About All Common Ground
Building a table in a world full of walls.
All Common Ground is a small, local circle for honest conversation across different beliefs — and a stubborn hope that people can still sit across a table from one another with humility, honesty, and love.
Different views. Shared humanity. Real community.
Where it started
It began with a particular kind of tired.
There’s a tiredness that comes from watching people you love lose each other over things that didn’t have to divide them — a Bible translation, a news cycle, a political season. All Common Ground started from that ache, and from a refusal to believe that’s just how it has to be.
It isn’t a debate stage, and it isn’t a deconstruction group out to tear down anyone’s past. It’s something quieter: a table where people who’ve taken faith, or truth, or community seriously — and still feel alone — can pull up a chair.
We’re not trying to win anyone over. We’re trying to make a place where people can stop pretending, tell the truth, and be met there.
Our mission
To build genuine community where real differences can breathe.
Online and in person — grounded in courage, humility, and compassion. We believe connection happens not when we argue to win, but when we listen to understand.
What we believe
A few simple commitments, held seriously.
Community first. We’re not just hosting a discussion — we’re building a community grounded in care, trust, and the dignity of every person at the table.
Understanding over winning. We don’t debate to defeat. No gotcha moments — only chances to understand each other a little better.
Curiosity over certainty. We’d rather ask a good question than hand someone a shallow answer. Growth here is shared, not a solo victory.
Presence over persuasion. We’re not trying to convert anyone to anything. You don’t have to agree with us to belong here.
Courageous, compassionate dialogue. We welcome hard conversations and handle them with care. We challenge ideas, not people.
Transparency and integrity. No hidden agendas, no manipulation — just honesty, and the accountability that comes with it.
Bridges instead of walls — one honest conversation at a time.
In a world that keeps sorting people into “us” and “them,” All Common Ground is an attempt to build something better in the gap: a place where belonging doesn’t depend on agreement, and where the goal isn’t to be right, but to stay in the room together.
Different views. Shared humanity. Real community.
About me
Why I started this.
I’m Eric Gajewski, and All Common Ground started with me — but not from a strategy. My story isn’t a clean one. Addiction took me further than I ever meant to go: I’ve been homeless, I’ve sat in a jail cell, I’ve burned bridges I’d give anything to have back. I also know what it is to be met in that wreckage by people who sat with me before I had anything figured out. That kind of grace is the whole reason this table exists.
I got tired of watching people I love lose each other over a headline, a translation, a political season. After more than two decades in digital marketing, I’d seen up close how the machinery profits from our division. This is my answer to that — something slower, more honest, and a lot less interested in winning.
Where I’m taking it: somewhere real and in person, here in the High Country of North Carolina — a local circle first. But the dream is bigger than one room. I want the Common Ground Way to be something others can pick up and use to start their own local groups, growing toward a holistic, recovery-centered community where people don’t just talk about wholeness but practice it together — spirit, mind, body, and relationships — and help build real local life, not just better arguments.
For most of my life I ran ahead of God — forcing doors, managing outcomes that were never mine to manage. It cost me. These days I keep my hands on the work in front of me and trust Christ with the rest. I’ve stopped obsessing over what I can’t control, and started pouring myself into what I can.
That’s the All Common Ground way: we’d rather build than complain. Less commentary, more contribution. We don’t just name what’s broken — we make something better in its place.
I don’t have this all figured out. I’m still in process, same as anyone who walks through the door.
— Eric
Where I stand
I’d rather you hear it from me.
A page like this usually stays vague on purpose. I’ve decided not to. If you’re going to trust me with anything — a Wednesday night, a hard conversation, your business — you should know what I believe now, rather than find out later and feel like I managed you.
I’m a Christian. I was born again, and I mean that the old way: something happened to me, and it wasn’t self-improvement. Jesus isn’t one option on a shelf here — He’s the center of it. When I read that in the beginning was the Word, or hear the Tao described as the Way woven through everything, or the I AM as Being itself, I don’t hear rivals to the Gospel. I hear people reaching for the same thing. I just believe it has a name and a face.
I’m also a Christian Universalist, and that’s the part people want to know about — so here it is plainly. I believe God’s love and purpose are wide enough that no one is finally, eternally lost. The early church had a word for it: apokatastasis, the restoration of all things. Some of the men who taught it are still honored as saints; the church later ruled against parts of it. I know that. I keep the case against my position on the shelf next to the case for it, because I’d rather be corrected than comfortable. You can read four of those voices and judge for yourself — Origen, Gregory of Nyssa, Clement, and Isaac of Nineveh — or the longer version of why we walk with all.
Here’s what that doesn’t mean. It doesn’t mean sin is nothing, or that what we do to each other doesn’t matter — I’ve done enough damage to know better. It doesn’t mean the cross was decorative. It doesn’t mean every road is the same road. And it doesn’t mean I think you’re wrong for holding the view you were taught. Most of the people who shaped me hold it.
And here’s what I’m not asking. I’m not asking you to agree, and I won’t raise this at the table unless you raise it first. If you believe in an eternal hell, you’re welcome here and I’m not going to work on you — no long game, no softening you up. You’d know if I were, and you’d be right to walk.
I know that saying this plainly closes some doors. There are rooms it keeps me out of, and people who’ll decide about me on this paragraph alone. That’s a fair trade. I’d rather lose you honestly than keep you by staying vague.
Come as a seeker, not a finished product
There’s an open seat at the table.
You don’t need the right words or your beliefs neatly organized. You only need enough honesty to admit that maybe life was never meant to be figured out alone.