In June of 1947, a small group of believers began meeting at the Hiway Theater with the goal of starting a church in the Middlesex area. They began as “Tabernacle Baptist Mission”, and with the help of Middle River Baptist Church and the Home Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention, within two and a half years they had purchased the land we meet on today, and had disassembled and re-assembled some old Army barracks to meet in. In Fall of 1949, the Home Mission Board and Tabernacle Baptist Mission called Alden Norris to be the first pastor of Tabernacle.

On January 22, 1950, Tabernacle constituted itself as a church, and had a charter membership of 102 individuals. However, the small building they’d put together could not hold everyone that had begun coming to the church, and in 1951 Tabernacle sponsored a new church plant, Essex Chapel, that within two years would be a fully constituted church itself, First Baptist Church of Essex. While FBC Essex no longer exists, Church of the Harbor, another Home Mission Board (now “North American Mission Board”) church plant meets in their former building, and they continue to see God move in incredible ways in our area!

Tabernacle began work on our current Sanctuary Building in 1954, with a total estimated cost of $100,000. Despite the incredible monetary burden, the Missions Committee of the church felt that there were still needy areas of our community that needed the Gospel, and so they started Mars Hill Chapel in the Back River area, which constituted as Mars Hill Baptist Church in 1961.

The Sanctuary Building was completed in February of 1956. While the initial plans of an addition with a 300-seat balcony and a connected Education Building that could hold 1,500 people for Sunday School did not materialize, Tabernacle has been incredibly blessed by God in the seven decades since the work began!

This page isn’t large enough to go over everything God’s done from 1950 to 2025: but between the churches planted, hundreds baptized: hundreds of thousands of dollars given to God’s work locally, state-wide, nationally, and internationally: and the thousands of individual lives changed as a result of Tabernacle’s dedication to leading people to know Christ, grow in His Word, and show His love to others; God has been immeasurably good to our little church in the suburbs of Baltimore!

Most recently, Tabernacle called Bryon Self to be its next pastor in October 2023. The church had emerged from 2020 and its aftermath stronger than it’d been in decades, and amazing steps had been taken in 2021 and 2022 to bring the facilities fully into the 21st century. God called the previous pastor, Dr. Andrew Bell, to Hampstead Baptist Church in Fall 2022, and after a few months of searching, He directed Bryon’s path to Tabernacle. In 2024, our church did a complete re-write of our Constitution & By-Laws, sent Messengers to the Southern Baptist Convention Annual Meeting for the first time in years, and established our first Elders at Tabernacle. We are incredibly excited to see what God will do with Tabernacle in the upcoming years, and we hope you will come along for the ride!