Matthew Moore: More than $17 million in medical debt has been erased for 11,000-plus residents of Sebastian and Crawford counties. That debt relief was made possible through a nonprofit called Undue Medical Debt and the efforts of First Presbyterian Church in Fort Smith.
Reverend Tasha Blackburn is the senior pastor for First Pres. We spoke over Zoom last week. She says she first saw the idea years ago in a news article where a church in North Carolina did a similar thing.
Tasha Blackburn: And it was intriguing to me because of the numbers they were talking about. So, I mean, the numbers were astronomical, how much debt they could forgive for how little they gave, if that makes sense. So I kind of kept that in my mind for a while, and I brought it to our session a few months ago. Our session is our leadership board at the church. And I said, dig into this partner. See if they’d be a good partner. What do you guys think?
And they sat with it for a couple of months. And then at our December meeting, they just went crazy with it. They had asked me to find out what the debt that could be gotten from Sebastian County would be. They can’t get all the debt, and we can talk about that if you want, but what they can get, they say, get us that number.
And then one of the members of my leadership team lives in Crawford County. And he said, by the way, I want to know Crawford County’s number too. And so they had all that information. And then at their December meeting, they said, no, we want to go for it. We want to forgive both counties. So our Christmas Eve offering, always 100% of it goes to help in the community somehow. And so the Christmas Eve offering went toward it, and then some mission funding that we had remaining for the year. And between that we were able to do it.
Moore: It’s wild to think about… You kind of mentioned it here. We’re talking about like decimals of pennies on the dollar here to talk about this ratio that you raised $63,500, and because of consolidation, because of the math that goes into this, the way the debt data is collected, more than $17 million was able to be abolished because of this amount.
Blackburn: Yes, just $63,000 and a little bit more. Over $17.7 million worth of debt. And it affects over 11,000 people in the two counties.
One of the things that really matters to us, what we try to focus our mission efforts on at the church, is those folks who are working one job, maybe two jobs, and they’re trying to make ends meet. But one bill comes in, a surprise, and it just really sets them back. So that’s what we focus on here at the church with some of our programs. And that’s what we wanted to focus on with this medical debt, because nobody asked to get sick.
Moore: Did you see medical debt as something that, like you saw it in a personal experience with one of your congregants, or you saw it in a way that made you realize that this is a very concrete way we can make a massive difference?
Blackburn: Yeah, well, we care a lot about debt at this church. We have a car loan program that is all about people getting a reliable car at a decent price, at an interest rate you and I couldn’t even get. So we partner with First National Bank here in town and with two different car dealerships in town to make sure folks can have reliable transportation and not be in debt for it at a buy-here-pay-here place.
We have a small loan program that does the same thing, so that you won’t have to go somewhere and pay 400% interest on a small loan. You should not be punished because you don’t have means. You shouldn’t be punished further. So we think about that a lot in our programming anyway, or in our mission efforts anyway. And so this seemed right up that alley, and it seemed like a lot of bang for our buck to be able to relieve medical debt.
We started looking into it. Medical debt is the number one reason Americans declare bankruptcy in this country that they did not ask to incur. And also we looked into it, and unfortunately the numbers are high around the United States, and they’re even higher in Arkansas. I think it’s the most recent data we were able to find, over 37% of adults in Arkansas struggle with medical debt.
Moore: And the reality is that people who have health insurance, people who are paying a monthly premium, are still folks who are running into this. It’s not just uninsured people who are going to the emergency room.
Blackburn: If you have something where, say, you had to just meet your deductible, and the deductible is high, to some people, a $2,000 debt is not the end of the world. And to some people, it really is. And it means that they cannot go to legitimate banks to do business. It means their credit rating is not what it could be to get interest rates at the rate they would like to get. It just has this cascading effect.
And so we wanted to look at cutting it off at the knees and at least doing something. So many of us, we look around the world and we say, how can I help? What can I do? Well, this was something we could do.
Moore: You make a point to call out the Lord’s Prayer in your rationale for doing this sort of specific act. Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. It seems to be a very important element of the kind of mission work that you do.
I think oftentimes when we think of mission work in the Christian church, we think of going to foreign countries and helping to build things, or we go to remote areas to help people who may not know about Jesus. But it sounds to me like your mission work that you are passionate about is helping people who had a hard time and want to get back on their feet.
Blackburn: Absolutely. You know, I was thinking about this. I mean, one of the big teachings we don’t talk about from the Old Testament is this thing called usury, which is an old-timey term. But it means charging people this interest that is going to bury them, and they will never get out of it. And that’s a sin, according to the Old Testament, to do that to people.
And Jesus himself talks about that we are not to trample on the poor, that we are to give, not because we will get back. We’re to give because to give is the gift in itself. And then, as you said in the prayer itself, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. We want to be a part of some good news in Fort Smith, in the River Valley, in Van Buren, in both of these counties. We want to be part of some good news that says we love our neighbors and we think everybody needs a break.
Moore: $63,500. Do you have an approximate amount of people who donated to make this possible?
Blackburn: Well, as I said, every year for the last, I’d say 10 years, we do our Christmas Eve offering for that. And so there were probably, of the folks who gave that night, over 100 folks gave that night, and that was over $4,000. And then the rest, we ended the year a little stronger than we sometimes do in the budget. We never know till the end of the year. And so we were able to do it from our living gifts of our annual fund. The remainder could be paid through that.
So that’s over 300 people who gave to make this possible. We do a lot of work around the community. We gave almost half a million dollars away last year to the River Valley through different nonprofits. We work with different nonprofits to give away grant money, and we’re very proud of that. And we are going to keep doing that, of course, nothing has the bang for your buck like this… We’ve never seen anything like this that can take away so much stress and heaviness. And like I say, we’ll continue to work with 10 or 20 different nonprofits throughout the River Valley, and we will continue to do so. And it’s an honor to partner with them.
Moore: What advice would you give to other churches in our area who see what you’ve done with, nothing personal, not that much of a gift, right? I mean, $63,000 is not nothing. But imagine a church that’s twice your size who could give? What advice would you give, or what encouragement would you give to other churches or religious organizations in our community?
Blackburn: I’d be happy to pass on Undue’s email. I mean, I think I mentioned earlier in our conversation, so many of us are looking out in the world. Our churches are looking out in the world and wondering, what can we do? I want to be a part of a solution, not a problem. I want to be a helper, but I feel caught because how can I help? Well, the way we can most make a change is in our neighborhood and in our local community.
So I would look at where the gaps are. Look at your own neighborhood and your own local area and where are the gaps and how can we be a neighbor in the gaps? Ask our leaders where the gaps are… We had a mission team a few years ago, that’s all they did. They just asked different leaders in town to meet with them and say, where are the gaps? Because if there’s something that’s being handled and it’s being done well, OK, don’t recreate it. Find the gap. And then we also try to look at things that are more than a Band-Aid. A Band-Aid feels good to the giver. It doesn’t make a change.
Moore: Reverend Tasha Blackburn is the senior pastor at First Presbyterian Church in Fort Smith. She says recipients of the debt relief will see a letter in their mailbox from Undue Medical Debt later this month, letting them know how much relief they received. The letter will also specify that no, this is not a scam, and yes, this relief came from First Presbyterian Church in Fort Smith.
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