By Heather Graves
Correspondent
DE PERE – More than 2,900 people around Wisconsin – including nearly 50 in Brown County – who’ve been hounded by debt collectors for past due medical expenses, can breathe a sigh of relief thanks to the generosity of an area church.
Life Church, located at 1551 Lawrence Drive in De Pere, donated $17,500, which cleared $4.4 million in debt, for pennies on the dollar, impacting thousands of individuals and families across Wisconsin.
Life Church has a congregation of 4,000 to 5,000 per week, including those in the building, those watching live online and the services held at the Brown County correctional facility.
Lead Pastor Sonny Hennessy said the church paid off the debt through a non-profit organization called RIP Medical Debt that buys up and forgives medical debt.
The organization, headquartered in New York, has been in operation since 2014.
The recipients of the donations were only told that Life Church cleared their debt.
Hennessy said many recipients had never heard of Life Church prior to this.
Life Church staff have been contacted by some of the recipients – through letters and voicemails thanking them for the life-changing donation.
“We didn’t do this to get credit or thanks,” Hennessy said. “We wanted to be an example of what the church should do and how to love people like Jesus said to.”
Hennessy said more donations to RIP are planned when more qualifying medical debt in the state is purchased.
“We asked to pay for all of Wisconsin,” Hennessy said. “We would have paid more, but all that was purchased in Wisconsin to that point was what we paid off. We will do it again.”
Hennessy and her husband Shawn, senior pastor at Life Church, are familiar with the pressure that medical debt can cause.
“We know medical debt is one of the biggest causes of stress in people’s lives, so it was important to us to show Jesus’ love in a practical way.” Shawn Hennessy said.
Seventeen years ago, while living in Washington, the Hennessys lost their daughter Savannah Rose when she was just 18 days old.
“Seattle Children’s and Tacoma General forgave hundreds of thousands of dollars after our daughter died,” Sonny Hennessy said. “We never forgot what a miracle that was.”
The Hennessys saw the donation as a way they could pay forward the generosity that was bestowed upon them.
The generosity of parishioners at Life Church doesn’t stop there.
Ten percent of the church’s weekly collections is donated to Eye Heart World, which fights sex trafficking and operates a survivors’ home here in Green Bay.
“We (also made a donation) to the victims of the recent De Pere fire, we give to those in need at shelters and to the Boys and Girls Club,” Hennessy said.