My name is Thomas Allen Garvin V (aka Tommy Allgood), and for the past few years I’ve been walking a pathway of Liberatory Leadership and Sacred Community Building that has asked and invited more of me than I ever expected—emotionally, financially, and spiritually. It has been an incredible path, and in so many ways I am who I am today because of it. Recently I’ve been thinking more about sustainability, and important voices in my life have nudged me toward being more vocal about the support I personally need. I’m sharing this now because I’ve reached a point where I can’t carry it alone. And I don’t believe I’m supposed to—because our collective and individual formation is community work.

Over the last decade, I’ve poured myself into supporting others—through nursing, trauma-informed facilitation, queer spiritual leadership, racial healing work, worship and music ministry, restorative circles, and consulting with organizations trying to become more human-centered. The work is meaningful and necessary. It’s also unpredictable. There are months the income flows, and months it doesn’t. There have been times I’ve held space for entire communities while quietly managing the stress of meeting living expenses. My income is meaningful but unstable at times because trauma-informed facilitation, spiritual care, and community healing are largely contract-based and inconsistent.

Don’t read that as a blame or indictment on communities struggling and loving together—it’s simply the truth of my becoming in this work, in this season. I am learning that I can ask for needs to be met without fearing rejection at my core. As part of that truth, I have to let go of the desire to “do it all myself”—because this is what Spirit is asking me to release. I’ve carried the weight of being strong, “self-reliant,” and emotionally composed for a long time. But this path—this calling into deeper learning, more structured ministry (service), healing, and leadership—was never meant to be walked alone or in silence.

I was accepted into and began studies at McCormick Theological Seminary, and I’m saying yes to stepping more deeply into the work that my soul must have—work that has been forming in me long before I had the language for it. My work—whether in circle facilitation, healing spaces, spiritual leadership, or community care—is about creating places where people who’ve been harmed, displaced, or spiritually exiled can find belonging, voice, and restoration. Seminary isn’t a divergence from that path; it’s the deepening of it. It’s where the work I already do meets structure, eldership, ancestral lineage, and formation.

But this journey comes with a financial reality I haven’t been able to meet alone.

There is also an institutional layer to this journey. Part of my seminary pathway is intended to be supported in partnership with Watershed, my primary home of spiritual practice and formation, and I’m grateful for the conversations unfolding there. We are still discerning what that partnership will look like in practice, and the details are not finalized yet. As those pieces come together, there remain immediate costs that I am shouldering on my own. Naming that honestly feels important. This GoFundMe isn’t in place of institutional support—it is what helps me bridge the gap, steward my portion, and give space and time while Watershed and I clarify how we will walk this formation journey together.

What I’m doing in seminary isn’t just about earning a degree. It’s about building the capacity to serve my community with depth. It’s about becoming the kind of spiritual leader I didn’t have growing up—Black, queer, trauma-informed, embodied, rooted, and unafraid of the truth. It’s about training to hold spaces where people can heal without judgment, reclaim their sacred worth, and find the Divine peace that covers all, outside the structures that once harmed them.

This is work my heart and body must have – And I need help crossing this threshold.

Your support will go directly toward tuition, fees, books, and the practical costs of completing this next stage of formation. Anything you give—whether large or small—helps me steady the ground beneath me so I can keep saying yes to the work I’ve been entrusted with.

If you’ve been touched by my leadership, my music, my facilitation, my care, or the ways I’ve shown up for community—this is one of the clearest moments where your support can carry me forward.

I’m committed to doing this work with integrity, transparency, and deep service. I’m committed to continue refining myself in the service and healing our world needs—one who knows what it means to rise from harm, to build resilient communities, and to lead from compassion, courage, and truth.

If all goes well- The Goal is 10,000 and we are gonna small is all our way there. (Unless you got it like that otherwise). To register for the next set of classes I need to clear the current due amount about $4500. If I have to update the amount I'll keep you posted.

Thank you for believing in me.

Thank you for helping make this possible.

Thank you for holding me as I step into the next chapter of my calling.

With care, gratitude, and hope,

Tommy