Giving too much – a way of life
by MMA

More about Christian Finances >>

The years have blurred some of the details, but Ray and Luetta Frey of Goessel, Kan., tell their story of

 the endless hay bales as matter of factly as if it happened yesterday.

“We’d counted and we were not going to have enough bales for our cattle for the winter,” Ray states. “We knew that. We fed them, we waited to run out and it never happened. We just never ran out.”

Their experience is not unlike the story found in I Kings 17:8-16, Lu notes. In that passage, Elijah the prophet is sent to the home of a poor widow to ask for food and bread. The widow has only enough meal to prepare one small cake for herself and her son. Yet, Elijah promises her that if she bakes him a small cake, then “the jar of meal will not be emptied and the jug of oil will not fail until the day that the Lord sends rain on the earth.” She did as he asked, and indeed the contents of the jar and jug didn’t run out.

Now Ray and Lu Frey would be the first to say they aren’t particularly special people deserving of that kind of miracle. They simply assumed God would always provide and that's exactly what happened.

While Ray eventually became a church stewardship director, their personal lives have exemplified their trust in God to take care of them. Their lives also demonstrate their dedication — and their enjoyment — of giving back to God and others.

Married in 1949, they recall being “dirt poor” during the early years of their marriage. Their home had holes in the wall large enough not only for the Kansas wind to invade their lives, but also a swarm of honeybees.

Ray’s salary as a one-room school teacher barely stretched far enough to feed and clothe the family, which included two girls within the first four years of their marriage.

But Lu had brought a spiritual discipline to their wedded life, and no amount of poverty could change that. “She taught me how to give,” Ray says simply. “No matter how little money we had, there was always something for the offering plate in church.”

In 1957, Ray and Lu moved their family to the Intermountain School for Navajo Children in Utah, where he took a job as a teacher. It was on the trip back home a year later when something happened Lu will never forget.

“We always put money aside for the church. On the way home we ran out of ‘our’ money, and we had to dip into the church fund — I think for gas,” Lu recalls. “I remember how bad I felt when I had to take that money out of the church fund. That really bothered me.”

Never mind the fact she repaid the money to the account. To this day Lu remembers how it felt dipping into funds set aside for God.

From 1959 until 1980, with the exception of a three-year stint in Oregon, Ray was the principal of Goessel Elementary School. His salary, combined with Lu’s frugal keep-track-of-everything style, allowed them to purchase a small piece of acreage in the country and give away more than 10 percent of their income.

Then in 1981 Ray was invited to become the stewardship director of the General Conference Mennonite Church. The opportunity looked exciting because he saw it as a chance to give of his talents and time to a cause he believed in with his whole being. He was told he could build his own program, and that looked like a challenge he was eager to tackle. There was just one downfall — the new job represented a significant drop in income.

Ray and Lu decided he would accept the job. And, they decided something else: that despite the evident drop in salary, the church and other charitable institutions they supported would never notice the difference. Their giving would remain unchanged.

Ray’s 12 years as stewardship director presented challenges and opportunities for him to not only preach what he practiced, but to more deeply practice what he preached. As the years passed, he and Lu increased their giving to their denomination, both in money and time.

Many weekends found Lu home alone while Ray traveled throughout the U.S. and Canada, presenting seminars on stewardship. Participants at those seminars ranged from youth to adults. They always came away knowing they'd heard a man who shared from his heart and his experience.

David Quiring, a farmer from Henderson, Neb., who met Ray through his role as stewardship director, was one of those people. “I've met very few people who understand the heart of giving like he does,” David says. “He helped people want to share of their financial resources. He enabled me to share my personal stewardship stories with others.”

The word stewardship has often been narrowly defined as giving money to God or the church. Ray and Lu certainly understood that definition, but it wasn’t nearly broad enough for their concept of what it meant to be created by God, and joyfully responding to God’s goodness in one’s life.

Stewardship is a way of life for the Freys. Ray created educational resources to share the concept with others. Beginning with high school youth materials in 1986, followed by congregational resource books and videos, he endeavored to communicate that stewardship is not God’s method of raising money, but God's way of raising men and women.

“Stewardship of time, abilities, the gospel, the environment, possessions, ourselves (mind, body and soul), and our relationships with others — there are many areas in addition to money in which we are responsible for managing what God has given us,” one of the congregational resources explains. “God calls us to be good managers of all that we have and are.”

For Ray and Lu, that meant a variety of things. One year they gave away two heifers among their small herd of cows. “Our neighbors had gone through some tough times with their health,” Ray says. “It seemed like the thing to do. Those heifers had calves of their own, and we could see them growing up and multiplying. That was fun to see.”

Involved in various activities in their home church, Tabor Mennonite Church, also gave testimony to the Freys’ commitment to a lifestyle of stewardship. They saw giving their talents to their congregation as a long-term commitment, similar to giving in the offering plate. Lu has been active in the Willing Helpers Women’s Organization, and Ray taught Sunday school for many years, served as deacon for eight years, and chaired the stewardship committee.

Then there are those three a.m. wake-up calls. On some early mornings, Ray is “suddenly wide awake, and the ideas and thoughts are going like crazy.” When he was the stewardship director, many of his plans and programs for that job came to him during this early morning communication with God. Being a good steward, he would be the first to say, involves not only giving but receiving — receiving inspiration and blessings from the Creator God.

For Ray and Lu, his years as stewardship director were times of exciting challenges for their personal stewardship journey. At one point, they resolved to increase their giving by one percent each year, until they had reached 18 percent — a level they kept for several years.

“We never missed that money,” Ray recalls. “You put it aside. It’s not available. And, there’s still always more for special needs that come up in the church.”

“Our tax man always says ‘You’re giving too much,’” Lu laughs lightly. “But we don’t think we’re giving too much. We can honestly say we’ve never regretted it. Sure it has been hard at times. Sometimes we’ll say ‘If we hadn’t given all that money last year, we could have done this or that.’ But that’s in jest.

“I look at this house and see so many things we’d like to replace or repair — the carpet is old, the house is aging and needs a lot. But when we’re considering a new purchase, I ask ‘Is this good stewardship?’ We’ve never had a new car. We haven’t had any debts for a long time. If we do borrow money for something, we like to pay it off in a very short time.”

“This is a way of life for us — we don’t know anything else,” Lu adds. “We enjoy giving.”

This article is brought to you by: Click logo to find out more

Carol Duerksen is a freelance writer living near Goessel, Kan., who considers Ray and Lu to be important mentors in her life.