Book excerpt: Election is a strange word when used in theology. It brings to mind old debates about what God might or might not have done before the foundation of the world. But viewed apart from that historical baggage, the word election is about a central gospel idea: that in Jesus not only does God choose to be God for us but chooses us to be for God. The calling of the disciples in the gospels is a story of election, of how God chooses to transform the world by choosing us to be messengers and agents of that transformation. So it is, says William Willimon, that election becomes not just the content of our preaching but the means as well. God chooses preachers. How unlikelyhow oddis it that God should entrust the proclamation of the gospel to, well, us? This unpredictable, electing God reaches out to save the world and then leaves it in the hands of preachers to get the word out? Through us, through our stammering tongues and faltering hearts, the preached word becomes the Word of God. If you wonder why you drag yourself into the pulpit every Sunday, if you worry that your sermons aren't reaching past the front pew, then read this book and be encouraged. God chooses; God chooses preachers; God chooses you.