Por Grayson Hester
Amid cascading crises, crumbling institutions and a prevailing sense of directionlessness, what stands as the most precious resource we can offer or status we can hold may not be our data or our time, but our clarity. Clarity is our sense of right and wrong, our perception of our purpose in this world and our resolve to see it through.
Enter Rev. Melissa Roysdon.
“I have clarity about who I am. I sometimes don’t feel like the most confident person in the room, but I always know that I’m called by God,” she said.
Upon meeting Roysdon and asking about her ministry, “clarity” may not be the first word that springs to mind. She is intentionally multi-vocational, splitting her time between teaching ESL at a local elementary school as well as in the evenings for adults, and serving as the pastor of Providence Baptist Church in Cookeville, Tenn. In both the public sector and the religious, her purpose and clarity are simple: to love people. In her case specifically this means immigrants.
To split her time is to help bridge ever-widening gaps of support, which both places her within the community she’s called to serve and increases her ability to serve it. “I discovered that I could make a difference for a child and the trajectory of their life, but that really wouldn’t starthappening until 10 years down the road,” she said. “But if I help a mother or a grandmother change her trajectory and develop her English skills then I could affect that family’s life a whole lot quicker.”
In this way, pastoring influencesteaching, which then supports the people alongside whom she ministers—both inside and outside the church’s walls.
“She makes people feel safe and valued. So I think she models that for us,” Mary Beth Duke, a member of Providence, said. “And you can’t go away from here on Sunday without intentionally thinking, have I been valuing the people in my life the way I should?” This question shapes every aspect of Providence’s mission in Cookeville, as stated in its Facebook bio: “The small church with a BIG heart.” What it lacks in imposing architecture is made up for in centrality, having been built on one of Cookeville’s main streets downtown.
That location symbolizes the role Providence sees itself playing in this mid-sized Middle Tennessee college town about an hour and a half from Nashville. It’s a role of commitment to the Gospel of a refugee Christ and to more down-to-earth concerns. “We’re right there on one of the main streets downtown and people just didn’t see us. So we moved to another location that was a lot more visible,” Roysdon said.
The “small church” aspect proved to be an obstacle. But the “BIG HEART” emerged as an efficacious remedy. That is, with more than a little help from a congregation related to another side of Christianity altogether.
“This opportunity to move here came about because we had a combined worship service with the United Church of Christ for Advent,” she said. “It was nice to have a church in town that was very open to us even though we were not exactly the same.”
While the UCC congregation maintains a focus more local than Providence’s global outlook, they both share a commitment to offering help to Cookeville’s more marginalized friends, whether in the form of a warming center for unhoused neighbors or ESL instruction for those who have immigrated here.
UCC’s chance to remodel a space for Providence arose from this service. “Our church has the clarity of our mission—which is missions—and that’s what makes us thrive,” saidJoyce Glover, another member of Providence. “We do have a purpose in supporting missions, and that’s our primary purpose of being here.”
New space, same purpose—and more eagerness with which to achieve it. It took sacrifice, intention and many meetings to make it happen.
But along journeys, there can be few trustier companions than clarity. The clarity of Roysdon’s purpose, of Providence’s mission, saw them through difficult decisions. What has emerged on the other side is a congregation reinvigorated and a model for other churches starting to grow.
“When we go through reimagining, we find a better way, we find a better self and we find a healthier self. As a denomination or a denomi-network or a Fellowship, it’s time for us to reimagine what that means for ourselves and for our collective self,” Roysdon said.
For Providence, that looks like joining other denominations to address the higher unifying call we all share. It also looks like making a commitment to mission work front and center, both in the church’s budget and in its worship.
According to Roysdon, despite its relatively small size Providence has had “for a very long time,” named Cooperative Baptist Fellowship field personnel as part of their budget. If the name didn’t, for whatever reason, fit, then the work of field personnel took its place.
“And we’ve had this missionary moment as a part of our worship service from the very early days of the church’s formation, even when we were still gathering in a house,” she said.
It was those early days of Providence that fomented and secured the missional outlook as the church’s reason for being. At that time—when Providence initially became a part of CBF—the congregation joined a program called “Adopt-A-People,” she said, in which they provided support to the Palaung people in Thailand.
“That partnership became the heartbeat of this church.”
Years later, that heartbeat keeps steady time, unfailing and undeterred, whether in the hand-painted halls of public education or the hallowed corridors of religion. Through moves, restructurings, adjustments and adjournments, Providence has maintained its clarity. It could provide a path forward for CBF churches that are fighting for survival, to say nothing of thriving.
It takes flexibility and great faith. But it is the work to which we are called, and it is work well worth doing.
If churches are struggling in these disjointed days, think of those struggles not as obstacles, but as opportunities. You may find compelling, Christlike clarity.
This article was originally published in fellowship! Spring 2026 Magazine. Find it here and sign up for the quarterly magazine here.