Through the long winter of 1893 and into the spring of 1894, while Jennie Johnson was still attending Wilberforce lectures, spiritual revival was abroad once more in the Baptist community of Chatham Township. Churches could not contain it. In the wake of the revival, a new religious community emerged in the Prince Albert district a few miles to the south of the Johnson homestead along the tenth concession. The implications of a new church in the making were not yet clear for Jennie Johnson, who returned to her home after three years at Wilberforce. She was not bound for Africa, but her new preaching from her old place at Union Baptist made it clear that Johnson's passion for the work had been amplified rather than diminished by her recent disappointments. Distant mission fields faded; the ones close to home appeared in sharp relief, viewed clearly now through the Wilberforce framework of racial justice and redemption.

During Jennie Johnson's time in Wilberforce, Samuel Lynn kept his post at Union Baptist Church, unsure if his assistant would return to Canada. Nonetheless, these years had not been ones of complacency for him. Dedicated to an expansive vision for the church, Lynn moved to tap the fresh revival among the people of Chatham Township just a few miles from the site of his Union Baptist Church. Many of those who gathered for prayer meetings that winter in the farmhouses of the Prince Albert district were already members of the Union Baptist congregation.