One church, The Altar Fellowship in Johnson City, Tennessee, is putting their money where their faith is and blessing the community around them to the tune of $8 million.
Leader of The Altar Fellowship, evangelist, pastor and author Mattie Montgomery, told The Christian Post that he dreamed of helping relieve people of crushing medical debt. After sharing this dream with a friend, the decision was made to partner with a debt negotiation group called RIP Medical Debt.
By doing so, The Altar Fellowship was able to purchase and consolidate $8 million worth of debt from the church’s six neighboring counties for only $50,000 after negotiations.
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“And essentially, we became the collection agency for $8 million of medical debt,” Montgomery said to The Christian Post. “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.'”
This act of kindness and love has led to amazing testimonies about the goodness of God.
As reported by The Christian Post,
“One story of a family helped by the church that stood out to the pastor involved a teenage boy who was known for attending worship services without his parents because they’re not Christians. The high schooler had been trying to share about the church and newfound faith with his parents.
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“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,'” Montgomery recalls. “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.”
Talk about a God moment.
But the job doesn’t stop there according to Montgomery. There is still a lot of work for the church to do in the world, and he hopes this example will set a fire in the heart of the church to go out and serve the world as Jesus commanded us to do.
“We want extravagant generosity to be one of the things that the church is known for,” Montgomery says. “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.”
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James Lasher is staff writer for Charisma Media.
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