A rainy Sunday at the end of a stormy week revamped Brat Fest plans for the last day of the 3-day festival. The music acts were condensed from three outdoor stages to one indoor stage, in the Veterans Memorial Coliseum. Brats were still for sale but Friday’s Take Your Brat to Work drive-through lanes were revived. And the cornhole tournament was moved to the Arena, starting right after the church service.
An enthusiastic crowd of several hundred worshipers filled the Arena for the 9:00 am church service. “They have moved heaven and earth to get us out of the rain and inside,” announced Heartland Church pastor Jon McNary, who has hosted the service for the past several years.
Noting the Wisconsin State Track & Field Championships coming up at the end of this week, McNary focused on the 400 meter relay as one of his favorite events. He explained that the baton must be carefully relayed from one runner to another and the race ends when the batons cross the finish line.
“The batons have been passed to us for our leg of the race,” he said. Going back all the way to Jesus, “the author and finisher of our faith [Hebrews 12:2], who called on his followers “to make disciples of all nations,” [Matthew 28:19], he reviewed how the Gospel message has been relayed through the early disciples all of the way down to our community today.
“This is our race today,” he said. “What will we do with the baton in our region, in our generation?”
Unlike the track and field competitors, though, we don’t have to run this race on our own strength. We have God’s Holy Spirit. “We are encouraged to run on His strength and on His power,” he concluded, adding that we also can run together as a community of believers.
Brat Fest is now in its fifth decade. For the last decade, the community church service followed by a day-long schedule of Christian music performers has been a part of the Sunday Brat Fest schedule. This year, Sidewalk Prophets and Seventh Day Slumber were included on the revised music schedule for later on Sunday, squeezed in with other performers.