First, the outward vocational dimension. By God’s grace, they had already helped launch two other successful church plants and a third that failed to thrive and closed. Jim began to talk with other leaders who were trying approaches mingling together the best of satellites and traditional church planting. As great as these options were, all of them still were slow, expensive, and fell far short of the need. Simply put, the opportunity was too great. But through their involvement overseas, they began to hear stories and meet leaders who were experimenting with approaches that bore a striking resemblance to the Gospels and Acts, and with similar results. But nothing had yet taken root in the West. So they watched and waited, reading, reflecting and praying.

Second, the inward devotional dimension. God began to speak compellingly to Jim, in particular, about the need to slow down and focus. Through dreams, visions, prayer and reflection on scripture, God began to invite Jim to a posture of simplicity, a radical trust in God’s provision and a radical focus on the priorities of God’s kingdom mission. God also began to speak to Jim from scripture to not just settle for what was expected as normal, but rather to do a new kind of work and ultimately to become a new kind of leader. 

Third, the pandemic. While the church they served remained stable organizationally, Jim and Meg began to see all the ways that the pressures of the pandemic exposed the weaknesses in the prevailing model of church that they’d inherited. Discipleship, community, mission, all struggled. Covid didn’t create the problems, but it did make them worse.