New Member Get Together

Sunday September 20th was the new member get together at Grand Traverse Pie Company.  I was very intrigued about the church and I wanted to find out more and more.  I had questions that I needed answered.  I need to know more about the "all is welcome" belief, I needed to know about funding.  How could a new church be able to afford the things that I have seen so far?  Would I eventually be drinking the kool-aid? 

My husband and I went and my daughter Danni tagged along to check things out.  Now I must tell a brief history of Danni (my daughter) with church.  She has probably been let down by the church as much if not more than the next person.  Danni has her own demons that she is personally dealing with and that is her story to share and not mine at this time.  Let's just say that I feel she could benefit from coming back to the church.  Her only compromise was that she would not allow the church to buy her dinner or dessert.  She wanted them to have no holds on her whatsoever and I could respect that knowing what she had gone through. 

So we went and we offered to buy our own dinner as well because I could see her point but they did indeed buy our dinner but I did pay for Danni's.  I turned around and donated that money later to the homeless as an offset.  I needed to give back just as they had given to us.  We were in the small room at the pie company and our pastor began telling his story and his story apparently hit home to Danni because the next thing I knew, she was having a panic attack and rushing from the room not to be seen again until I got home. 

Again the people were friendly and when we got to the question and answer portion, I almost felt bad for asking the hard hitting questions BUT I had never joined a new church in it's infancy.  My questions were answered gracefully but not overly practiced so I felt confident in the answers I was given.   It was that evening that I told my new pastor my story about how I was drawn to Common Ground.   I told him of my dark and scary place, how I didn't know if I could get out of that place alone but through God and his guidance... in my words, an article, a movie, a book and a worship service, I became a different person.  My husband can even vouch for this.

It was like a dark heavy cloud was lifted from me in one week.  I had given up on myself and forgotten God in the process.  I allowed people to treat me badly and to make me think that I was not of worth.