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How to Be a Missionally-Minded Good Samaritan

 In Luke 10 Jesus tells the story of the good Samaritan. The usual (and correct) interpretation of this is to look after others, whoever they are, and take care of their physical needs. But what about their spiritual needs? What if they have suffered trauma, or are struggling with addiction? So, it is broader than physical needs, clearly.

Also, in the original story, Samaritans and Judeans (or Galileans) were separate groups of people. There was a tendency to mistrust one another, therefore. The Samaritans were foreigners, and had been for almost eight centuries (the people group came into being after the conquest of the Northern kingdom).

So, from a missional perspective, what can we learn from this story?

We need to treat those from other nations as we would our nearest and dearest. This impacts several areas of life:

  1. Immigrants. We cannot simply follow the current trend to want to preserve our country for our own people (which, in any case, is hard to define ethnically). Rather, we should treat immigrants as we would our own people. This means caring for their needs as human beings, not just as people who need to hear the good news.
  2. Those abroad who have not yet had an opportunity to even come close to hearing the good news about Jesus. Many churches these days want to prioritise local mission, but this is unbiblical. We need to treat those who are far off in the same way as we treat our local neighbours.
  3. Any mission in the majority world needs to be integral. Again, we need to care for the whole person, and the community they are part of.
  4. Those who do not yet have access to the Bible in their own language. There are over 7,000 languages in the world, yet the vast majority of Bible translations are into languages like English, that already have many, many translations. Instead we should be prioritising those groups that do not have any of the Bible in their language yet, but who need it (as either the local churches want to use it in that language, or the entire people group are unreached). This point therefore relates to point 2 - it is hard to share the good news about Jesus with people if they lack a translation that works for them. It might be that an oral storying approach, or trauma healing is what they need right now, rather than classic Bible translation (which might be needed later on).
Talking of which, we (my wife and I) were involved in one of the national language translations that came out in 2016. At that point there were about 650 languages that had the full Bible. Now there are about 782 (as of November 2025). Praise God for the huge progress that has been made in Bible translation over the last 9-10 years! But more work is needed, and we need to pray that the Lord of the harvest sets aside workers for this important harvest/work.

So, who is my neighbour, and what can I do to reach out to them? Let us take a minute to reflect and ask the Holy Spirit to prompt us how we can be involved in reaching out to unreached people groups, as well as ministering to the needs of those who live locally.

Up-to-date Bible translation statistics are available here.

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