Embarking on a new adventure is always exciting and scary, and the beginning of Providence Church was certainly that! I was in my twenties, newly married to Ross, and we were ready to see what God had for us in this new adventure. We had been attending The Village a little less than a year and heard that they were going to plant a church near Frisco. We showed up for an interest meeting led by Barry Keldie, the lead pastor of Providence, and we decided that we wanted to take this leap of faith. We dove all in, along with a group of one hundred others.
This was an entirely new experience, and we had no idea how rewarding or how difficult it would be. Each member linked arms with those around them and served the body in mighty ways. If you needed us to help with childcare, we’re there; needed help setting up, no problem; needed help baking cookies and delivering them to visitors…I’m in!
The early days were a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants time in the life of our church. We were nomads, waiting for weekly emails about where we would be meeting that Sunday for church. Who knew you could run an entire kids program in the gym of an elementary school?! We found a semi-permanent home for a few months at Frisco Bible Church; then, finally, we moved into the old Broken Spoke. It was a dilapidated bar at the corner of FM 423 and Main Street that we renovated as our first church home. The members of Providence once again stood up and helped in whatever ways they could. We were a small group of believers, and most of us were very young, but we all had one thing in common: faith in Jesus and the desire to see the gospel of Christ proclaimed to the ends of the earth.
Ross and I have seen a lot of things change over eighteen years at Providence. We no longer meet at the old Broken Spoke. Our membership has grown, along with our staff, and God brought us Pastor Afshin. Some things haven’t changed, though: our desire to love Jesus and see the gospel of Christ spread. We still want to see more and more people come to faith in Him. We want to know truth and let it define us. We want to behold our beautiful Savior and let that transform us into His children. That’s one thing I love about Providence — we are still the same church at our core. As I look around and see all that God is doing in our midst, I pray that no matter how big or small our congregation becomes, no matter who serves as our pastor, and no matter what building we meet in, we always will be a church that strives to make less of ourselves and more of Jesus.
