A row of shovels stood in the dirt in front of the makeshift pulpit before congregants who were seated on folding chairs instead of pews. The services marked an official groundbreaking for a new church to be built in the empty lot where the Mormon chapel in Grand Blanc Township stood until it was razed to the ground last year.
The FBI has said that the man who attacked the church was motivated by "anti-religious beliefs" against the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
After a year focused on healing, the community is ready to start rebuilding, Bishop Jeff Schaub said during the Monday evening service.
“We are grateful for all who have facilitated our ability to gather here today for this purpose, and to move forward from today to build this place of worship,” he said, thanking first responders who prevented further loss as well as the community members who have continued to do the congregation work through the trauma and grief of a mass shooting.
Church member Michael Mero had just been named to a leadership role overseeing church facilities on the day of the attack. Moments later, he heard a crash outside.
“I went out front to help whoever had hit the building,” Mero recalled, not knowing that the crash had been intentional.
A local resident had just rammed his truck into the church building where some 200 congregants were gathered.
He began shooting, poured out accelerant, and lit the building on fire. The gunman was killed by law enforcement officers who arrived on the scene minutes later.
Mero stayed inside to help the injured while his wife and six children ran outside to escape the carnage. His family was panic-stricken and feared the worst.
Four people lost their lives that day, and eight others were injured.
As the building burned, Mero found his family again.
“What was really touching is watching families reunite in the pavilion, people coming out from where they had taken cover, and finding their loved ones,” he said, his voice quavering at the memory. Mero said those reunions reminded him of the Mormon belief that families are “sealed” together in the afterlife – and were a reminder to keep hope alive.
“Whatever happens in this life,” he said, “We still have the opportunity to be together and comfort one another.”
But that kind of outlook can be harder for younger people to lean on.
Mero said that his children struggled to understand why he wasn’t with them as chaos unfolded. He said the pain they felt made him more aware of his role as a father – although the tragic events of last year have also made him feel an added sense of purpose for the role he had just been asked to fill overseeing the church facility. He said that work has come to feel almost sacred.
"I remember standing in the field in the back watching the building burn and feeling the weight of that calling of what I had been asked to do,” Mero said. “I can't say that I felt up to the task, but I knew that there was a reason that I was asked to be in the place that I was.”
The new church building will have additional security infrastructure, he said, to ensure congregants feel safe when they begin gathering in the new building after it’s complete.
For Brent Ward and other church leaders, the day focused not just on rebuilding what was lost, but renewing their spirits.
“We acknowledge with solemnity and sorrow the circumstances leading to this event,” he said in a prayer at the end of the groundbreaking service, as members of the church moved in behind a row of small gold and silver shovels.
“Yet today we are here and unitedly raise our thoughts and praises to thee with gratitude in our hearts for this blessing to build a chapel again on this site.
With that, members of the church took up their shovels, and turned the soil.
