Last night, my son and a mutual friend and I, took the men working at the Union Gospel Mission's Thrift Store to a men's BBQ at one of the Mega Churches here.

The venue for the evening was first games, then the BBQ, and then a message.

I stood awestruck at the spreading campus, nestled in the pines with multiple green grass sections, acre after acre.

800 men attended from this huge church, and they were frolicking and playing shuttle cock, corn-hole, and other amusements.

It was like Paradise Found! I was amazed as I viewed, what looked to my eyes, like a beautiful Country Club, where everyone was enjoying the sports while waiting for the BBQ to be served.

The dinner bell rang and they presented 140 racks of ribs, pounds and heaps of pulled pork with all the fixings. Thirty coolers containing soft drinks and ice cream, something for every palate.

We found an area to sit, in the nose-bleed section, a group of rag-tag men that stood out like a thumb among the cashmere and Metro men's fashions.

But there we sat, all the men but one were strangers to me, but my son introduced me to the men when we picked them up at the store to whisk them off for an adventure outside the walls of the Mission.

The conversations were easy, humorous, engaging and my heart drank in every moment with the men.

As we sat there, underneath the pines, the conversations were going on at rapid rate, hearts were open, their souls were desperately hungry, and conversation flowed, as all the activities around us dimmed, and in our little group, we had CHURCH!

We all stood up when the singing began, led by a fella who looked to me about 17, with his guitar pouring out the latest contemporary Christian songs, none of which I knew; and one of the men I was talking with sat down and I could see he wasn't engaged, so I asked him if he wanted to go and talk somewhere, he immediately said yes, so we got up and found a place sitting on concrete stairs away from all the froo-froo and beauty, and for the next hour he poured out his heart.

We got up when the crowd began dispersing and looked for our group, easy to spot in the huge crowd of metro clothes.

There wasn't a single pause in the conversations all night as these men, coming from horridly traumatic backgrounds, drank in simple fellowship where connections were made, laughter and stories flowed; and all this without intoxicants or evil conversations.

The men thanked us as they hugged us, and we parted.

My son and I drove home drinking in the Holy Spirit's afterglow that permeated every fiber of my being.