In 1925, Jennie Johnson left her Prince Albert Baptist congregation for an uncertain and unlikely venture across the border in Michigan. As an accomplished woman of fifty-seven, easier paths were open to her, but the road to Flint and a new mission was as clear to her now as the path to mission work in Africa had once seemed. This time she made the decision long before she could even envision the details. “In 1925,” Johnson wrote simply, “I saw the need for spiritual guidance and for material help as well for those of my race who had come from the South and settled in Michigan. So, praying for God's help and guidance, I launched on the project of providing a true Christian Centre for those bewildered and needy souls. I was no longer young, money was not plentiful … but the work was there.”

The move to Flint joined Johnson's personal fortunes to the great migration of African Americans from the south to the midwest, where the automotive industry had transformed an already vibrant urban economy into a smaller version of the motor city from which it took its cues. Not surprisingly, Jennie Johnson's time in Flint would bring a sharpened sense of race consciousness to her ministry. To this point, the conflict over women's ordination had defined the most contentious part of her work, but in Flint the woman question—which Johnson of course had always considered settled—gave way before the question of race.