Joy

This was year four of Madison’s collaborative week of service, and do we ever have the stories to back up the momentum and value of this experience! Over 300 volunteers from 24 Madison churches contributed 898 volunteer hours of work at 12 public schools and other sites around Madison. Most folks volunteer at one site: the site their church is working at, the site that works best for their schedule, or the one closest to their neighborhood. And with so many volunteer sites and different shifts, it’s hard to get the full view of this event. So, we gathered leaders…

Madison’s Brat Fest started 40 years ago with a table, three chairs and a grill. So selling over 100,000 brats over a holiday weekend is impressive. So was what looked like the largest crowd ever at the annual Brat Fest community worship service. For the second year in a row, the 2023 worship service was hosted by Sun Prairie’s Heartland Church. A show of hands revealed about two-thirds of the crowd at the Main Stage Sunday morning were from Heartland. One count put attendees at 950. Looking out over the sun-soaked crowd, Heartland pastor Jon McNary said, “I think this…