Today, we look at a course choice. We can either as a church choose to be a maintenance-mode church, where we only focus on buildings, budgets anyd by-laws. This attitude ignores and avoids the people dying without Christ in the sea of life or we can have a mission-mode attitude that builds bridges rather than burns them to reach people who are counterculture to us.
To help us choose a mission-mode attitude, Jesus told a story or parable, which is probably the most famous paralel He ever told -- The Parable of the Good Samaritan. And in telling this parrabel teaches us that in this parable, the most unlikely person who is the hero is the Samaritan. This Samaritan reached out to someone who was totally counterculure to him. Jews hated and despised Samaritans. What a powerful lesson we all need to learn on reaching those who are counterculture to us.
