A Kansas church changed the lives of nearly 2,000 people on Sunday when they paid off some $2.2 million in medical debt.
In an Easter Sunday sermon, lead pastor Todd Carter of Pathway Church in Wichita, Kansas paralleled the excitement a person feels when they find out that their medical debt has been forgiven, to the excitement we should feel every day for the debts that Jesus paid for us on the cross.
According to Relevant Magazine, He told his church that this year, instead of spending money to advertise for their Easter church service, they gave the money to a company called RIP Medical Debt, which works to buy and forgive peoples medical debts for pennies on the dollar.
In a video of the church's service posted to Facebook, Carter told his congregants, “We decided to take some of the money that we would normally give to people who are in financial need and we took some of the money that we would normally use to be able to promote our Easter services.”
He continued, “When I say 'promote our Easter services,' I’m talking about the money that we would normally use to pay for advertisements about our weekend services for Easter as well as the direct mail that we would send to people’s homes, but we decided to do something different this year. We wanted to send out a different kind of mail.”
Carter told the church that this year, they decided to send everyone in the state of Kansas who fell on hardship because of medical debt, a letter telling them their debts had been forgiven.
The letter, Carter said, read, “We’re Pathway Church. We may never meet you. But in an act of kindness in the name of Jesus Christ, your debt has been forgiven.”
The pastor then asked the congregation to consider the joy the people may have felt when they found out their debts had been forgiven. He said, “I want you to imagine for a moment what those 1,600 people felt like last week when they got that letter in the mail. What was going on in those houses when they got that letter in the mail and all of a sudden they realize that their debt, this debt that has been hanging over their head has been forgiven… that’s exactly what God in the person of Jesus Christ wants you to feel each and every day – that your debt has been forgiven.”
According to Relevant Magazine, the church was able to help 1,600 families in Kansas and eliminate $2.2 million worth of debt through a donation of $22,000.
Photo courtesy: Getty Images/Zero Creatives
