Member Spotlight: Ray King—editor emeritus, former vice president

Ray King (1950-2025) 'saw Jesus at work in every area of life'

Ray King brought a journalism and public information degree, ministry experience, and a unique perspective to Samaritan Ministries as one of its first staff members.

Eventually serving as vice president of Communications and now a special consultant, Ray was key in guiding the early years of Samaritan Ministries.

It started because, in the early 1990s, he needed a job.

“Ted was a painter and wall paperer, and I had gone a few months without having any work to do,” Ray recalled. “I was in a Bible study and one of the guys there said, ‘I don’t want to insult you, but I know about a minimum wage job.’”

The job was with Pittenger Paint & Paper, and Ray took a job there at $8 an hour.

“We were living hand to mouth until Ted got Samaritan going, and even then we continued to live hand to mouth because we were just getting started,” Ray said.

As they worked on revitalizing homes, Ray and Ted talked about the latter’s idea of starting a health care sharing ministry. The unusual approach to health care appealed to Ray, whose family, like Ted’s, were homeschoolers and used to doing things out of the norm.

As Ray relates in Sharing the Burden: The Samaritan Ministries Story, when Ted wondered how much money he could make leading a health care sharing ministry, Ray challenged Ted on his motives. But after Ted decided he would try to make Samaritan Ministries work even if he didn’t make any money off of it, the ministry started to come together.

Ted then asked Ray to be a founding member of the Board of Directors when Samaritan was being formed as a nonprofit in September 1991, meeting around Ted’s dining room table. Soon Ray was leading the ministry’s communications effort and creating and editing its newsletter. He made displays for conferences, designed ads, and led marketing efforts.

But he was known then and is still known as the man who can best express the biblical aspect of health care sharing to both the uninitiated and those who have been a part of it for a long time.

“I think my number one focus was to keep and emphasize the vision for why we do it—the scriptural motivation—and not reduce it to mechanics,” Ray said. “You know why you do it. People tend to reduce things to practices that we carry out. We humans like to reduce things to what we can do to human effort that doesn’t depend on the work of the Holy Spirit.”

As part of his consultant’s role, Ray still makes suggested edits to Samaritan’s news releases. But for him, the newsletter was and is the ministry’s main educational instrument, teaching members the worldview behind biblically based health care sharing.

Ray even saw advertising as an opportunity to disciple others, offering such ideas in display ads as “this is how Christians take care of one another.”

“I hope that the things that are biblical that we tried to impress on people will be remembered,” he said.

Unexpected direction

Ray didn’t see himself going into communications for a living. Raised on a farm in central Illinois with his three brothers, he was “busy every night of the week” with groups like 4H and Future Farmers of America (FFA). While he was serving as state FFA reporter, he met the founder of the Department of Agriculture Communications at the University of Illinois. Changing his plans to stay home and farm, Ray headed to the U of I and took a newswriting course his first semester, although he still waited until his junior year to declare his major.

He also got involved in the discipleship organization The Navigators while in college, even passing up a job in advertising when he graduated so he could work with The Navigators another year. Soon, that ministry’s director of communications asked him if he wanted to get some training and work for the ministry’s magazine at their headquarters in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Yet even that type of work pointed him back home, leading him to wonder if he might be able to go back home, farm, and make disciples.

He did that in 1975 after marrying Marsha the year before. Ray, his dad, and two of his brothers ran a dairy farm of 50 cows, built up a hog farm raising 5,000 head per year, and grew corn, soybeans, and wheat. He even stepped briefly into politics as a township supervisor at one point.

Ray and Marsha still live in that house, which Ray’s great-grandfather built in the 1890s. They have seven children (five boys and two girls) and 32 grandchildren and counting. Their family was very involved as part of the Samaritan family in the early days of the ministry, and several have ended up working at Samaritan at times. His son, Alan, is still on staff.

“We (Samaritan Ministries) used to have Christmas dinners for the families, and it was a very personal, close-knit group,” Marsha said. “Any time there was a Board of Directors meeting, our four youngest ones would go with us. We were also very much involved in stuffing the monthly newsletter. It was very much a part of our life.”

Biblical message

Ray’s contributions to Samaritan are apparent to those leaders who have succeeded him and Ted.

“Ted would likely tell you that Ray King was indispensable to him in the early and growing years of Samaritan Ministries,” Samaritan CEO Mark Zander said. “In too many ways to count, Ray acted as Ted’s trustworthy wingman by offering untiring, faithful support and giving wise, biblical counsel. Ray’s fingerprints are all over Samaritan Ministries, and his invaluable contributions to Samaritan’s core foundation, including our Purpose, have been an integral part of the Samaritan story.“

One thing Ray is known for is emphasizing biblical principles in health care compared to what insurance companies would do in similar situations.

“We want to see the entire Body of Christ throughout the whole world pray for somebody who has a medical need and provide for them,” Ray said. “The message should be, ‘We’re here to care and we’re going to pray.’ Samaritan is a piece of that. We try to put it all into the same package.”

Besides getting the newsletter rolling—with its early mix of biblical worldview messaging, challenges to medical orthodoxy, birth and death announcements, special prayer needs listings, and ministry updates—Ray also set the tone for the ministry’s marketing.

He also has made his mark with the monthly Doorpost feature that has appeared on the back of the Samaritan newsletter for nearly three decades. The Doorpost always consists of a Bible passage and a concise reflection by Ray, always with the focus on God's Word, like everything else in Ray's life.