Ray Ortlund Separates Himself from Bible Belt Christianity

Hi Jon,

I am a college student and a regular attendee of Immanuel Nashville, Ray Ortlund’s church. As someone called to the ministry myself, I would like to say a few things about the church for your benefit. First, Ray is now essentially the pastor emeritus – he has ceded teaching duties to T.J. Tims who, at least on the face of it, seems less woke. Secondly, neither promote the Galatian heresy, or combine works and faith at all. While I appreciated the rest of the video, and think (like most of us) Twitter is harmful to his ministry, I can easily say that he was making a delineation between orthodoxy and the orthopraxy which stems from it. He clearly believes, as all of the orthodox Reformed tradition has, that faith without works is dead, and that that dead faith is dangerous and difficult at times to parse out. Thirdly and finally, when he talks about building a “gospel culture” he doesn’t just mean something hollow or flabby or appealing to the elite; having attended the church, I can say that there’s a sweet sincerity about it which I haven’t experienced very often.

Having sat under Ray and the staff of Immanuel, and listened to your podcast a good bit, I think that there is a good bit of talking past one another and wish that such would stop. Being at Immanuel has reminded me that faithful believers can rejoice in Christ our redeemer even through myriads of disagreements.

In Christ,
Jackson Lee