The vision for Mosaic began in South Africa. While Jim and Natalie were serving a seminary internship with three new churches in Cape Town, they'd put their kids to bed each night and spend hours talking and praying about God's will for their future. During that year a vision was born in their hearts of a new America---young, culturally-diverse and moving to the gateway cities & suburbs. The Eatons returned to the US and accepted a call to lead a church in Laurel, Maryland, in the suburbs of our nation's capital.

In Laurel the dream came to life. Surrounded by growth, diversity and a loving church, the Eatons' ministry flourished. One weekend, a visiting missionary planted the seed thought of someday moving further out into the Maryland suburbs to start a new church from scratch. "Jim, look at the opportunities here," he said. "Overseas, our perspective is that it takes more courage, maturity and skill to start a church. I believe God has called you to do this---you should pray about it." So Jim & Natalie began to think and pray---perhaps one day God would open the door to do this.

In the meantime, God clearly led the Eatons to a multicultural, international opportunity near Ramstein, Germany, not far from Frankfurt. But after only two spiritually exhilarating years, Natalie came down with an illness which eventually forced them to return to the States. This was a difficult move because of the great needs in Europe, but they knew it was the right thing to do. During this transition time, as the doctors eventually found the cause of Natalie's sickness (which turned out to be very minor), the Eatons accepted a multicultural church in the Chicago area.

God was good over the next two-and-a-half years as the Holy Spirit transformed the lives of a growing number of people. Young couples began coming to Christ from various ethnic and cultural groups, providing more hands-on experience in multicultural ministry.

In the summer of 2003, several pastor friends from the DC area called Jim out of the blue with the challenge of moving back to Maryland to start a brand new multicultural church. After a couple of trips surveying communities along the I-270 corridor, and after prayer and the input from godly counsel, Jim & Natalie were gripped with the sense that this was God's timing--God was calling them to take an extreme step of faith and embrace this new challenge. They moved in the fall of 2003.

Mosaic Church is being started in the Frederick area because of its historic sense of community as well as its new, diverse growth coming from Montgomery County and other areas around DC and Baltimore. This is a challenging but immensely rich opportunity to start a new church in a new community---totally from scratch. We're excited to see how God is going to bless His initiative---Mosaic Church. Maybe God is calling you to embrace this dream as well!