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Shawn Jeong did not start a small group because he felt ready, or because he had a vision for ministry at work. He started it because he could not stop thinking about a coworker named Issa. That alone says something about how God tends to work. Not through grand plans. Through people who simply keep paying attention.
Two years ago, Shawn's life looked nothing like it does now. An engagement had ended, and not gently. He packed up everything he owned and drove a U-Haul to Colorado to start over, only to lose his job a few months later. He was alone in a place where he knew no one, working for a boss who would not give him a Sunday off to go to church.
"He had to strip away everything," Shawn said. "My friends, my relationship, my job. For me to realize, oh, I need God."
He calls that season his wilderness. Not the kind with manna and forty years of wandering, but a quieter, smaller version of the same lesson.
"Thank you God for not leaving me out there for forty years wandering," he said. "It was only six months."
During that stretch, alone in an office on a Sunday morning, Shawn turned on a Saddleback service online out of habit. Pastor Andy was talking about a forty day challenge to read the New Testament. Shawn decided to take it on, and it led him back to an old middle school friend named Steven, now a campus pastor at Saddleback South Bay.
What Shawn did not know yet was that Steven had written his name down months earlier as part of a church initiative called One Life, a list of people to pray for with no guarantee they would ever respond. Steven had no particular reason for choosing Shawn. He just wrote the name down and kept praying.
Shortly after, Shawn reached out. The two reconnected, started reading Scripture together over Zoom, and within months, Steven baptized him at Saddleback Lake Forest.
A year later, Shawn found himself on the other side of that same story, though he did not see it that way at the time. A coworker named Kevin had shared his faith with another colleague, Issa, who walked away from that conversation more confident in where she stood with God. Shawn was glad to hear it and moved on with his day. But something about Issa stayed with him.
He kept wondering how she was doing, what came next for someone who had just said yes to faith but did not know what to do with it. That curiosity, more than any plan, is what led Shawn toward starting a small group. It did not come easily. He tried to get a devotional booklet for Issa and could not, because of a scheduling rule that had nothing to do with him. He signed up for small group leader training mainly so he could unlock a Bible study app he wanted for himself. He nearly skipped the training entirely to spend time with visiting family, until those plans fell through at the last minute.
Looking back, Shawn reads all of it as God closing doors that were never meant to open, and quietly nudging him toward the one that was. "I just kept doing what I thought was right," Shawn said, "and asked God to close the doors that weren't meant for me."
So he started a group. Wednesday mornings, before work, in their office conference room. A handful of coworkers, a video series, and no pressure to perform. Shawn was already the guy who held people accountable all day at work. He did not want to be that guy here too. For a few weeks, attendance was thin. Sometimes it was just Shawn and one other coworker. He kept going anyway, partly because he was waiting for Issa to be there before he started the video series in earnest.
When Issa finally was there, something shifted. They watched a session on connection with God. Afterward, when Shawn opened the floor to talk about it, Issa grew emotional. She had been around church her whole life, Catholic school included, but had never once felt truly connected to God. She had always carried a quiet emptiness she could not name, one she had learned to fill by leaning on her husband instead.
Hearing the idea of a real, felt connection with God, paired with something her own pastor had said recently, brought it all together for her in a way it never had before. Her prayer requests changed after that. What had once been about productivity and getting her life organized became something simpler. She wanted to know God better. Shawn was the one who started the group, but he is quick to say it changed him just as much as it changed her.
"All the steps I took to get here," he said, "this is why." It is easy to miss the pattern at first.
A friend who prays for someone with no explanation. A man who shows up to a small group mostly for his own sake. A door that closes so another one can open. None of it looks like spiritual growth in the moment. It looks like ordinary life, full of setbacks and small decisions that do not seem to matter. But that is usually what growth looks like before anyone can see what it becomes.
Shawn’s story reminds us that discipleship grows through relationships. It doesn't require a special title. It simply requires a heart willing to say “yes” to the next step God places before you.
This is the heartbeat of Dream Now. God is inviting us all to dream for every area of our lives—our work, our families, our communities, and our world. Whether it’s starting a conversation with a coworker, serving on a Dream Team, or simply showing up for others, your faithfulness creates ripples that transform lives.
God is able to do “immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine” (Ephesians 3:20, NIV). He is currently working behind the scenes in your life, closing doors that aren't meant for you and opening the ones that will lead you—and someone else—closer to Him.
Maybe it’s starting a small group of your own, or perhaps it’s as simple as checking in on a neighbor. Transformation is on the other side of your yes.
