Jesus gives the church its mission map11. Acts 1:8: Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the ends of the earth. Most of us skip the third stop.
For the first-century Jew, Samaria was the ethnic and theological wound of the road: the neighbors the Jerusalem church would have preferred to walk around. Yet Jesus puts Samaria on the required route to the nations (John 4; Acts 8). The witness goes through it, not past it.
Every congregation has a Samaria: the neighborhood nobody visits, the people group that feels like a complication, the mission nobody volunteers to fund.
The gospel that avoids Samaria never reaches the ends of the earth. Which stop is your church walking around?
- Acts 1:8 ↩
