As an employee in a hospital accounting department, Catherine Coe has seen how medical debt can devastate people financially. As a member of Trinity Moravian Church, she has also seen how a small group of people can ease that devastation by coming together despite their differences.
Trinity Moravian is “definitely a purple congregation” according to its pastor, Rev. John Jackman. The church pews hold conservative Republican Trump voters alongside liberal Democrats who vehemently oppose the president. But those political differences dissolve when it comes to helping erase people’s medical bills they can’t afford.
Uniting around a community need trumps partisan preferences
Coe told North Carolina Health News that we are all “just a single medical bill away from financial ruin.”
“There isn’t a political divide when it comes to medical debt,” the self-identified conservative continued. “It all brings us together.”
Terri Mabe stands on the opposite side of the aisle politically, but agrees with Coe that those differences don’t matter when it comes to helping people. As someone who worked in the construction industry, Mabe has seen the same hardships as Coe.
“In between projects you are a lot of times without a job,” she said. “Then you get sick. Next thing you know, you owe $5,000, $10,000 that you cannot pay. You’re barely paying your home bills. Then you’re like: ‘I can’t pay it. What do I do now?’”
But how does one congregation of just a couple hundred people make a dent in millions of dollars of debt?
The Debt Jubilee Project takes on medical debt for pennies on the dollar
The church has honed its approach to alleviating medical debt for people in the Winston-Salem community through a series of fundraising campaigns. But it hasn’t really been difficult, according to Rev. Jackman.
“This is the easiest money I’ve ever raised,” he said. “All I do is tell people what we’re doing, and they write me a check.”
That check might be $25 or $30, but it all adds up. The church’s first campaign in 2022 set a goal of $5,000 to erase approximately $500,000 in medical debt held by residents of Forsyth County. That goal was met with mostly donations under $50 each.
How does $5,000 erase one hundred times that amount in medical debt? Jackman had learned about a nonprofit called Undue Medical Debt, which purchases medical debt in large bundles, millions of dollars at a time, which allows them to buy it for pennies on the dollar. That makes it so a $1 donation erases around $100 in debt.
It’s not a perfect solution to the overall problem, but it’s at least something
Trinity Moravian raised $17,000 in its eighth Debt Jubilee, which helped retire $2.2 million in debt. People whose debts are forgiven don’t apply or ask for the help. They simply receive a letter that their debt has been eliminated.
Obviously, solving the problem at the root would be preferable to fundraising to erase debt after it has accumulated, but Jackman contends that he and his congregation are concerned with fixing what they can, where they can.
“We hope the medical system gets fixed someday but that’s beyond our pay grade,” Jackman told WXII in 2023. “But what we can do is what we’re doing now, buy some of the debt and forgive it.”
The church launched its ninth campaign on July 15, 2026. You can learn more on Trinity Moravian’s Debt Jubilee Project web page.
