Mission and Preaching

While I'm linking to other blogs… here's another good one.  Michael Kruse quotes Will Willimon on the connection between preaching and mission.  (look at the whole post here)

The line that I thought was particularly good
"I suppose that we preachers ought to strive, in every sermon, to have some illustration or example whereby ordinary Christian people could sense God’s vocation."  

Why?

"Too many people in the church think of mission as something exotic, something that goes on somewhere else, something that cannot work here. In preaching, particularly when stories of mission activity and success are narrated, people are disarmed, they let down their defenses, they come to see themselves as part of God’s gracious activity in the world."

Mission often evokes images of people moving their whole family to some obscure place in Africa.  While that certainly is one valid form of mission work, if we are going to work toward a missional church mentality that sees ourselves as part of God's work in the world rather than a "open the doors and they will come so we can be a religious service provider" mentality we're going to have to work against this stigma about the word "mission" and provide "local, small, slow, seemingly insignificant" (Brian McLaren's words, not mine) opportunities for people see to themselves as part of God's mission.