Wingmen Grapevine, TX 1/20/17 7:00 a.m. 120 men

Wingmen is a parachurch organization that is, to me, a real church, only just for men.

They meet at the Lancaster Theater in old downtown Grapevine, and there is a catered breakfast of huge mounds of bacon and eggs. I skipped the breakfast as I am trying to stay away from pork, as part of my whole "follow Jesus" effort. 

It was started by Chad Hennings, who had a great career as a defensive lineman with the Dallas Cowboys. He hosts the every other week "corporate" event, while many of the men meet in "Element groups" on the off weeks. The corporate event seats about 120, and it appeared to be exactly full. I understand it is also simulcast and archived to be seen on the internet. 

The speaker was Dudley Hall, who appears to me to be the default guy when they don't have a guest speaker. And he is a really good default guy. I first saw him about 15 years ago at an area church, and I have liked him ever since. 

The concept that hit home with me was in his closing, that earth does not go up to heaven, but that heaven comes down to earth, just like it says in the Lord's Prayer. 

One thing that I think we can all agree on is that heaven is populated by saints. So heaven coming down to earth means that earth is starting to be populated by saints. I have met some saints, and their lifestyle is best described as "Jesus like", no matter what the other attributes. They know their job is to equip others to be saints and to continue to disciple them, to turn the saved into the sanctified, completely and permanently filled with the Holy Spirit, born from above. 

As these saints disciple other people who have called upon the name of the Lord, Jesus selects some of those as saints. And that's how we get the exponential progression that will lead from Jesus completely coming into some and Jesus eventually coming into all. 

I tried to contribute a fairly large sum of money to Wingmen yesterday afternoon, but their online system didn't seem to want to take the money. It would not accept a four figure amount and when I adjusted down to a similar three figure amount, it crashed on the first try and then did not give a success landing page on the next. So I will wait to see on the credit card bill and, if the Lord leads, try again to give.

Wingmen gets into my category of favorite churches.

Trey