09/01/2026
Below is from our church’s September newsletter with more photos of our Sunday School kids at the Winnebago County Fair.
Article Title: Cultural Cultivation: Lessons Learned at the County Fair and Beyond
In mid-August, Junia and I went to the Winnebago County Fair to watch some of our Sunday School kids show their animals. It was our first time seeing any of it in person.
County fairs show up quite often in American movies and TV shows. Kids leading cattle around a ring, pigs in the barn, prize-winning cherry pies. I had seen the pictures. But standing there while our own kids walked a steer or a hog in front of a judge, and listening to them and their parents explain what they were doing and why, was something else entirely. Keeping an animal calm and moving where you want it to go turns out to be hard, and the kids are still learning it. That’s part of the point.
At one point I asked what I thought was a simple question: how do people get those big cows home, some of them over 1,300 pounds? That’s how I found out most of them don’t go home. I didn’t expect that. There was a sad part to the day I hadn’t seen coming.
The best moment came in the sheep barn. One of our older members was sitting there, and he told me he brought his own sheep to the fair nearly every year when he was growing up. So he was sitting close to the sheep, right where he’d always been. That conversation turned the day into something more than a visit to a fair. I came home knowing our church members better, young and old.
This is what cross-racial, cross-cultural ministry looks like. Back in June, a group of us made kimbap together, and for almost everyone in the kitchen it was their first time. In August, a pastor from South Korea watched steers and hogs shown at a county fair for the first time in his life. Neither of those things happens without the other person. We each brought something the other had never done. That’s how we learn about each other, and how we grow together in Jesus’ name, with a door open to everyone.
Grace and peace,
Pastor Seong
