that kind of investment would be the number of people who will be in heaven as a result of your investment – the number of people who have accepted Jesus as Lord and Savior and been baptized into his name.
How would your $10,000 investment in Naperville Christian Church at the end of 1998 have fared? As of last Sunday, your investment would have been a big part in seeing 117 people baptized into Jesus Christ in the last three-and-a-half years. 117 people who will be in heaven. 117 people who will spend an eternity with Jesus instead of an eternity without Him.
And that’s a very conservative estimate. Those 117 people are just the ones we’ve touched locally. But there’s more. Because approximately 10% of every dollar given to the Naperville Christian Church general fund is sent on to our missionaries, your investment dollars would have gone even further.
For example locally, we support the efforts of the Chicago District Evangelistic Association. Since 1999, the CDEA has planted churches in Plainfield, Waukegan, and a Spanish-speaking congregation in Elgin resulting in approximately another 80 baptisms in the last three and a half years. Naperville Christian Church’s contribution to the CDEA is just over $5000 a year – making us one of their top ten supporting churches. Your $10,000 contribution might have resulted in three times that many baptisms in even more new church plants.
What’s even more fun to contemplate is that the CDEA provided much of the initial funding to start Naperville Christian Church way back in 1964. The total cost? Just $18,992.25 between November 1964 and October 1969. And NCC has given back almost $138,000 to the CDEA in the 32 years following. Not a bad return on investment.
That’s just one example, of course. Naperville Christian Church also supports missionaries in Kenya, Chile, Thailand, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Tennessee, and Illinois – missionaries who have seen hundreds more people come to Christ in the last three-and-a-half years.
While the number of people who will spend eternity in heaven because of your investment in Naperville Christian Church is a powerful return, it’s not the only important measure.
Take for example, our church’s benevolence ministry, which provides financial assistance to members and friends of members. Your $10,000 investment would have had an amazing return in this area as well.
BENEVOLENCE
So far this year, the Benevolence Ministry has assisted 8 families with almost $5000. In 2001, the Benevolence Ministry helped 13 families with over $12,000 in emergency funds. In 2000, we assisted 8 families with just under $20,000. And in 1999, we were able to provide almost $13,000 to another 11 families in need.
All told, between 1999 and 2002, your investments were able to provide 40 families with almost $50,000 in emergency assistance – an average of $1250 per family. And keep in mind that the vast majority of these families are members of Naperville Christian Church or friends of members here.
I wish that I could tell you the individual stories of the families and individuals that we have helped, but because of confidentiality, I can’t. But I can tell you that some people here avoided foreclosure on their homes because your investment allowed them to pay their mortgage payments; others were able to escape from overwhelming medical bills; still others were able to afford Christmas presents for their children in a year that would have otherwise seen a very empty tree.
Again, this is just the tip of the iceberg.
• It doesn’t include the annual Angel Tree project in which we provide gifts to children whose parents are in poverty or in jail. Last year we provided Christmas gifts to 150 children; in 1999 and 2000 we provided gifts for an additional 300 children.
• It doesn’t include the thousands of dollars annually that has gone to support the Illini Children’s Christian home, which provides foster care and adoptive parenting for at-risk children.
• It doesn’t include the thousands of dollars annually that supports the Chicagoland Christian Village, where senior citizens are able to receive quality nursing home care that they otherwise couldn’t afford.
• It doesn’t include the thousands annually that funds the Christian Service Center in Chicago, which serves the urban poor in the Austin neighborhood.
A $10,000 investment in the Naperville Christian Church Spiritual Index would have increased the available funds for the Benevolence Ministry by more than 56%. It would have funded Christmas gifts for almost twice as many Angel Tree children. And it would have allowed us to more than double NCC’s annual contribution to Illini Children’s home, Chicagoland Christian Village, and the Christian Service Center combined.
BABIES AND CHILDREN
If baptisms and benevolence aren’t the return on investment you’re looking for, what about the investment in our children?
Last week we talked about the moral decline in America, and how we as Christians needed to adopt a mission-field approach rather than a battle-field approach. This week pollster George Barna released the results of a new poll on American’s concerns about the future:
[A] widespread sense of disappointment has reduced people’s confidence in opinion shapers and cultural influencers. When asked to describe their level of confidence in seven types of influencers, only one of the seven - teachers - was awarded "complete confidence" or "a lot of confidence" by at least half of the public (53%). At the bottom of the list were executives of large corporations (12% had "complete" or "a lot of confidence" in them), followed closely by the producers, directors and writers of TV and films (13%), elected government officials (18%), and news reporters and journalists (20%). . . .
Researcher George Barna, whose firm conducted the survey, is the author of A Fish Out of Water, a newly-released book on leadership challenges and practices. In his book, Barna notes that the primary means of gaining people’s trust and confidence is by demonstrating strong character. "People rely upon their leaders, whether they are in the business sector, in ministry, government or within their own family, to model virtuous behavior and appropriate values. By virtue of the opportunities they encounter, every leader will be tempted to grab for power, prestige, publicity or other perks. What separates the good from the bad is not their skills and abilities but their character - and there are always cues that reflect the person’s true inner nature. When commitment to profits and position trump commitment to propriety and purity of motive, such moral failures are virtually inevitable." . . . .
Barna’s research showed that most people believed that these corporate scandals were related to moral choices, and that the best strategies for preventing these kinds of moral scandals in the future weren’t aimed at adults, but had to start in childhood:
The most prolific support was shown for "parents spending more time teaching their children appropriate values." Three-quarters of all adults (72%) said that had parents done so the recent crises might have been completely or mostly avoided. Similarly, almost two-thirds of adults (62%) said if American society had s stronger moral foundation such affairs might not have happened. . . .
The research also drove home the importance of a person’s upbringing as the mirror to both their character and values. "More than many people want to admit, how we train our children determines their values, views and behaviors as adults. If you want a moral society, you must develop it by raising children who understand and embrace good values and standards. Leadership based on consensus is always prone to satisfying the lowest moral standard. Leadership based on firm and unchanging standards of virtue never goes wrong."
Listen again to what George Barna says:
More than many people want to admit, how we train our children determines their values, views and behaviors as adults. If you want a moral society, you must develop it by raising children who understand and embrace good values and standards.
Every week almost 1 out of 4 people (25%) attending Naperville Christian Church is under the age of 12. Every week 2 out of 5 people (41%) involved in Sunday morning Bible Classes is under the age of 12.
If you expand your definition of kids to include teen-agers, then more than 1 out of every 3 people here on Sunday morning (34%) is age 18 or younger.
And what are those children and teen-agers receiving every Sunday morning? Firm and unchanging standards of virtue, rooted in the characters, stories, and principles of the Bible. Each week they’re learning about the importance of character, values, and morals.
How does all of that happen? It takes the dedicated efforts of dozens of volunteer teachers, caregivers, sponsors, and leaders – who give wholeheartedly of their time and their talents to serve our kids and our teens. And it takes the coordination and direction of Tawnya Davenport, our full-time Children’s Minister, and Steve Limiero, our full-time Youth Minister. It also takes money.
Our annual budget for Children’s and Youth Ministries is just over $21,000, not including Steve or Tawnya’s salaries and benefits, nor the salaries of our paid caregivers in the nursery.
What kind of fruit would an investment of $10,000 in the Naperville Christian Church Spiritual Index look like if you looked at the results in Children’s and Youth ministry?
According to Barna Research the probability of accepting Christ is much greater among children, than by teens and adults. In children between the ages of 5 and 13 the probability of accepting Christ is 32%. It drops to 4% for those between the ages of 14 and 18, and picks up to only 6% for the rest of life.
Pat Verbal, children’s ministry author and consultant for the International Network of Children’s Ministry (INCM), states that "75-85% of Christians today made their commitment to faith before the age of 15."
Again, not a bad return on an investment.
How Are Your Investments Doing? (Redux)
How are your investments doing?
Remember the words of Jesus?
Matthew 6:19-21 (NIV)
19 “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. 20 But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
If you’d invested $10,000 in earthly treasures, your returns wouldn’t be very impressive.
While the corporate scandals on Wall Street aren’t the only cause of the decline, they are a big part of that decline:
Listen again to what George Barna says:
Only 12% of those surveyed had "complete" or "a lot of confidence" in corporate executives.
62% said if America had a stronger moral foundation, that the corporate crisis might have been prevented.
72% say that this needs to start with giving our children stronger moral standards.
Which leads me to wonder:
If years ago more people had invested their treasures in heaven – in the Naperville Christian Church Spiritual Average or other godly causes – would we still singing "All to Dow Jones I Surrender" or would we be singing a different tune?
