When did we divide people into spiritual and not-spiritual? When did we decide that physical challenges and emotional aches were something we could leapfrog over — in our passion to touch on someone’s spiritual needs?

We’re leapfrogging no longer.

Compassion-based ministries are actually high on the agenda for the Evangelical Free Church of America. After all, compassion is a call from Christ Himself, and our biblical model for life (Matthew 9:35,36; Luke 6:32-36; 1 John 3:16-18).

Churches across the EFCA agree. In fact, the compassionate response to Hurricane Katrina since 2005 has formed the movement’s single largest joint effort ever: More than 12,000 volunteers have joined teams in New Orleans, compelled by the call to alleviate pain and suffering in Christ’s name.

And guess what’s happening as a result? A slippery slide into the “social gospel”? Far from it. A team in New Orleans is preparing to launch a multiplying, church-planting movement there — building on the spiritual transformation that sprang out of the fertile soil of compassion.

Spiritual fruit is springing from compassionate relief following other crises as well: Southeast Asia tsunami, Rwanda genocide, North Dakota drought, Peru earthquake, Iowa floods. Not to mention day-in, day-out acts of compassion in large and small communities the world over.

Jesus lived and breathed compassion. So the gospel — the good news about Jesus — is inconceivable without His compassion. Join us in living out the gospel with compassion in your community.