I’d looked for a church home for months. I’d gone from church to church looking for something that didn’t require I leave my seminary training at the door but something that felt like home without all the seminary fluff. The first day I walked into Tabernacle, it was like grandmother’s living room. Comfortable. Safe. Friendly. When I learned of the food pantry/clothes closet ministry, I knew I’d found the inner sanctum…the heartbeat of the church and my own soul. Without so much as a question why, I was given a place to serve. I was able to give and be given to in that place. I found family in that space. I was home.
Tabernacle has raised more than one rascal of a seminarian. I’m grateful for the call to see us through those winsome years of theological discernment. But, not only have you raised us, guided us, ordained us, you have been strong enough, mature enough and loving enough to let us go. Bless us as we go, in fact. You have served as the holy parent in an arrangement that could have easily been interpreted as someone else’s problem. Tabernacle Baptist Church made me into the minister I am today. I find myself referencing what TBC would do on more than one occasion in my daily ministry in Massachusetts. When I come back to visit, it’s like that first day all over again: comfortable, safe, friendly. I guess you never really become a stranger in grandmother’s living room. There is always a place for you when you come home.
Thank you for loving me.
Rev. Lindsay C. Comstock
Lindsay was ordained at Tabernacle Baptist Church on January 6, 2007 and currently serves as Minister of Christian Education and Youth at The First Baptist Church Worcester, Massachusetts.
