Former ERLC President Russell Moore has joined Pastors Ray Ortlund and Barnabas Piper at the non-denominational Immanuel Church in Nashville, TN, joining their leadership team with the idea that the church will act as a staging ground for his new public theology project at Christianity Today.
With this move, he has effectively signaled that he has left the Southern Baptist Convention not only professionally, but personally as well. Though he still has a few more weeks left in his tenure at the ERLC, with a few more commitments to close out, he is making a beeline for the denominational door. Regardless of whether a formal statement is immediately forthcoming, for all intents and purposes, the man is gone.
Calling him a man of “tremendous integrity” and a “man of the bible” who “knows how to preach the gospel in the public square better than almost anyone today,” Immanuel Pastor TJ Tims shared that Moore’s “heart resonates deeply” with the ministry at Immanuel Nashville, and as a result, they have found a place for him as “Minister in Residence.”
Moore will occasionally preach and teach at the church that is closely associated with The Gospel Coalition, but their primary goal is to serve as a “home base” for his new progressive and spiritually garish endeavors.
In the post With Russell Moore Gone, I Weep in Joy, published a mere two weeks ago, one of JD Hall’s predictions was that:
“Within 90 days (or so) you will see or read Moore in a podcast or article (my guess would be CT or RNS) explain that he left the SBC because they grew too narrow for his view of wide-tent Christianity (of course, the opposite is true). He will point to Beth Moore as one of his reasons for leaving, holding true to his word that “a denomination that doesn’t have room for Beth Moore doesn’t have room for a lot of us.”
Looks like this treacherous man is right on schedule.
