KOKOMO — A church in central Indiana is planning to help a lot of Hoosiers in need by wiping out millions of dollars in medical debt.
Fuel Church of Kokomo says they donated $20,000 to RIP Medical Debt, a non-profit organization that purchases medical debt for pennies on the dollar and then forgives those loans completely.
"We had some money allotted in our budget to do some renovations here at hte church this summer and our board of directors agreed to take that and give it to help eliminate $5.2 million in medical debt for people in Howard County and Miami County," said Jacob Burgei, pastor of Fuel Church. "My wife and I were in thousands of dollars in medical debt at one point in our lives. I've had two back surgeries and it impacted our lives, it impacted our marriage and our parenting and I know the stress that it brings."
That donation will wipe out the medical debt for 3,400 Hoosiers, most of them Burgei says he will probably never meet.
"It's random. We don't pick whose debt gets eliminated,' Burgei said. "It very well likely could be people within our church and it could probably be alot of people outside of our church. They may never walk through our church and we're fine like that."
He says it's the church's way of paying it forward.
"We just want them to know because of what Jesus did, paying our debt, your debt has been forgiven," Burgei said.
This isn't the first time an Indiana church has wiped out debt for Hoosiers. Last week, a southern Indiana church purchased $6.2 million of debt for four surrounding counties and wiped it clean.
