Skip to main content

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.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Flow Chart for Bible Translation (a Relevance Theory Approach)

One of the current theories behind modern translation work is Relevance Theory. [1] Here is a flow chart that explains the process often used to produce a draft when using such an approach: *Make sure your translation committee makes the decision as to what kind of translation they want. A domesticated translation is one that submits to dominant values in the target language [2] whereas a foreignized translation is one that is happy to import foreign terms and ideas from Hebrew, Greek, or the language of wider communication such as the Greek term baptizo . The chart looks something like this: Text                                   Communicated Ideas                  Context A sower went out to sow  A farmer went out to sow grain   People scattered/threw seed etc. The text has very little information, but behind i...
Post a Comment
Read more

A Plea Regarding Footnotes in Bible Translation

Recently I was giving input to a team who had worked on Psalms. I noticed that in several places they had included footnotes referring to the New Testament use of those Psalms. One example was a footnote in Ps 34:20 'not one of [his bones] will be broken' that referred to John 19:32, 33, 36 where this prophecy is fulfilled. Now, obviously this is a useful link for readers, but it is better to put it in John's gospel referring back to Psalms. Why? Because the New Testament is (to some extent) a commentary on the Hebrew Bible, whereas the reverse is not true (the Hebrew Bible never refers to the New Testament). There are often two possible ways of reading a Psalm: In its original context, and  As interpreted by the New Testament writers. This is quite important, as the Hebrew Bible belongs to two faith communities, the Jews and the Christians. (Muslims too, to some extent, though they refer to the Torah and the Psalms only). If we translate the Bible in such a way that it onl...
Post a Comment
Read more

Integral Mission vs. Holistic Mission - What's the Difference?

 A lot of people are talking about integral mission these days, whereas the idea of holistic mission seems to have fallen by the wayside. What's the difference? Holistic mission is mission to the whole person, taking into account their physical as well as spiritual needs. Evangelism is combined with social action. Unfortunately, this term has been used for some years now, and much mission that was labelled 'holistic' was mainly social action. Integral mission has more focus on communities and their felt needs. What issues of poverty and (lack of) justice are there? How can a given community begin to address these issues? What input do they need from outsiders as they do so? How can they define kingdom goals that will bring them out of their physical and spiritual poverty? Lausanne defines it here . The fact is that the neediest communities are often ones that lack the Bible, and lack a clear orthography (alphabet corresponding to the phonemic system of the language, and tha...
Post a Comment
Read more