A church in Tennessee recently helped a whole community pay off their medical bills adding up to $8 million.
The Altar Fellowship in Johnson, TN, 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 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 the six closest counties surrounding the church had a collective of $8 million worth of unpaid medical bills.
"And 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.
One of the recipients of the church's generosity was an atheist man whose son attended The Altar.
"And 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. "