Take My Hands

ILLUSTRATIONS BY ANDREW BANNECKER

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.