Sterling Severns Life of the Community, Staff, Worship

When We Gather

On Sunday mornings, I have the privilege of sitting up front in the blue fabric chair just behind the pulpit before worship really gets going.

For over 20 years, I’ve settled into that chair nearly every week, watching the congregation arrive for worship. Some of you walk in quietly, take a bulletin, and slip into a pew for quiet reflection, while others of you move through the room greeting one another. And then there are those of you in the Virtual Acre doing something similar in your own way—settling in with coffee, saying good morning in the chat, making space for worship wherever you are.

One of the things I’ve come to love about sitting in that seat is that it gives me such a clear view of what happens next. I get to see the slow, quiet convergence as you arrive from all over, carrying the week behind you, your burdens and joys in tow, and gradually our voices begin to join together.

There’s something beautiful about those first notes of the gathering song. It’s one of those sacred moments when our gathered bodies become The Gathered Body—when the many individual parts begin coming together as one.

As worship continues, that sense of shared space only deepens. When some of you stand to share your testimonies—each one unique, rooted in your own lived experience—there’s this mystery where your stories begin to resonate with all of us. When others of you lead us in song, guide us in prayer, or serve in so many other ways, your offerings invite us deeper into this shared experience of worship.

We start to hear our own questions, struggles, and hopes echoed back.

It’s in that sharing, both spoken and silent, that we remember we’re not just a collection of individuals, but brought together by the Spirit of God, learning again and again to share our lives, lift our voices, and find grace in the faces around us.

It’s one of those times when our scattered lives find a shared voice, drawn together by the Spirit, ready to sing grace into the world.

Rev. Sterling Severns, Pastor

Sterling Severns Worship & Fellowship

Looking Toward Sunday: Becoming the Neighbor

July 13, 2025 – Gospel Focus: Luke 10:25–37

This Sunday we’ll turn our hearts to Luke 10:25–37—the familiar but ever-challenging parable of the Good Samaritan. Jesus tells this story in response to a question we’re still asking today: “Who is my neighbor?” In it, compassion crosses boundaries, defies categories, and disrupts prejudice. As we prepare to worship together, here are a few questions to carry with you this week:

  • I wonder what keeps us from seeing the suffering right in front of us.
  • I wonder how courage and compassion might look in our own lives this week.
  • I wonder who has been a neighbor to you when you needed it most.
  • I wonder how God might be inviting us to “go and do likewise,” embodying mercy, justice, and grace in real ways.

Let’s also pray especially for our youth group at Passport Camp this week—that they would experience God’s love and guidance in powerful ways.

I hope you’ll join us Sunday as we listen for Jesus’ call to become neighbors in a world so desperate for compassion.

Grace and Peace,

Rev. Sterling W. Severns, Pastor

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Image: Vincent van Gogh, The Good Samaritan (after Delacroix), 1890. Public Domain. Courtesy of the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam.

Sterling Severns Devotional, Life of the Community, Taste & See

Pastoral Reflection: Grace at the Start


Rev. Sterling W. Severns, Pastor

This past Sunday, we chose to begin worship at the table. Before prayers or offerings, before much else was said or sung, we paused to share Communion—passing trays from one to another, serving and being served, bread and cup in our hands.

It wasn’t about earning anything, or proving ourselves ready. It was about acknowledging something true before anything else: that grace is given. That God provides. That all of us come hungry in one way or another.

In these tender and challenging days, when so many questions swirl about what comes next, there is something quietly powerful about starting there. To recognize that whatever happens begins not with our certainty or our planning, but with God’s own generosity. That nothing we’re about to do—our singing, our praying, our listening, our giving—creates grace. It simply responds to it.

Passing the bread and cup among us reminded us of our shared dependence. It was a small act of trust: receiving what someone else handed us, offering it in turn. A way of saying we cannot provide for ourselves alone. That God is always the one who moves first, offering what we cannot make ourselves.

For those who would like to reflect more on why this small shift in the order of worship can matter so much, I want to share this thoughtful piece that speaks to it beautifully: Grace at the Start: How Moving Communion Changes Everything.

I keep thinking of these words from Rachel Held Evans that many of us have carried with us:

“This is what God’s kingdom is like: a bunch of outcasts and oddballs gathered at a table, not because they are rich or good, but because they are hungry, because they said yes.”

–Rachel Held Evans, Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving, and Finding the Church

It’s an image worth holding onto.

Because whatever questions we’re asking about the future, whatever uncertainties wait for us beyond the doors of this sanctuary, we begin by acknowledging the grace already given.

And in serving and being served, we remember who we are.

People who are hungry. People who say yes.

People who find, again and again, that God meets us at the table.

Sterling Severns Devotional, Life of the Community, Staff, Worship

Pastoral Reflection: No Turning Back

Sterling Severns

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.”

– Annie Dillard

No Turning Back

There’s something unflinching about Jesus here.

Luke says he “set his face toward Jerusalem.”
It’s the moment he stops wandering and starts going.
Not drifting. Not hedging.
But choosing the road ahead—come what may.

He’s honest about it.
Bracingly so.
He says following will cost you.
He says you’ll have to let go of “but first.”
He says you can’t plow straight if you keep looking back.

And it’s not cruelty that makes him speak this way.
It’s love that refuses to lie.
He knows the road leads through suffering.
But he also knows it’s the only road that leads to life.

I think there’s mercy in that clarity.
A grace in being told the truth about what matters most.
Because when you know the cost, you get to choose freely.
And love that’s chosen freely is the only kind that lasts.

I imagine us standing there together in that moment.
Hearing his voice.
Not with shame. Not with fear.
But with a holy honesty that says:
“Yes. Even this. I’ll follow.”


I wonder:
I wonder what “but first” you’re holding onto these days.
I wonder what you’d have to lay down to follow more freely.
I wonder what you might gain on the other side of that choice.

Looking Ahead

As we prepare for worship next Sunday, I hope you’ll take time to read ahead in the Gospel—Luke 10:1–11, 16–20.

Jesus sends seventy others on ahead of him.
He doesn’t weigh them down with baggage.
He sends them lightly, with trust and purpose, to bring peace and healing wherever they go.
He tells them to say: “The kingdom of God has come near.”

If this week is about choosing the road,
Next week is about walking it—together.

And there’s hope in that.
We don’t walk alone.

I wonder:
As you read and pray this week,
I wonder what it would mean for you to go lightly.
I wonder how you might speak peace into someone’s life.
I wonder where you might notice God’s kingdom drawing near.

May God grant us the grace to see clearly,
the courage to choose freely,
and the love to walk this road with one another.

Yours in Christ,

Rev. Sterling W. Severns
Pastor

Sterling Severns Life of the Community, Worship, Worship & Fellowship

Pastoral Reflection: A Moment Worth Holding

“A sacrament,” Frederick Buechner once wrote, “is when something holy happens. It is transparent time—time when you can see through to something deep inside time.”

A Moment Worth Holding

And wouldn’t you know it, last Sunday felt like that.
Not holy in a big, dramatic sort of way.
Nothing flashy. Nothing staged.
But holy in a way that you could feel in your chest.
In the quiet that settled before a hymn.
In the steady presence of people who knew this moment mattered.
In the kind of moment you know you’ll carry with you.

Judy stood there—humble, clear-eyed, and fully herself—and guided us, as she always has, with the kind of wisdom that doesn’t need to raise its voice. She reminded us that Baptists don’t really “do” sacraments. But that doesn’t mean we don’t know when we’re standing on sacred ground.

“This is a transition,” she told us. “But more than that—it’s a glimpse. A thin place. Transparent time.”

She was teaching us to notice the holy humming beneath the familiar. To pay attention.

Honoring Judy

Last Sunday felt like one of those moments where the everyday and the sacred sit side by side, and you can sense something deeper just beneath the surface.

Music lifted us, stories grounded us, and a spirit of celebration reminded us who we are together. We honored Judy Fiske, Organist Emerita, for her years of ministry—decades spent faithfully stitching together worship and community in ways that have shaped us more than words can express.

We hold Judy, Eric, and their entire family in prayer as they step into this new season—a time to rest, reconnect, try new things, and enjoy being together in a different rhythm of life. We also anticipate seeing Judy in worship again in September—not in a staff role, but as a fellow worshiper. We’ll be eager to see her at the organ bench with some regularity, though we’re still discerning what that rhythm will be.

We’re deeply grateful for the many hands and hearts that planned and facilitated such a meaningful day—thank you for helping us mark this transition with so much love and care.
The beauty of that moment continues to echo in the life of our church.

This Sunday’s Gospel: Luke 8:26–39

This Sunday, Jesus steps off a boat and into the chaos of a man’s life. The man’s name is Legion. That alone tells you plenty. He’s a walking crowd of pain.

But Jesus doesn’t flinch. He sees through to the deep inside.
And in that seeing, there’s healing.
In that moment—terrifying and tender and beautifully human—there is mercy.

Not the kind that says “I’ll pray for you” and keeps walking. The kind that stops, listens, lingers. The kind that stays.

Jesus sends the man home, not just well, but whole. With a story to tell.

A Request for Prayer

Like him, we too are walking forward with a story to tell—grateful for healing, grounded by mercy, and reminded that our calling is not just to look back with thanks, but to look ahead with hope.

That’s where we are, church. On the edge of something new.
Listening to the Spirit who whispers, “Now go tell what God has done for you.”

We invite you to be in prayer for our pastoral and music staff, and for our congregation, as we take up the shared work of worship planning and leadership. These next few weeks will be a time of transition—filled with both memory and discovery. Let’s ask God’s Spirit to guide us gently and clearly through each step.

And together, we will keep walking—grateful for what has been and expectant for what is still to come.

Grace and Peace,

Rev. Sterling W. Severns
Senior Pastor

Sterling Severns Building for Hope, Life of the Community, Staff

Building for Hope: A Bold Step, A Shared Journey

Tabernacle is one of just thirteen churches nationwide invited to participate in Building for Hope, a two-year, grant-funded initiative designed to help congregations reimagine how their buildings and land can better serve their communities—and, in doing so, help sustain the mission of the church.

This isn’t a side project. It’s a purposeful process that invites the congregation to explore how we might use our space more fully for the common good, while also building a more sustainable financial future for our ministry.

Rooted in faithful economic practice, this work centers on social enterprise—a mission-led approach to using what we’ve been given (our space, our location, our creativity) to meet real community needs while generating income to support long-term ministry. Social enterprises aren’t about profit—they’re about purpose. Churches across the country are doing things like:

  • Turning unused classrooms into art studios and business incubators
  • Offering coworking spaces and after-school programs
  • Inviting food entrepreneurs to use commercial kitchens
  • Developing affordable housing on church property
  • Partnering with nonprofits to create gardens, clinics, or community spaces

In all cases, the mission leads. Any project we pursue must reflect our calling to love, serve, and seek justice.

Where We Are Now

This past week, two of our team members—Sterling Severns and Ryan Corbitt—joined cohort representatives from twelve other congregations for a national Zoom call to share updates and learn from one another. In just a few weeks, three members of our team will attend the second offsite cohort gathering in Alexandria (May 15–17), returning with new insights and energy for the next phase of our journey.

Before that, the full Tabernacle team will gather on Tuesday, May 13 to complete Session 3 of the Good Futures Accelerator. This session, titled Community and Context, centers on listening: to our neighbors, to our history, and to where God might already be at work. We’ve also partnered with the BGAV to launch a demographic study that will help us better understand the people who live around us—and how we might come alongside their gifts and needs.

Who’s Involved?

Our current team includes: Ryan Corbitt, Jay Hartman, Donna Soyars, Kathy McGraw, Sterling Severns, and April Kennedy. A few others have recently expressed interest in joining the team, and we anticipate welcoming additional members in the coming weeks.

This is an active working team, guiding the process and helping shape how and when the broader congregation is engaged. Importantly, the team does not make final decisions on behalf of the church—it stewards the process, creating space for all of us to listen, discern, and imagine together.

We also want to share a leadership update: Donna Soyars, one of our three coordinating leaders, is stepping back from that coordinating role to focus more fully on her responsibilities as Chair of Building & Grounds. She remains a committed and active team member, and we are deeply grateful for her wisdom and dedication. In the coming weeks, a new team coordinator will step into that role alongside Ryan and Sterling.

What’s Next?

We anticipate hosting the first churchwide gathering in early June, opening the process to broader congregational conversation, input, and imagination. These sessions will continue throughout the year and will be essential in helping us discern what expressions of social enterprise might take shape at Tabernacle.

This isn’t about fixing a problem. It’s about following God’s Spirit into what’s possible—rooted in our story, shaped by our neighbors, and open to where hope leads.

Let’s keep listening.
Let’s dream together.
Let’s build for hope.

Sterling Severns Devotional, Devotionals, Lenten Devotion

The Invitation to Let Ourselves Be Loved

March 13, 2025 ( pages 41–46)

We spend years trying to earn love—or at least, something that feels like it. We wear masks, curating versions of ourselves to gain approval. We achieve, perform, shape our identities around what will make us worthy in the eyes of others. But beneath the surface, a quiet fear lingers:

If they see all of me, will I still belong?

Nadeau wrestles with this tension, reflecting on the ways he spent his life trying to secure love: through success, usefulness, becoming exactly what others needed him to be. He thought he understood love. He believed in it. He knew, intellectually, that God loved him. But there’s a difference between knowing something in your head and letting it reshape your heart.

And when the carefully constructed mask—the one that made sure he was respected, sought after, admired—began to crack, a deeper question emerged:

Am I loved, truly loved, apart from what I do, apart from what I present?

He’s not alone in this struggle.

I would imagine the rich young ruler and the woman at the well both carried a weight they could no longer hold. Both were isolated, but from opposite corners—one less obvious than the other.

The ruler approached Jesus full of confidence, certain that he had done everything right. He wanted confirmation, assurance that he was on the right track. Jesus looked at him—loved him—and invited him to be free (Matthew 19:16-22, MSG).

The woman came to the well alone, burdened by her past, expecting nothing but silence. But Jesus saw her completely, naming the truth she thought she had to hide—and inviting her into freedom (John 4:1-26, MSG).

She knew she needed to be free. He didn’t yet realize he was in a self-made cage.

One walked away, unwilling to release the life he had built. The other ran toward her village, proclaiming, “Come and see!”

Maybe the difference wasn’t in how much they had to let go. Maybe it was in how much they were willing to trust that they were already loved.

And that’s the great truth: Jesus knows who we are through and through—even the parts of ourselves we don’t yet acknowledge, even the parts we try to hide from the world. And still, we are fully cherished.

“People change when they are cherished.”

– Gregory Boyle

Not when they impress. Not when they get everything right. Not when they finally become the person they think they’re supposed to be.

We don’t transform by performing. We transform by surrendering to love.

Some of us have known what it is to be lost, only to realize we have been found. Others may still be searching, wondering if they ever will be. The invitation remains the same.

Let yourself be loved.

I Wonder…

  • I wonder how much of my life has been spent trying to earn love rather than receive it?
  • I wonder if I have mistaken admiration for belonging?
  • I wonder what it would feel like to be fully seen and still cherished?
  • I wonder where I am resisting love?
  • I wonder how God is inviting me to let go of the mask and step into freedom?

This Reflection is Part of a Lenten Journey

This Lent, we’re making space for something deeper—reading Room for Good Things to Run Wild by Josh Nadeau. No book club, no meetings—just a daily invitation to reflect, in whatever way feels right for you.

Learn more, access the reading calendar, and join the journey here: https://www.tbcrichmond.org/an-invitation-to-reflect-a-lenten-journey-together/

More about the book and author: https://a.co/d/45D382Y

Sterling Severns Devotional, Devotionals, Lenten Devotion

Get it together. Keep it together.

March 15, 2025 (Day 10, pages 55–58)

Get it together. Keep it together.

These two phrases are unrelenting. For so many of us, they hum beneath the surface, quietly and destructively applying pressure that has shaped far too many of our days. We tighten our grip, clench our jaw, convinced that if we just try harder, hold on a little longer, everything won’t come undone.

How much more of our precious time on this earth will we spend simply trying to hold everything together? As if survival is the goal. As if control is the prize. We convince ourselves it’s working—until the cracks form. Until what we thought was unshakable begins to shift beneath our feet.

“Faith demands renovation. Grace demolishes what will not sustain.”

Josh Nadeau, Room for Good Things to Run Wild

The ground is shifting, and we feel it.

Could it be that grace is already working its way in—not in spite of the cracks, but through them?

Could it be that what feels like falling apart is actually making space for something truer, something more whole?

Beneath all that crumbles, something unshakable remains.

Love remains. Grace remains. God remains.

Perhaps what’s coming undone was never meant to hold us in the first place.

I Wonder…

• I wonder what I’m gripping too tightly that grace is asking me to release?

• I wonder if I’ve mistaken holding it together for actually being whole?

• I wonder how I might recognize grace in the shifting ground beneath me?

• I wonder if the unraveling is actually an invitation?

• I wonder who I’m walking with—and who is walking with me—all the way home?

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This Reflection is Part of a Lenten Journey

This Lent, we’re making space for something deeper—reading Room for Good Things to Run Wild by Josh Nadeau. No book club, no meetings—just a daily invitation to reflect, in whatever way feels right for you.

Learn more, access the reading calendar, and join the journey here:

An Invitation to Reflect: A Lenten Journey Together

More about the book and author: https://a.co/d/45D382Y

Sterling Severns Devotional, Lent, Lenten Devotion

Wonder Is Food, Not Fact

March 14, 2025 (Day 9, pages 51–54)

Jesus touches the eyes of the blind man. “What do you see?”

Awakening from darkness, the man rubs his eyes. His pupils attempt to make the adjustment. The people move like trees, blurred and unsteady. He’s exhilarated. He’s confused. His healing isn’t complete. And so Jesus touches him again. The pupils continue to adjust, the dimmer grows brighter, the clarity increases. The healing continues. (Mark 8:22-25)

I wonder what happened next?

What does it look like for someone who has been ignored, ostracized, left to the margins, to step back into the world as someone being made whole? His eyes in a constant state of adjustment, clear one moment and blurred again the next. Continual regeneration of sight to inevitable tears from wounds still in need of healing. The emotional pain that surfaced as he processed years of isolation, the ways his own community, maybe even his own family, had left him unseen.

I wonder if he was aware of the healing still unfolding—not in his eyes, but in his heart.

Healing and forgiveness are two sides of the same coin. It takes time to heal from the wounds others have inflicted. Maybe even longer to heal from the wounds we’ve inflicted on ourselves—and on others.

Nadeau experiences blindness in a different way—the kind that slowly takes hold over time. A loss of wonder. A dulling of love. A heart that, little by little, stopped being able to see.

He didn’t notice when his wonder started dimming—when the world lost its enchantment, when everything around him was reduced to function. What began as chasing understanding turned into stumbling, feeling his way through a world that no longer felt alive. He had spent years trying to grasp truth, trying to make sense of his place in the world, but the more he tried to pin everything down, the less he could see.”I had unwittingly built a world in which only what I could explain was real,” he confesses.

I had unwittingly built a world in which only what I could explain was real.

Josh Nadeau, Room for Good Things to Run Wild

And then, one night, Jesus allowed him to see again.

Sitting on a rooftop in the city, looking out over the skyline, the world widened before him. The same steady voice of unconditional love—the music too often drowned out by the noise—whispered in his ear, “See it with my eyes. What do you see?”

He saw the lights stretching into the distance. He saw how small he was, how vast the world was, how he didn’t have to make sense of everything all at once.

Healing takes time. So does seeing.

We have yet to learn we can’t survive without enchantment and that the loss of it is killing us.

He is being invited to feed wonder. Invited to be startled by beauty again. Invited to notice the holiness hidden in ordinary things.

Not all at once. But slowly. A second touch. A second chance.

______________________________

I Wonder…

I wonder where I’ve let cynicism rob me of joy?
I wonder if I’ve mistaken understanding for faith?
I wonder what I’ve stopped seeing clearly?
I wonder what happens when I stop demanding answers and start receiving?
I wonder what I need to step back from so I can see with new eyes?
I wonder who I would see if I looked in the mirror and saw myself through the eyes of Jesus?

______________________________

This Reflection is Part of a Lenten Journey

This Lent, we’re making space for something deeper—reading Room for Good Things to Run Wild by Josh Nadeau. No book club, no meetings—just a daily invitation to reflect, in whatever way feels right for you.

Learn more, access the reading calendar, and join the journey here:
https://www.tbcrichmond.org/an-invitation-to-reflect-a-lenten-journey-together/

More about the book and author:
https://a.co/d/45D382Y

Sterling Severns Devotional, Devotionals, Lenten Devotion

Starved Hearts

March 13, 2025 (Day 8, pages 46–50)

The math seems so simple.

Want less + feel less = ache less.

But if we aren’t careful, we’ll spend a lifetime working at a misidentified problem. If we think hunger is the problem, we try to eliminate it—starving ourselves of desire, convincing ourselves we don’t need, don’t long, don’t ache.

But the hunger was never the problem. So many of us have spent years numbing ourselves, filling the silence with noise, losing hours to (de)vices. And yet the longing remains. Not because something is missing, but because something real is calling us deeper.

C.S. Lewis called it “inconsolable longing”—a desire too deep for words, too persistent to ignore.

Henri Nouwen spoke of it as restlessness, the ache of a heart that hasn’t yet found its way home.

“Restless is our heart,” St. Augustine wrote, “until it comes to rest in Thee.”

In today’s reading, Nadeau faces his hunger head-on. The moment he stops numbing himself, the ache remains. He’s tempted to believe something is broken in him, that the hunger itself is a flaw.

The hunger isn’t the problem.

You aren’t a problem to be solved.

You are cherished and the longing of your heart is holy.

It’s calling you home.

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I Wonder…

  • I wonder where I’ve been numbing my hunger instead of listening to it?
  • I wonder how my desires might actually be leading me toward God?
  • I wonder where I’ve mistaken apathy for peace?
  • I wonder what it would look like to be honest about what I truly long for?
  • I wonder where God is inviting me to rest today?

____________________

This Reflection is Part of a Lenten Journey

This Lent, we’re making space for something deeper—reading Room for Good Things to Run Wild by Josh Nadeau. No book club, no meetings—just a daily invitation to reflect, in whatever way feels right for you.

Learn more, access the reading calendar, and join the journey here.

More about the book and author.