Our Story

In January of 2003 my wife and I began Renaissance Church with about a dozen friends. We met in the old Columbus Theatre on Broadway in the West End of Providence. Being in New England and being inexperienced as a church planter, we did not grow very fast. In fact, the first three years we remained at about 30 people and met in hotels, storefronts, dance studios and even outside in parks on occasion. Being on the West Side we focused mostly on serving local artists. We created a small arts venue for artists to perform and display their art and built many friendships.

By an act of divine providence we ended up on the Eastside and the church tripled within months as we were invaded by college students from Brown University and Rhode Island School of Design. About 2009, the church experienced an awakening after a season of 40 days of prayer and fasting. After that powerful visitation from God we became much more serious about prayer and walking in the fear of the Lord. The basic Gospel message also took a much greater central place in our lives, and the presence of Jesus was notably stronger as we surrendered more fully. 

We were growing up.  

In this time of dramatic reviving God gave birth to a fresh vision of relocating the church into an area of urban decay in Providence's South End.

We then took a crazy step of faith, at a time when we were struggling financially, and found a large warehouse-type space in the heart of the city. In less than a year, our church doubled in size and became much more diverse in every way. The church formed wonderful relationships with Burmese refugees, the homeless, urban teens and kids, and all kinds of beautiful people living in the surrounding neighborhoods.

After a solid five year run in that location I started feeling a stir that perhaps God was moving us on. Though the location had many great features one weakness was that it was hidden away and not as visible and accessible as we desired. Also, during those five years we grew from about seven children to seventy children—and desperately needed more space for our kids programming! So I started once again on my prayer drives in search of a new location.

After much prayer, I kept feeling drawn to the densely populated area around Classical High School where Southside, Westside and downtown converge. We found an amazing three story 18,000 square foot building smack in the heart of everything at 184 Broad Street with a top floor sanctuary that overlooks the downtown skyline. We were now surrounded by three high schools, Johnson and Wales University, hundreds of homeless and the city's largest shelter, thousands of under-resourced families, a thriving local artist community, young professionals in downtown lofts and seniors in high rises. The need was overwhelming. We served hard in this location for a full decade until the cloud of the Lord moved us on. 

After the pandemic we found ourselves in a season of decline and weariness. We found out the building we were renting was being sold. Once again we needed to venture out to look for a new space to meet in. This has been our story from the beginning as we’ve met in schools, in armory buildings, in hotels, at Conley Wharf, in storefronts, in houses, in athletic centers, in theatres, in warehouses—to name a few! So, here we go again. This time the Lord led us just outside the city of Providence in a quiet area of Riverside. We found a raw, unused warehouse that we transformed into a beautiful church home. We moved into the space at the start of 2025, and it’s been serving us well as we are in a season with more young families than we’ve ever had. 

In all honesty, the above is just a brief history of the locations we’ve met in. I have hundreds of stories accumulated from our start in 2003. To hear a more in-depth account of some of our history take a listen here. 

- Pastor Scott Axtmann