About Common Ground Ministry

 COMMON GROUND MINISTRY began in 1985 after 4 suicides at Ft. Vancouver High School in one month. A local youth pastor and Chaplain, Mike Miller, was involved in counseling those families through the tragedy. He began a school assembly program, Dare to Live, to counter this growing threat to our youth. 

Subsequently Mike presented his school assembly in all 50 states to roughly 3 million students. Because the secular schools prevented him from giving the students the hope to be found in Jesus Christ, he began an after-school all-school assembly program called The Fight of your Life, in which he could present this hope and give an altar call. 

The programs ran through 2008. Unfortunately, local churches were reluctant to adopt and disciple students who had had no previous church experience. In 2016, Mike discovered his non-profit had been delisted due to an error in reporting, so a group of Christians got together with the burden to see local youth not only refuse suicide but come to know Jesus as their savior. The non-profit was re-formulated under the name Common Ground Church, a church without walls. ‘Members’ of our church continued to serve in their various local churches and added this ministry to our local youth.

In 2018 we designed and began Hopeline, a suicide prevention hot line, with a local 360- prefix and with links to local Clark County community resources. All volunteers went through 32 hours of training in subjects necessary for dealing with distraught callers. We offered “mental health first aid” and not on-going counseling. To move beyond mental health first-aid, we designed and began the counseling program Fully Restored. With a salaried Licensed Supervisor Counseling Therapist, we partnered with Multnomah University to offer their master’s-level counseling students the ability to counsel our Hopeline callers which allowed them to reach the required 70 hours of supervised counseling for their Master’s Degree.

Carpenter’s Garage offered low-cost or no-cost auto repair services to the community and gave back over $5 million in provided services.

We adopted an existing non-profit maternity home, New Beginnings Maternity Home, and designed Allie’s House as a communal home for 6 or 7 pregnant or recently birthed teens. Subsequently we partnered with a local couple, prophetically charged to run such a home, and transferred control of the non-profit. We sold an existing decrepit house in Vancouver to Heather’s House, now under construction.