The cross preacher

“You can’t be a cross preacher and appear wise to the world.”

This was the provocative line I jotted down about halfway through Phil Colgan’s address at the Nexus 2015 conference. I’m pretty sure, by the way, that ‘cross preacher’ was my abbreviation for ‘a preacher whose sermons are dominated by the message of Christ crucified’—as opposed to a merely grumpy or angry preacher (although I guess grumpy preachers are also mostly despised by our broader culture).

Phil’s powerful talk wrapped up the morning presentations at Nexus, following on from Simon Manchester’s exposition of Galatians 6, and Mark Thompson’s exploration of Luther’s ‘theology of the cross’.

Starting in 1 Corinthians 1-2 and branching out to other places in the New Testament, Phil showed how the apparently weak and foolish message of the cross must be our constant preoccupation and testimony, as well as the reality that shapes our character.

I was particularly struck by Phil’s take on contextualization, and how the cross licences the best kind of contextualization. In imitation of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross, we should sacrifice our lives and preferences for the sake of reaching as many people as possible (the ‘all things to all men’ principle). We might sacrifice our habits, our clothing, the language we use, the buildings we meet in, and more. But the message doesn’t change. We sacrifice ourselves, but we don’t sacrifice the message—it remains the simple, unvarnished word of the cross that cuts across the cultural expectations and categories of Jews and Greeks alike, and only makes sense to those who by the Spirit of God apprehend the things of God.

To hear how Phil explained this, and much else besides, see the video below.