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Taking Church Outside the Walls

Light the Way takes church outside the walls through mega events across multiple cities—and uses Brushfire to coordinate volunteers, sponsors, and vendors so the team can stay focused on ministry, not logistics.

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Light the Way is a multi-day Christian music festival and ministry led by founder John Wilson. It exists to “take church outside the walls”—to reach people who would never step inside a church but would absolutely show up for a concert or festival.

Since launching in 2017, Light the Way has reached nearly 200,000 people with the gospel. The organization operates as a nonprofit, runs multiple festivals and concerts across the country, and has built a model based on relationships — not just ticket transactions.

Brushfire helps Light the Way run complex, multi-day, multi-city events with hundreds of volunteers, sponsors, and vendors, all while staying true to the mission that started it.

Before Light the Way existed, Wilson spent a decade as a country music promoter. His world was touring, nightlife, and backstage access — not ministry work, and definitely not church.

Then everything changed.

After being relentlessly pursued by a local pastor who kept asking him to “just try” putting on a Christian concert, John finally agreed — mostly as a joke, and mostly for the money. That one show ended up changing his life.

During the concert, John heard (and felt) something he couldn’t explain. He watched young people in his own hometown respond to a message about hope, addiction, and freedom — a message that sounded exactly like his story. That moment led to him surrendering his life to Christ, walking away from addiction, and deciding to use his promoter skillset for something different: events that don’t just entertain for two hours, but change lives.

He formed the nonprofit in 2016 and launched the first Light the Way festival in 2017. They expected a few hundred people in a small Missouri town. More than 10,000 showed up.

Today, Light the Way is in its 10th year, with multiple festivals and concerts across the country, a donor-supported annual red carpet gala, and a clear mission: reach people who would never walk into a church — but will walk into a show.

The Challenge:

Ministry-first sounds beautiful. Running it at scale is not.

Light the Way isn’t just selling tickets. It’s coordinating:

  • Hundreds of volunteers per festival (often ~200+), across different departments, shifts, and days
  • Donors, sponsors, and ministry partners who keep events financially possible
    Vendors who activate at each site
  • Attendees across multi-day festivals in multiple cities
  • A growing staff that needs to be trained on systems quickly

There are two huge realities in that:

  1. They can’t rely on just ticket sales.
    John is blunt about it: secular crowds will buy tickets, Christian audiences often won’t at the level you’d expect. That means Light the Way depends heavily on sponsorship, donors, and vendors to make each festival financially viable. Relationships are the engine.
  2. They are operating like a touring organization.
    Every city is essentially a new build — new volunteers, new team members, new logistics. They need to be able to collect the right info from every volunteer, slot them into the right role at the right time, communicate specific training (like prayer team expectations vs. kids zone expectations), and do it without duct-taping six tools together.

What they couldn’t use was a generic “one size fits all” ticketing link and a spreadsheet. What they needed was a professional-grade operations system.

“I can send an email and get an instant response. If we’re stuck, Brushfire sends me a video showing exactly how to do it. I’ve literally built Brushfire into our staff training.”
John Wilson
Founder, Light the Way

The Solution:

Light the Way uses Brushfire as both its public-facing ticketing platform and its behind-the-scenes logistics hub.

Here’s how that shows up:

  1. Volunteer registration that reflects reality (not theory)
    The festival relies on close to 200 volunteers per festival. Brushfire lets Light the Way build that: department, day, shift, role, all selected in one flow. No guessing, no replaying “Who said they could cover Friday night?” over text.

     

  2. Segmenting and communicating to the right teams instantly
    Not every volunteer gets the same prep. The prayer team, for example, needs additional guidance and specific training that’s different from someone helping with kids activities or front gate.

    With Brushfire, John’s team can pull a specific segment — like everyone who signed up for prayer team — and send messaging just to them with expectations, instructions, and spiritual guidelines, right inside the same system. No messy export. No CC-all chaos.
  1. Training new internal staff using Brushfire support
    Light the Way is still growing and hiring. Every time someone new joins, John doesn’t have to stop what he’s doing and become the “ticketing trainer.”

    He simply says, “We use Brushfire, and you’re going to love them.” His team emails Brushfire, and they get a fast, personal response — often with a walkthrough video made for them. When Light the Way brings in a new team member, Brushfire steps in and helps train them on the platform directly.

    That level of support lets John scale the organization without burning himself out as the only person who “knows how it all works.”
  1. A platform that supports relationship-driven revenue
     Because ticket revenue alone doesn’t fund the mission, Light the Way’s model is built on sponsors, donors, and vendors. Brushfire is supporting that relationship-based model — not forcing them into a pure ticket-volume model that doesn’t match how ministry events are sustained.

The Results:

Nearly 200,000 people reached with the gospel.
Since that first “let’s just try it” concert, Light the Way has reached almost 200,000 people. What began as one small-town event is now multiple festivals and concerts in multiple cities — plus a 10-year legacy.

200+ volunteers per festival — organized, placed, equipped
What used to look like chaos now has structure. Volunteers can choose their area, their day, and their block. Leaders can pull specific groups and communicate only what matters to them. Everyone’s prepared before doors even open.

Onboarding made scalable
Instead of John stopping to onboard every new staff member himself, Brushfire steps in. New hires get trained on the same platform Light the Way actually uses in the field, so the organization can continue multiplying without losing consistency.

Mission stays first
Light the Way’s core mission is simple: take church outside the walls and reach the people who would never walk into a Sunday service but will absolutely walk into a show. Brushfire helps them execute at that scale — without diluting that mission into “just another concert.”

Light the Way is not just putting on shows. It’s building access points to faith for people who would never sit in a pew.

TLDR

Light the Way uses Brushfire to run multi-day, multi-city Christian festivals with 200+ volunteers per event—keeping ministry first while Brushfire handles ticketing, volunteer logistics, communication, and staff training.

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