Invitation to Transforming Mission
Friends, we’re now in the second to last week of this sermon series I put together for the season of Lent, based on “Invitations of Jesus” by pastor and author Trevor Hudson. This week’s “invitation” that Hudson asks us to consider is Jesus inviting us to share in mission. Oof. Mission is one of those Church Words that makes me feel bad, because I always feel like no matter how I’m working at it, I’m doing it wrong. It’s also one of those Church Words that fills me, your pastor, with cold dread because I think “oh no, here come the charge conference forms.” But I’ll say more about that in a minute. Most of this is because of my own perspective. We don’t join Jesus in his mission by working hard at it. We get there by thinking and feeling like Jesus. Then it comes naturally. When I started ruminating on this, I was thinking of the Casting Crowns song “Jesus, Friend of Sinners”: Jesus, friend of sinners, we have strayed so far away We cut down people in Your name But th...