A Faithful Steward: Agnes Brinkley Frazier
Our Lord once told the tale of servants who had received talents from their master (Mt. 25:14-30). Two of the servants served wisely, reinvesting what they had been given. But the third wickedly hid his portion. When the master returned, he greatly rewarded his faithful servants for their wise stewardship. But the timid and slothful servant was relieved of the little with which he had been entrusted and cast into the outer darkness.
Jesus intended that His parable serve as a warning as well as an exhortation. Each person is entrusted with various gifts from our Master Who will require an accounting. The faithfulness of our stewardship will be revealed, and we’ll receive our just reward.
Agnes Brinkley Frazier (1897-1993) believed passionately in this call to stewardship and spent many years trying to encourage faithfulness among Free Will Baptists (FWB). She wrote prolifically for multiple denominational organizations and served in numerous associational positions at every level. Beyond her deep thinking and honed writing, she was a faithful model of what she taught. In this post we’ll consider this fascinating woman of God, as well as her insights into Christian education.
Background
Mrs. Frazier was no different than any other little girl. Raised in rural Tennessee by a devout Free Will Baptist family, she lived simply, held to a high moral standard, and worked hard to make her dreams of education and serving Christ come true. She diligently completed her Latin homework in high school, worked as a sales lady in the local department store, and graduated from Peabody Normal College in 1916.
On September 20 of the following year, she married James E. Frazier who loved her and “provided well for his household” throughout their sixty-three-year marriage.[1] While he was in Europe during WWI, she taught school in rural Alabama. They returned to Tennessee after the war, where she taught in the Nashville public school system until her retirement in 1948.
She wasn’t done serving, though. Frazier moved back to her hometown of Ashland City, Tennessee to care for her ailing parents until their deaths. In 1980 her husband James also died. Five years later she moved back to Nashville where she spent her last years.
Church and Spirituality
Frazier was saved at the age of fourteen during a revival service at Bethlehem Free Will Baptist Church in Ashland City. However, she would not fully commit her life to Christ for another twelve years. Then in 1925 Frazier moved to Nashville and transferred her church membership from Bethlehem to the fledgling East Nashville Free Will Baptist Church where she developed several important relationships.[2]
John L. Welch was the pastor of East Nashville at the time. He, his wife Mary Ann, and Fannie Polston took the twenty-eight-year-old school teacher under their wing and began to disciple her.[3] Frazier was soon heavily involved in denominational work. She was a “tireless and fluent writer” for the Woman’s National Auxiliary Convention (WNAC, now Women Nationally Active for Christ), Free Will Baptist League, Church Training Service (CTS), and various other Free Will Baptist ministries.[4] In 1938 she was one of the first women ever to be elected to a national board serving on the inaugural Home Missions Department Board (now North American Ministries).[5]
Writing
Much of Frazier’s writing was specifically for women. She penned the first Women’s Auxiliary Methods manual to enable local churches to develop leadership and encourage the “talents of Free Will Baptist women.”[6] To her thinking the Auxiliary was specifically designed to serve the church as a whole, “aiding the church in all its programs.”[7]
Frazier argued that the WNAC ought to support the church in cultivating mature Christians, and in teaching faithful stewardship of time, talent, and finances so that Christ might be proclaimed throughout the world.[8] Through this ministry she educated many about missions, individual service, Bible study, and prayer.[9]
Faithful stewardship was a passion for Frazier. She wrote, “Whenever the idea of stewardship begins to permeate the minds and hearts of Christians then the superficial and unscriptural methods of raising money are abandoned by them.”[10] Tithing is the minimum required giving for a Christian and should be exceeded with a “love-gift over and above,” she argued.[11]
Practicing what she preached, Frazier gave generously while encouraging others to do likewise.[12] Beyond her own gifts toward the founding of Free Will Baptist Bible College (now Welch College), she also raised more funds from others than any other layperson in the denomination.[13]
Christian Education: “Your Opportunity and Mine”
Frazier did more than just raise funds for the college, though. Prior to 1953 The Free Will Baptist (North Carolina) and The Free Will Baptist Gem (Missouri) jointly acted as the denominational organ. In early 1940 both carried an article by Frazier upon “special request” of the National Association of Free Will Baptists Christian Education Board entitled, “Your Opportunity and Mine.”[14] The board wisely published this article in both periodicals so that the entire denomination could read her thoughts on Christian education and respond appropriately.[15]
“Your Opportunity and Mine” is a wonderful statement of Christian education philosophy and an impassioned call for a denominational college. In smooth and inspiring prose, Frazier called not only for financial support and students, but also delved into epistemology and worldview thinking (though she never used the then uncommon term worldview). Such a fine piece of writing didn’t go unnoticed either.[16]
Frazier opened the article by describing the eagerness of young Free Will Baptists begging for a college that could equip them to serve the Lord better especially in evangelizing the modern educated world. Additionally, she noted that Free Will Baptist leaders of the time held various doctrinal stances due to being educated “in all types of Christian institutions.”[17]
A Free Will Baptist college “centrally located” could provide doctrinal cohesion and a unified identity to the still young denomination and its clergy.[18] More broadly, the proposed school could help the denomination to retain young people by providing an “intelligent interpretation” of the “Free Will Baptist message.”[19]
As this last statement indicates, Frazier did not see Welch College as only a place for training professional Christian ministers. Rather, she argued for a school that could educate all Free Will Baptist students, no matter the “sphere” of their called vocation, because all education is guided by epistemological assumptions—worldviews:
The real forces in education are not material, but personal and spiritual, and the significant difference between colleges lies in the region of personality. The difference between two professors . . . is not so much what they know, for one will know about as much as the other; and they will both know the same things. But the difference is in their attitude and outlook.[20]
She concisely and clearly applied presuppositional epistemology in this statement. The professors’ underlying beliefs and assumptions are the key element here rather than data. As Abraham Kuyper suggested, this presuppositional divide in knowledge produces two vastly different understandings of the world.
Concerning this divide and the acquisition of understanding, Frazier (with the shade of Augustine wrapped about her) later wrote that the college should “develop in body and mind, soul and spirit, all the beauty, perfection and power of which the individual is capable . . . But what is beauty? what is perfection? what is power? These are soul qualities. They belong to the great Christian postulants. No soul approaches perfection without the spirit of Christ.”[21]
We cannot understand beauty, perfection, or power without the Spirit of Christ—faith seeking understanding. And if understanding can truly be drawn only from His Spirit, then Christian education isn’t only important for the church.
In fact, Frazier argued that Christian education is also essential for society:
Just in proportion that education is underpinned with the Christian postulants; and shot through and through with faith in Christ, and obedience to God will it turn out men and women fitted to do the work of construction and order in our civilizations, whether they serve in the field of religion, medicine; or whether their chosen field be in some other sphere . . . . This is why we should support Christian Education.[22]
What a beautiful expression of transformational Christianity! Christian education is important because the only way to understand beauty, perfection, and power is through the Holy Spirit. And once we have grasped these concepts, we must apply them to every aspect of life and civilization, and by so doing transform them.
Frazier’s passionate call for a college to train all students to fulfill their various vocations and remake society is even more prescient today. Seeing the “paganizing influences of a godless education” already present in 1940, Frazier sought a school to “save our great country” and even our “civilization.”[23]
Conclusion
Agnes Brinkley Frazier does not grace the pages of any major history book. Most people have heard nothing of her. She is remembered best by the WNAC for her writing, leadership, and staunch commitment to teaching stewardship. But she is a wonderful model of faithful stewardship for us all.
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[1] Agnes Frazier interview by Pat Thomas (Ashland City, TN: June 11, 1982); available in the Welch College archive.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Mary Ruth Wisehart, “Early History of WNAC,” Contact (October, 1970).
[5] Agnes Frazier interview by Pat Thomas.
[6] Agnes Brinkley Frazier, The Manual of Women’s Auxiliary Methods (Monett, MO: Free Will Baptist Gem printed for The Women’s Auxiliary of the National Association of Free Will Baptists, 1940), [5].
[7] Ibid., 9.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Ibid., 9, 11.
[10] Ibid., 10.
[11] Ibid., 12.
[12] Agnes Frazier, “As I Remember” (Nashville, TN: unpublished, n.d.), 1; available in the Historical Collection of the NAFWB Historical Commission.
[13] J.R. Davidson, “Gratitude for Answered Prayer,” Free Will Baptist 57 no. 23 (August 26, 1942).
[14] J.R. Davidson, “Note” concerning Mrs. J.E. [Agnes] Frazier, “Your Opportunity and Mine,” Free Will Baptist January 24, 1940.
[15] Ibid.
[16] Clyde C. Flannery—Dunham, Kentucky, “The Need of Education,” in Free Will Baptist February 14, 1940; and J.E. Hudgens, “Letter from Ashland City, Tennessee,” in Free Will Baptist March 27, 1940.
[17] Mrs. J.E. [Agnes] Frazier, “Your Opportunity and Mine,” Free Will Baptist, January 24, 1940.
[18] Ibid.
[19] Ibid.
[20] Ibid.
[21] Ibid.; italics added.
[22] Ibid.; italics added.
[23] Ibid.
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