By DAVID NAHAN/Sentinel staff
OCEAN CITY – 2020 was a tumultuous year for the Ocean City community and for the world at large with the COVID-19 pandemic raging, the virus infecting more than 100 million people, taking more than 2 million lives, including 439,000 and counting in the United States, and wreaking havoc with economies large and small.
‘You get the sense that you’re out there on your own, that people don’t care, and that’s not the case. Ocean City made that known. People do care. The community did care and they showed up. They put feet behind their caring. They didn’t just send words and cards. They sent resources and their good wishes and their prayers and their love. That just meant the world.’
Shari Thompson, president,
Tabernacle Baptist Church board of trustees
In the middle of it all, Shari Thompson experienced something that reinforced her faith as the community came together to help save the historic Tabernacle Baptist Church.
“It will be the thing I hold onto for 2020. It was a very trying year but look what happened in the midst of that,” she said. “There was a bright spot. There was a feel-good story. There was a God story. There are many God stories but for us it was kind of a mountaintop experience for us and our congregation.”
In December Tabernacle Baptist Church got a refund of about $16,000 in property taxes it never should have owed, but did because of improper dealings by the former pastor. The pastor, Charles Frazier, who died last summer, had transferred the church property into his name and tried to sell it. The church trustees stopped the sale in the nick of time, got it back from the pastor and his family, and appealed to the city to stop a tax sale after it lost its tax-exempt status and racked up tax bills for 2019 and 2020. Long story short, the trustees couldn’t stop the sale so they raised money with the support of the community to pay off the tax bills before the sale, and through the courts proved the church never should have lost its status. That culminated with the refund the church can now use for seed money for repairs and ministry.
As the oldest church in Ocean City moves forward, Thompson, president of the board of trustees of the church, took a few minutes to look back on a bad year with a sense of gratitude and awe of how the community responded in the church’s hour of need.
“My first thought was … the amount of people that supported us, especially on the day of our fundraising event and yard sale. We were just inundated with people,” Thompson said, citing “the generosity of the Ocean City community. Many people just gave money and said ‘keep it’ when we were doing the fundraiser of the meals. They just wrote checks. They said, ‘I don’t need to have a meal. Just take this and good luck.’
“It was such an unexpected blessing in a really tough time, not just locally but nationally,” she said. “Overall, 2020, everyone can agree was not a great year….
That is something we can celebrate not only as Tabernacle Baptist Church but as a community. In the midst of a really tough year, people came together to support a cause the community was behind and really wished us well.”
From the comments she received, Thompson said the community did not want to lose the church as an historic landmark or to lose the congregation.
“They didn’t want to see it go away. It was really heartening to know that it wasn’t just us that cared. It wasn’t just a few members, it was the community that cared. That’s really special,” she said.
People from her past and that she had never met came out to help, including teachers that once taught her at Ocean City Intermediate School and a stranger who donated to the church’s yard sale fundraiser.
“An elderly man … dropped off things to donate and he kept coming back. He came back the next day with articles he received from his daughter. And he came back the next day with articles he received from his neighbor. He wanted us to have so many items for our yard sale. He didn’t know me from Adam, as they say. He just really connected with our mission to save the church,” Thompson said.
“You get the sense that you’re out there on your own, that people don’t care, and that’s not the case,” she said. “Ocean City made that known. People do care. The community did care and they showed up. They put feet behind their caring. They didn’t just send words and cards. They sent resources and their good wishes and their prayers and their love. That just meant the world.”
She said the church trustees and congregation members felt the community support was a sign from above.
“It has also solidified in our mind that we are following God’s path here. God has sent the community. We think we see it as a message that we’re on the right track. All of this is because we’re following God’s path, not our own path. We want to do what God wants to do with this building. It really feels like a confirmation when we received the support that we did receive.”
Repairs, ministry ahead for church
Thompson said Tabernacle Baptist Church is “now turning the ship” to focus on ministry for the new year, although that may not happen until the latter part of the year given COVID-19’s persistence into 2021. They are planning on Christian speakers and events and contemplating an alternative Halloween.
They are taking estimates to repaint the exterior of the church to match its original appearance when it was St. Peter’s United Methodist starting in the late 1800s. The trustees have a picture when the church was on St. Peter’s lot showing darker trim around the windows and doors. They have an original window and plan to use paint chips to match the color.
“It really gave the church more of a presence,” Thompson said. “We’re interested in doing the exterior, just like the interior was done, giving it a historical paint job. That will complete the restoration inside and out.” The interior was restored in a four-year community effort that culminated in 2003.
The church also needs some gutters reinstalled and a new church sign because the wood on the current sign is starting to rot.
“We’re looking forward to the years we’ll be able to see some of the members back. We hope we will see them in the church and we’ll continue to exist and to be a light on that corner. That’s what we’re really hoping to do,” she said of the church at the intersection of Eighth Street and West Avenue.
“There wasn’t a lot of activity in the church the last 20 years,” she said. “We’re looking to reverse that. We’re looking to be led by God and to be able to be a spiritual asset to the community.”