As someone who has great affection for the Jewish race as has spent a lot of time evangelising Jewish people we should not let ourselves be too caught up by this verse.
Paul does explain the reasoning behind this statement later on in Romans where he several times compares the situation of the Jew and the Greek and comes to the conclusion that: 11 For there is no partiality with God. (Rom 2:11).
On a practical level when one reads Acts one will be struck with how Paul conducts his evangelism. His usual practice on entering a new town or village was to find the local synagogue.
This was a valid approach since nearly every settlement in Asia Minor and the area we now know as Greece and Macedonia would have a Jewish population.
At the time, in general, these individuals, were the most receptive to the message of the Gospel, closely followed those who were referred to as "God-fearers".
God-fearers were not Jews but were devoted to the word of God.
On thing that really did distinguish the gentile God-fearers from the Jews was their reluctance to accept circumcision.
What this mean't was that when Paul preached the Gospel to these congregations some of the Jews and often a large proportion of the gentile God-fearers would accept his preaching.
One of the factors that made the Gospel of Jesus Christ so inviting to the gentile God-fearers was that there was no obligation for circumcision - rather Paul preached a circumcision of the heart.
By evangelising in this way Paul was able to achieve his goals of reaching both the Jew and the Gentile really simultaneously.
When Paul reached Athens he did not find a synagogue and so could not follow his normal pattern of [FONT=Helvetica Neue, Verdana, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif]evangelism.
Instead he goes to the forum and debates the philosophers that he finds there. (Acts 17:16-34)
In doing so he shows his consummate flexibility of approach.
Furthermore, when one reads the various renderings of the Great Commission it is true that Jesus commands them to start in Jerusalem, and then reach out to more distant communities and people groups.
In practical terms what was Jesus telling them?
As far as I am concerned this is perfectly clear - start where you are, then move on to nearby communities, and then finally reach out to communities that are more distant.
If one has done any theology of missions then one knows that there are two concepts in play here.
The first is most obvious - there is a geographical dimension to this - but possible more importantly;
There is also a cultural dimension to the Great Commission - firstly reach out to people who share your cultural and theological outlook (Jerusalem), then look to communities that are similar but with some differences (Samaria), and finally try to reach those groups that are very distant from ones cultural and theological outlook (to the ends of the earth).
Remember what happened to the early church in Jerusalem when, after thoroughly evangelising Jerusalem they forgot about the rest of the Great Commission. God allowed great persecution to fall upon them and most of these new believers fled [/FONT]4 Therefore those who were scattered went everywhere preaching the word. (Acts 8:4).
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From what I can see we are called to evangelise according to a similar pattern so we neither need to go to Jerusalem nor start directly with Jewish people in exercising our ministry.
Start evangelising where you are geographically and to people who are culturally close to the Christian way of thinking and then gradually increase the geographic and cultural distance of the people one ministers the Gospel to.
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