A church in Tennessee recently helped a whole community pay off their medical bills adding up to $8 million.
The Altar Fellowship in Johnson City, Tennessee, is led by Pastor Mattie Montgomery and his wife, Candice.
During an interview, Montgomery explained how this generous act came to be. The pastor received a call from a friend who explained he had a dream of paying off people’s medical debts.
Through this vision, the business man who ‘loves the Lord’ according to Montgomery partnered with Undue Medical Debt (formerly known as RIP Medical Debt) to help those in the community drowning in medical debt.
The organization negotiates with collectors to buy the rights or claim on medical debts. The businessman and pastor did research to find that their county and six surrounding counties had a collective $8 million worth of unpaid medical bills.
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“Essentially, we became the collection agency for $8 million of medical debt,” said Montgomery. “And then instead of pursuing it any further, we just sent a letter to everyone whose debt we had taken, and we just said, ‘Hey, Jesus loves you, we love you. And it’s our privilege to cancel this debt entirely.'”
The church alongside the philanthropist congregant were able to purchase all the debt for only $50,000. The medical debt of 3,921 households in seven Tennessee counties was erased overnight, the families learned in the letters sent by the church.
One of the recipients of the church’s generosity was an atheist man whose son attended The Altar.
“Then, one day, his dad called him in and said, ‘Hey, that church you go to is called The Altar, right?’ And he said, ‘Yeah?’ And the dad said, ‘Your church just paid off all my medical bills. And he was just really confounded by that. He thought, ‘Why did they do this?’ And his son got the opportunity to share the Gospel with his father because of the giving of the church.”
While Montgomery doesn’t know if they can give this grand again in this specific way of paying off people’s medical bills, he hopes that the act of giving becomes reflex.
“We want extravagant generosity to be one of the things that the church is known for,” Montgomery said. “And I don’t just mean our church, The Altar Fellowship; I mean the Church nationally and internationally. I want people to know that, in a moment of crisis, the place they need to get to is to be with a group of people who follow Jesus. They need to get into a church. That’s my hope: that the Church can be the hands, feet, and wallet of Jesus to the world around us. “
This article was originally published at CHVN Radio.
Sylvia St. Cyr is an on-air radio host at CHVN, a Christian outlet in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.
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10 Responses
Wow, what an amazing ministry! They have such incredible love for their community. Can you imagine if even one percent of churches in America did this what an impact it could have?
This is a wonderful thing to do and I am certain it was a blessing to the community.
As a non-American, though, I must comment on just how insane it is for people to have medical debt.
Steve, the system here in the USA is badly broken. That the church could negotiate to buy all the debt for $50,000 shows us how much patients were overcharged and how much the “system” was willing to write off. It’s an act of mercy and generosity. Unfortunately, it doesn’t help fix the bigger problem.
Oh yeah. You can have little or no insurance, because good insurance is expensive, and end up with $10,000s to $100,000s in bills. And at least as troubling, HAVE insurance, go to the hospital and have the insurance decide after the fact “Well, actually, we aren’t going to cover that” and STILL end up with cripplingly large bills.
It’s the dual whammy of not having medical care for all, and having almost every hospital have equipment ranging from “pretty nice” to “state of the art”, so prices are quite quite high.
Imagine if some of these televangelists did this? You know, went looking at private jets and realized “Hey wait a minute, that money could help thousands of people.”
This is truly wonderful that this church had some financial resources and, rather than getting some fancier fittings for their church, or spending on some other temporal things, they generously helped their entire community. I’m not a faithful person, but these people are truly following the word of Jesus and it’s heartening to read about them doing so.
God bless this church abundantly.
This is a great idea. Our church just did the same thing last year.
But unfortunately, this is only a band aid solution. Many pastors around the nation have preached against a comprehensive solution to get people insured, raging about the evils of “socialized medicine” and Obamacare. And they have supported politicians like Trump and the Republicans who tried to take health insurance away from 25 million people with no plan to replace it.
Trump promised in January 2016 that he was “two weeks away” from releasing his health care plan. So I’m sure it will be released soon. ;)
Given medical debt is the top reason for bankruptcy, this is a blessing beyond words. Thank you for sharing.
Finally some good news that’s the kind of “good news” that I believe we are called to! You can tell someone about Jesus all day long and that’s head knowledge and may never get to their heart but you do something like this…if the church would do this kind of stuff, this is what changes lives. This is what makes people able to SEE Jesus and believe that faith is real and that they are able to come to the table too!! People would rather see a sermon than hear one any day because hearing doesn’t always reach the heart. So thankful to hear of this GOOD NEWS!! I hope we see our churches doing more of this.
Such a Blessing! Thank You for sharing this beautiful story!