City Church Mourns the passing of Grant Ballard

It was almost 2 years ago that Adam Snell and Andy Moon met Grant Ballard. He was recently graduated from a year-long CityTeam program in addiction recovery, and was paired with Adam and Andy as part of City Church's mentoring program, which matches two mentors with one mentee.

Grant passed away last week, and the work of mourning has set in with Adam, Andy, and all those who knew him. He was good-natured and funny, but also struggled with addiction off and on during his adult life. At City Church and through City Hope, we have worked to be involved in the lives of people like Grant who deal with addiction, which touches the lives of many people in our church and in our city. The mentorship program is rooted in community development and relational work that builds a fabric for all of us who are involved. Losing Grant tore a hole in that fabric, and we are mourning his loss.

As these CityTeam graduates prepare to transition from the strict and regimented world of recovery to the world of job-searching and apartment-hunting, our mentoring program pairs them with two men who have been trained to be in relationship with people working through addiction. His mentors were able to help Grant find and move into his first apartment after graduating from the program, helped him buy a new mattress, and connected him with the deacons. Grant met with his mentors regularly and would attend church with them as well--with Andy at the Sutter campus, and with Adam at the Mission campus.

Grant often talked about how grateful he was for City Church. In the throes of addiction, there were also times he felt immense shame and isolation, times he couldn't imagine coming back to church to face his community. But his community came to him, and reassured him that he was not alone. Grant asked for prayer often, not just for himself but also for his mother, who lives in Merced.

At this difficult time, as a church we can pause to remember Grant, to pray for his mother, to ask God to direct our mourning into compassion for those in our midst who are struggling with the disease of addiction. We can continue the work of the mentoring program at City Hope. City Church continues to exist as a church for the world. That means that, at times, our hearts will be broken--and when they are broken, we will be there for each other. At other times, we will celebrate stories of recovery--and we will rejoice together. Grant's passing leaves an indelible mark on the fabric of this church and these people, and  we trust that God is using the loss of Grant to sew us back together even more closely than we have been before, in some mysterious way, and drawing us closer to himself with the work of the church.