TBC Richmond

By Tabernacle Baptist Church

Sermons, updates, and other resources from Tabernacle Baptist Church in Richmond, Virginia.... more

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The podcast currently has 65 episodes available.

TBC Richmond episodes:

December 08, 2019 The Journey to Wholeness, December 8
Scripture: He helps us in all our troubles, so that we are able to help others who have all kinds of troubles, using the same help that we ourselves have received from God. Just as we have shared in Christ’s many sufferings, so also through Christ we share in God’s great help. (2 Corinthians: 4-5)
Meditation: My father was an alcoholic. I have never written those words before. It has taken me over 50 years to be able to acknowledge that hurt and shame in my life. My father was a caring man with one of the best senses of humor on the earth, but he wrestled with demons for nearly all his 84 years. To see him at work as a middle-class government bureaucrat one would not have sensed the brokenness in his life, or for that matter the brokenness his drinking brought to his family. Brokenness is not often used to describe those of us in the middle class. No, we reserve it for the poor, the sick, and the homeless. But the journey to Christmas is about God’s reaching out to heal our brokenness. The gift of Christmas is Jesus’ promise of healing, peace, and hope for all his children, no matter their status in life.
Christ House is a medical recovery facility for homeless men and women in inner-city Washington, DC. On the first floor of the facility is an all-purpose room used for meetings, dining, and worship. On this day, the Easter Sunday worship was just beginning. Crowded into the room was an array of God’s children…rich suburbanites and poor inner-city residents, old black patients and young white volunteers, healthy neighbors and sick guests.
As the service began, Pastor Allen Goetcheus asked the community’s spiritual counselor, Sr. Marcella to say a few words. Her words were simple but direct, and there wasn’t a soul in the room who did not instantly understand how profound they were. Looking out on the congregation of men and women battered but unbeaten by life, she smiled and said. “If you don’t believe in resurrection you haven’t spent any time at Christ House.”
The gift of Christ House is that resurrections, big and small, are a daily occurrence. For some it is one day of sobriety after decades of alcohol use. For another it is the report that the HIV once consuming his body has been slowed to a stop, and for others it is the once unimaginable news that he is well and there is a home to move into.
Through the brokenness of those with whom we worshipped at Christ House, those of us whose lives had our own trials and tribulations were allowed to confront the dark and hurting places in our own lives and to share resurrections with people who, on the surface at least, were very different from us. It is impossible to worship with the poor and sick at Christ House and say you cannot deal with your struggles.
The journey to Christmas is the journey to hope and wholeness and, ultimately, peace.
“This is the blood of Jesus,” Leland whispers to me as he hands me the communion cup. In that moment the gift of Christmas is mine, for no distance separates the middle-aged, middle-class white man from a tiny Canadian border town and the formerly homeless black man with AIDS. We have each seen our brokenness, and through the gift of Christmas Leland and I share God’s love and healing.
Prayer: Lord, help us to reach out to those whose trials and victories teach us about the healing gift of Your love. Amen.
For additional information about our Advent devotions and their authors, click here.
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December 07, 2019 Making Room in the Inn

Scripture:
And Jesus concluded, “In your opinion, which one of these three acted
like a neighbor toward the man attacked by the robbers?”   The
teacher of the law answered, “The one who was kind to him.” Jesus replied. “You go then, and do the same.” (Luke 10:36-37)
Meditation:
A few years ago, I attended a
meeting in Cincinnati and decided to spend the night sleeping in a shelter run
by a close friend of mine. For nearly
two decades, my friend Buddy had reached out to the homeless men and women in
that city.   Buddy was one of the most
gentle and caring people I have ever known, unless you were a city official bent
on redeveloping his beloved Over-the-Rhine neighborhood and displacing the poor
and struggling families living there.
No
matter who came to his door, no matter how dirty or confused or inebriated,
Buddy put his arm around him and welcomed him into his shelter.
Tom
was one of those men who somehow found their way to Buddy’s doorstep. The night I stayed at the shelter, Buddy
asked Tom to give me a tour. Tom spent a
little time showing me the various programs and residential portions of the building,
but mostly Tom took me on a tour of his life.
He
told me how he was abused as a child, how he quit school and got into trouble,
how his marriage fell apart and he lost his family, and how drugs and alcohol
consumed him for years. He said, “I have
a Master’s in drugs, and a Ph.D. in trouble!”
“But,”
he proudly continued, “because of this place and the people who cared about me,
I found hope and the strength to change my life. I have been sober for 10 years. I have my children back in my life. I have a job I love, working with others who
are struggling with addictions. And most
of all, I know who I am.”
It is
clear that Tom’s life was changed by the programs which helped him deal with
some very difficult personal issues and by his own willingness to choose hope
over hopelessness. But what really saved
Tom’s life was the gift of hospitality — an unconditional acceptance of the
stranger in our midst — provided by Buddy and his staff.
Henry
Nouwen describes hospitality this way:
Hospitality is not to change people, but
to offer them space where change can take place…It is not a method of making
our God and our way into the criteria for happiness but the opening of an
opportunity to others to find their God and their way… hospitality is… a friendly
emptiness where strangers can enter and discover themselves as created free;
free to sing their own songs, speak their own languages, dance their own
dances.. Hospitality is not a subtle invitation to adopt the lifestyle of the
host, but the gift of a chance for the guest to find his own.
Prayer:    Lord,
help us to reach out to the strangers in our midst, to offer love, hope, comfort,
support, and a safe place to find their own way. Amen.
For additional information about our Advent devotions and their authors, click here.
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December 06, 2019 Sticky Kisses
Scripture:
Jesus said, “Let the children come to me and do not stop them, because
the Kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.
(Matthew 19:13-14)
Meditation:
As I pulled my car into the
parking lot at the shelter, I saw another car follow me into the small
lot. The car was crowded with children
and belongings. It looked like the
family had endeavored to strap every last possession on the car’s roof, and the
trunk strained with the remaining items.
As I sat and watched, three children climbed quietly out of the car, but
it was clear that another child remained inside the car. He was engaged in an animated conversation
with his parents. All of a sudden the
car door swung open and the young boy burst out, tears streaming down his face.
He was barely 12 or 13 years old. He began to walk briskly down the sidewalk,
screaming and crying that he did not want to stay at a shelter, asking his
parents, “How could you do this to me?”
As he walked away his shattered and defeated parents stood with their
heads bowed, holding back their own tears.
Parents
know how tough the years of a middle-schooler can be as they seek to venture
out on their own and gain the acceptance of their peers. Can you imagine being
a young boy living in a shelter? How do you invite your friends over after
school? How do you even tell your
friends where you live?
Homelessness
is hell for children, and it shapes their lives for years, if not for a
lifetime. A study by the Interagency
Council on the Homeless (now the U.S. Interagency on Homelessness) revealed the
sobering statistic that more than a quarter of all homeless adults had been
homeless as children, and many others had experienced similar childhood traumas
of abuse, foster care, or institutionalization.
Every day that we allow children to be homeless on our city streets
increases the likelihood that they and their children will find themselves on
those same streets years from now. We
must find a way to imbue this generation of children with hope for a future, or
their hopelessness will consume them and diminish us.
Prayer:
We pray for children
              who bring us sticky kisses and fistfuls of dandelions,
              who sleep with the dog and bury goldfish,
              who hug us in a hurry and forget their lunch money,
              who cover themselves with Band-aids and sing off key,
              who squeeze toothpaste all over the sink,
              who slurp their soup.
And we pray for those
              who never get dessert,
              who have no safe blanket to drag behind them,
              who watch their parents watch them die,
              who can’t find any bread to steal,
              who don’t have any rooms to clean up,
              whose pictures aren’t on anybody’s dresser,
              whose monsters are real.
By Ina J. Hughs
For additional information about our Advent devotions and their authors, click here.
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December 01, 2019 Sunday Worship – 12/1/19
Join us this morning for the first Sunday of Advent.
Today we also celebrate the baptism of Haley Bell. Our scripture this morning is 1 Samuel 2:1-10.
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December 01, 2019 The Gift of the Stranger
Scripture Reading: She gave birth to her first Son, wrapped him in cloths
and laid him in a manger – there was no room for them to stay in the inn. (Luke 2:7)
Meditation:
It was my first night as a
volunteer at the new Salvation Army shelter, opened to address the growing
needs of homeless men in downtown Phoenix.
I had never worked with homeless people before, so I sat nervously at
the registration table asking each man a few questions as he signed in. As I got more and more into the flow of the
job, I became more mechanical in my duties, soon failing to look up before
asking the next man in line his name. As I crouched over my clipboard, I called
out for the name of the next person in line.
A voice quietly said, “My name is Joseph.”   Continuing to stare at my clipboard, I
asked, “And your occupation?” Joseph
quietly answered, “I am a carpenter,” and then he disappeared into the crowd
heading through the shelter door.
At
that moment, just a few days before Christmas, I was jolted out of the
complacency of my “official” role. I
realized I could not ignore these men. I could not fail to give them the simple
dignity of looking them in the eye. If Joseph were there, could Jesus be there
also?   And what if I missed the
opportunity to grasp God’s outstretched hand and His invitation to journey with
Him in service to the world?
The
Bible does not tell us why the innkeeper felt compelled to find a place for
Joseph and Mary to sleep that night.
Perhaps it was the fact that it was clear that Mary was close to giving
birth that moved him to compassion, but why had none of the other innkeepers
felt so moved? Maybe it was because the
innkeeper had access to the cave where Jesus was born and no one else did, or
perhaps it was simply a chance to make a little more money from the travelers
visiting Bethlehem to pay their taxes. Or, just maybe, it was because by
looking into the eyes of Mary and Joseph the innkeeper caught a glimpse of
God’s love and chose to be a part of His plan for revealing that love to
mankind.
We
will have to wait until we get to heaven to get the answer to that question,
but what we do know is that the birthplace of Jesus is an important part of the
revelation of God’s story. Through His humble
birth, Jesus was connected to the world of the broken, and through that was
able to teach us about compassion and grace and hope. As Thomas Merton reminds us:
Into this world, this demented inn, in
which there is absolutely no room for Him at all, Christ has come
uninvited. But because He cannot be at
home in it, because He is out of place in it, His place is with those others
for whom there is no room. His place is
with those who do not belong, who are rejected by power because they are
regarded as weak, those who are discredited, who are denied the status of
person, who are tortured, bombed, and exterminated. With those for whom there is no room, Christ
is present in the world. He is mysteriously present in those for whom there
seems to be nothing but the world at its worst… It is in these that He hides
Himself, for whom there is no room.
Prayer:   Lord, thank You for the innkeeper who chose to be a part of God’s plan for the world. Help us to be aware of those around us who need to find room in the inn – be it a place of physical rest or spiritual hope. Amen.
For additional information about our Advent devotions and their authors, click here.
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December 01, 2019 Advent Introduction
The Christmas story is about journeys. It is the story of a young expectant mother traveling to Bethlehem with her husband to pay taxes. It is the story of the Magi following the stars in search of a King, and of humble shepherds taking leave of their sheep to find a Savior wrapped in cloth in a manger.
And so
it is for all of us. The birth of Christ
marks the beginning of the journey to Easter and our personal journey from
brokenness to wholeness. For those who
choose to listen, the Christmas story transforms each of us into a traveler on
the road to reconciliation, redemption and hope.
Our
personal journey has taken us to many places only God could have imagined, from
the windswept plains of a North Dakota reservation to the sugar cane fields of
south Florida; from a barrio in the desert Southwest to the hollows of
Appalachia, and the streets of inner-city Washington, D.C. Along the way we were blessed with a decade
at Fredericksburg Baptist Church where we were nurtured, supported, challenged
and uplifted.
In
2002, we were humbled to have been asked to share some stories of our journey
with our fellow parishioners during Advent season. And, this year, we are equally humbled to
share these stories with our friends at Tabernacle Baptist Church. In the pages
of this devotional you will hear the stories of those we have come to know as
we have traveled…stories from our work with Native Americans, migrant farm
workers, elderly persons and the homeless men, women and children.
Many
of the people we will introduce to you in the pages ahead have led very
difficult lives. Most have overcome
incredible odds and openly share their stories.
Others are more reticent, desiring to put the past behind them and grasp
their new futures of hope. In order to
ensure that we did not compromise anyone’s privacy we have changed some of the details.
Additionally,
to make it easier for readers (and the writers), we have chosen to refer to God
as He, even though it our belief that God encompasses both masculinity and
femininity. All scripture references,
unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Bible in Today’s English
Version, commonly know as the “Good News Bible.”
A
number of the readings make reference to Christ House, a medical recovery
facility with 24–hour nursing coverage for homeless and formerly homeless men
and women. Christ House is an
all-encompassing ministry with a social work department, a substance abuse
recovery program, a worshipping congregation, and a staff who live in community
on site. Kairos House is a companion
ministry nearby where former Christ House patients committed to recovery live
in community. Christ House is located in the Adams-Morgan neighborhood of
Washington, DC, and was part of the Church of the Saviour’s family of
ministries. The Church of the Saviour is now a scattered community of
independent churches.
As we
journey toward the destination of Christmas, we must recognize that this
journey is only preparation for a longer one.
Christ invites you on a longer journey into the life of your community
to tell the story of Jesus and reach out to a hurting world.
It is
our prayer that through our stories you will hear the Christmas story in a
different way this year, and the people we introduce to you will challenge you
to invest yourselves even more in ministry at Tabernacle Baptist Church and in
the community. As we begin our journey
remember these words of Jean Vanier:
We are called to drink deeply from the
heart of Christ, so that we, the church, can become a home for the lonely and the
crushed of this earth. Christ puts into the arms of His church the suffering
and the hungry of this world so that they may heal us, call us down from our
pedestals of power and wealth and lead us into the wisdom of the beatitudes.
Please
come with us as we travel to Christmas.
Fred and Ginny Karnas
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November 14, 2019 Call Stories: Bonus Track with Sterling and Hogan
Listen to a follow-up conversation between Sterling and Hogan about their call stories! Listen to Hogan’s Call Story here, and Sterling’s here.
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November 14, 2019 Call Stories: Sterling Severns
We’ve shared a series of conversations about calling with our pastoral staff on our podcast. This week we’re hearing from Rev. Sterling Severns, our Senior Pastor. There is a follow-up conversation with Sterling and our Youth Minister, Hogan Brock; make sure to listen to that one too!
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October 23, 2015 Let's Talk About Sex: Week 7
This is the seventh session of our fall 2015 Wednesday night Adult series. Our topic this week is "The Biology of Sexuality." We're making these podcasts available if you are unable to join us on Wednesday nights in the fellowship hall. You are also invited to join us on Sunday mornings from 9:30 to 10:15am in the parlor to discuss the previous Wednesday's topic. These sessions will be led by Rev. Kristen Koger.
*Note: The podcast this week does include slideshow images from Dr. Tracy Hartman's presentation. If you download the podcast, you should be able to view them. The slides do include textbook illustrations of human anatomy.*
Tentative Schedule for the Series
Introductions and Context
September 9
Week 1 - Introduction, Ground Rules, and Big Questions
September 16
Week 2 - Sexuality and Objectification in Contemporary Culture
Sex and Sexuality in the Bible
September 23
Week 3 - Sex and Sexuality in the Old Testament, part 1
September 30
Week 4 - Sex and Sexuality in the Old Testament, part 2
October 7
Week 5 - Sex and Sexuality in the New Testament, part 1
October 14
Week 6 - Sex and Sexuality in the New Testament, part 2
Healthy Sexual Relationships Today
October 21
Week 7 - The Biology of Sexuality
October 28
Week 8 - Sex and Marriage
November 4
Week 9 - How to Talk to your Young Children about Sex and Sexuality
November 11
Week 10 - How to Talk to your Teenagers about Sex and Sexuality
November 18
Week 11 - How to have Difficult Conversations
December 2
Week 12 - Dealing with Shame and Guilt
December 9
Week 13 - Toward a New Theology of Sexuality (Closing session)
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September 10, 2015 Let's Talk About Sex: Week 1
This is the first session of our fall 2015 Wednesday night Adult series. We're making these podcasts available if you are unable to join us on Wednesday nights in the fellowship hall. You are also invited to join us on Sunday mornings from 9:30 to 10:15am in the parlor to discuss the previous Wednesday's topic. These sessions will be led by Rev. Kristen Koger.
Tentative Schedule for the Series
Introductions and Context
September 9
Week 1 - Introduction, Ground Rules, and Big Questions
September 16
Week 2 - Sexuality and Objectification in Contemporary Culture
Sex and Sexuality in the Bible
September 23
Week 3 - Sex and Sexuality in the Old Testament, part 1
September 30
Week 4 - Sex and Sexuality in the Old Testament, part 2
October 7
Week 5 - Sex and Sexuality in the New Testament, part 1
October 14
Week 6 - Sex and Sexuality in the New Testament, part 2
Healthy Sexual Relationships Today
October 21
Week 7 - The Biology of Sexuality
October 28
Week 8 - Sex and Marriage
November 4
Week 9 - How to Talk to your Young Children about Sex and Sexuality
November 11
Week 10 - How to Talk to your Teenagers about Sex and Sexuality
November 18
Week 11 - How to have Difficult Conversations
December 2
Week 12 - Dealing with Shame and Guilt
December 9
Week 13 - Toward a New Theology of Sexuality (Closing session)
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FAQs about TBC Richmond:

How many episodes does TBC Richmond have?

The podcast currently has 65 episodes available.