A $100,000 donation from a megachurch in North Texas has been used to eliminate the debt of more than 4,000 families amounting to $10.5 million.
In previous years, Covenant Church in Carrollton had usually spent the money collected from church members each year to pay for advertisements to promote Easter services. But this year, senior pastor Stephen Hayes decided to donate $100,000 to a charity that buys medical debt for pennies on the dollar and forgives debtors.
"What if we bought up some of this medical debt and write on the letters, 'We are Covenant Church and we are local in this area and we can serve you in any way and we would love to be your church. But even if we don't get to meet you, just know that God loves you,'" Hayes recounted.
The sum had been donated to an organization called RIP Medical Debt, which used to be a debt collector. The pastor noted that it paid off a total of $10,551,618 in total debt for 4,228 families living in Carrollton, Crossroads, Colleyville, and McKinney.
Hayes himself had experienced being in medical debt after he was hit by a car when he was 17 years old. A blood clot had to be removed from his brain, and he had fallen into a coma.
When doctors told his parents that he may never walk or speak again, they turned to their church congregation for prayers.
Hayes eventually woke up after 12 days in intensive care, and was able to walk out of the hospital six days later. Members of that congregation also pulled together to help the family pay for his extensive medical bills.
The pastor says that he is dismayed when he thinks about people who need the same kind of help but do not have the kind of support he had.
The pastor said that the families benefiting from the church's donation will be soon be receiving mail informing them that their medicals debts have now been paid and are now gone. He told his congregation that we should all feel the same joy that these people would be feeling, as we also received a similar letter in the form of John 19:30, in which Jesus declared "It is finished," just before he died on the cross, paying all the debt of our sins for us.
"When you were in debt to someone, when you reached the end of your payment plan and paid off whatever you were in payment toward, they would write like the big red 'paid' stamp they would put on the invoices, they would write the word, 'tetelestai.' Jesus in that moment was saying 'guess what, it is finished, the debt of sin had been paid,'" he explained in his sermon.
