So, you received a letter stating that your medical debt has been abolished by Vineyard Community Church in partnership with the nonprofit, Undue Medical Debt. You may be wondering, “Is this a scam?” Allow me to reassure you, no, this is not a scam. Your medical debt really has been abolished.

You may be wondering, “So, what’s the catch?”  No catch. No strings attached. No ulterior motive. If you got a letter stating that your medical debt has been abolished, we are overjoyed that we got to bless you in this way! We hope it helps lift the heavy burden of medical debt off of your shoulders.

As a church community, we are raising funds to renovate our building. We are setting aside 20% of all funds that are raised, and we are using that money to abolish medical debt in our area. We are doing this in partnership with the nonprofit organization Undue Medical Debt. They find and purchase the debt from hospitals in the area, and we, as a church, pay off the debt.

You may be wondering, “Why is Vineyard Community Church abolishing the medical debt of people they don’t even know?” Great question. Simply put, we paid your debt because Jesus paid ours. (Matthew 18:21-35, Romans 6:23)

As a church community, we are followers of Jesus Christ who believe in the gospel. And the gospel tells us that all of us are in over our heads with debt – a debt we couldn’t possibly pay – the debt of sin. Yet, Jesus paid a high price to cancel all the debt of our sin. He paid with His very life. His death on the cross and resurrection from the grave completely abolished our debt of sin. We’ve been given a new life in Christ. (Colossians 2:13-14)

Because we’ve been set free from the debt of sin, we wanted to help set other people free from financial debts. Setting people free from medical debt, to us, is a real-life picture of the gospel. Your debt has been paid, no strings attached. You don’t need to do a thing. You don’t need to visit our church. You don’t need to donate money. You don’t need to do anything except enjoy your new freedom from your medical debt. That’s enough for us. We’re simply responding to the grace we’ve been given and paying-it-forward. That’s why we paid off your debt. We hope you’re blessed by it.

We'd love to hear your story about how getting your medical debt abolished has impacted you! If you'd like to share it with us, I know we'd be so encouraged by it.